Year 6 Spotlight

Debates & Kahoots!

The following student reflections highlight the learning and teaching in the Year 6 classrooms.

Debate reflections

This term the Year 6s have been learning about debates. A key feature of our learning has been focused on debating language. Debating language involves using clear, persuasive and concise language to strengthen our arguments. Debating is important, because it helps us analyse different views, and make logical arguments.

On Thursday 13 March, the Year 6s had a mock debating afternoon. My topic was ‘uniforms should be required at schools’. This was a challenging topic because there was not heaps of evidence to go off, unlike some other topics, so researching was quite a bit harder. It was fun because we were given the chance to perform our debates in front of the class. On the afternoon of the 27th March, Year 6 parents are free to come along and watch us do our debates!

~ By Jimmy H,  6C

For the last few weeks, the Grade 6s have been learning about debates in writing. Debates are like writing a persuasive essay, introduction, arguments and a conclusion, except you're competing against another team. You will get a topic and will either be the affirmative team or negative. You and your team will write an argument each. 

On Thursday 13th March, the Grade 6s had a mock debate in their classes. It was challenging but I still had a lot of fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it too. Everyone was very encouraging and mature about all of it. I am looking forward to Thursday 27th March when we have another debate with the Grade 6 parents in the audience – so Grade 6 parents, if you don’t have anything on, please come and support your kid! 

~ By Xavier M, 6A

Kahoot reflections

In Year 6 this term we have been learning about Civics and Citizenship. We have tried out the Australian practise citizenship test and even the Canadian practise citizenship test. After learning about the hows, whens and whys of citizenship, we made our own Fairfield Primary School citizenship tests. By using Google, our brains and Kahoot we made FPS citizenship tests and the Year 3 students came to try them out. Every single one of them passed! I call that a success!

~ By Annabell S, 6C

This term, the Year 6s have focused on making kahoots (online quizzes) for the Year 3s for our inquiry unit on Civics and Citizenship. For writing, we have been exploring persuasive writing in the form of  debates.

In the kahoot we made 10 questions for the year 3s to have a deeper understanding of our school and the school values, some of the questions in the kahoot involved teachers and staff, we really wanted to test them on their understanding of the school values, such as creativity and respect. We worked in groups of two or three and listened to each other throughout the whole experience, while the Year 3s were in our class we talked to them about how to navigate through the kahoot.

When writing our debates we learned about persuasive techniques  (AFOREST), and the structures of debate passages (PEEL strategy). We have also focussed on teamwork and being supportive to others around us and on our team. We had to research statistics and facts to help with our speech, we then had to present it to the whole class to work on public speaking. As audience members we had to be quiet and respectful to our peers. This was a great way to prepare for high school and for our real debate in front of our parents.

~ By Lola PS and Stella H, 6B

In Inquiry this term, we have been looking at citizenship and how you can become an Australian citizen. We learnt about the citizenship test, then made FPS citizenship tests for the Year 3s with kahoots. We worked in pairs or small groups and came up with questions for our kahoots like, ‘What are our school values? (Answer: Respect, Creativity, Excellence and Community), ‘Who is Milkshake? (Answer: A cow)’. We really enjoyed creating our kahoots and the Year 3s loved trying hard to answer our questions. 

~ By Lily R, 6A

~ Year 6 Teachers (Anna, Conor & Anneliese) and Students