Connect: Year 6
We’re in the Swing of Term 4!
As we move into the warmer weather and the months glide by, it’s hard to comprehend that at the time of writing, our students only have 48 days left at Skye Primary School before they move into the completely different world of Secondary School. Grade 6 have been encouraged to make the most of the time that they left as members of the Skye Primary School community and enjoy the friendships and good times that they have, while working as effectively as they can so they are equipped to handle the step up into Year 7.
Key Dates
Thursdays 12/19 October- Moving into the Teen Years.
Wednesday 18th October- 4-6pm Skye PS ART SHOW!
Tuesday 31st October- Hot Chip Lunch
Tuesday 7th November- Melbourne Cup Day Holiday
Monday 11th December- BIG DAY OUT! Gumbya World!
Tuesday 12th December- Statewide Transition Day
Thursday 14th December- Grade 6 Graduation
The Next Fortnight of Learning
Mathematics
Over the next two weeks, we will be focusing on Percentages and Tessellation and Location in Maths. With percentages, we are going to be looking at the real life skill of adding and subtracting percentages off items that are for sale in shops and with certain bills that you might receive a discount on if you pay them by the due date. We will also be looking at Tessellating shapes. It was particularly interesting that a lot of the students struggled to describe what a tessellating shape was, but when they got different shapes to experiment with, they took to this with gusto and made all sorts of wonderful tessellating patterns. (Google the art of M.C.Escher to find amazing tessellating art like this!
https://www.tessellations.org/eschergallery1thumbs.shtml
Literacy
We have been working really hard at building up our vocabulary (the word of the week is diverse!) so we can comprehend as much as possible when we read. The improvement of our reading throughout the year has been amazing. We firstly zeroed in on practising our Fluency so we could read with a good pace and rhythm, now we are building up our bank of words. We’ll finish the year looking at building our background knowledge so we can make links to what we are reading which will also help us understand what we are reading!
With our writing, we are studying how to write an Information Report. These require a lot of research, then paraphrasing the information that we have gathered and then drafting, editing and writing up a final copy. It’s been excellent to see how our students have been able to write for sustained periods of time that not only helps them improve now, but will put them in good stead for future years.
Inquiry
We are looking into Financial Literacy and implementing a fun programme called ‘Banqer.’ I know that when I think back to my Primary and Secondary schooling, this sort of thing was never taught in the curriculum and what an important skill it is to have! We are learning about, Incomes, Expenses, Saving, Loans (and Interest on them!), Superannuation and basically what to look out for with handling the money that you have worked hard for.
Wellbeing
MOVING INTO THE TEEN YEARS has been an excellent programme so far and the students have been very mature in how they are handling the material that is being presented by the specialist in the area. This education is invaluable for the students, because the more knowledge that they have, the better the chance that they are going to make responsible decisions when different situations arise in the future.
REFERENDUM! YES OR NO?
Finally, over the past couple of weeks we have been studying all think Referendums. We are looked at the history of them and we have have learnt what has to happen for a Yes vote to be successful (The majority of votes overall and the majority of states- at least 4 of the 6) We have studied the case and arguments for both the Yes and No sides and we held our own referendum on the Proposed Change. We’ll see if our outcome reflects that of Australia's overall.