Year Five/Six News 

Civics and Citizenship: Building Democracy

To launch our Civics and Citizenship unit, Year 5/6 students explored the big ideas behind government by working in teams to build marble runs! While it may seem like just a fun STEM challenge, the activity sparked an enriching discussion about how the process mirrored the way governments work.

Students shared ideas, negotiated roles, made group decisions, and followed agreed-upon rules, just like a democratic government leading a country. Through this hands-on experience, they discovered the importance of collaboration, fairness, and listening to others,  all key values in a healthy democracy.

What a creative way to kick off our unit on how Australia is governed!

Exploring Multiplication Methods

In Maths, we're learning about multiplication and exploring different strategies to solve multi-digit problems. Some of the strategies we’ve been using include:

• The vertical method (also known as the algorithm),
• The area method, where we break numbers into parts, and
• The lattice method, which uses a grid to help us organise our thinking.

These strategies help us build a deeper understanding of how multiplication works and give us different tools to solve tricky problems with confidence!