Grade 6 News

Our newsletter is brought to you by the Grade 6 Public Relations leaders; Bella, Jack and Charlie.

Important Reminders

Please complete your Winter Round Robin permission forms!

Learning in Action

Literacy

By Charlie P

Over the past couple of weeks we have been looking at persuasive writing. In order to make a convincing argument we learnt how to extend, elaborate and explain our ideas and reasons to make them be a more persuasive reason. Alongside our persuasive we have been working on our Literacy Goals, some of the students have also been implementing our goals in our writing pieces to improve them.

Preview for Learning: For the rest of the term, students will be expanding their understanding of non-fiction texts into the realm of informational writing. With the Olympics coming closer and closer, we will be focusing our reading and writing on learning about and expressing information related to the Olympics. Students will be exploring the following goals is relation to informational writing:

Researching Skills: activating prior knowledge, asking questions, using text features to locate relevant information
Researching Skills: paraphrasing and synthesising information across texts
Non-fiction text structures: compare and contrast, description and cause and effect
Monitoring comprehension: cohesive devices and phrases - synonyms and antonyms

Maths

By Charlie P

In Maths, we have been finishing up our work on multiplication and starting the exciting task of learning division strategies to help us in our work, while simultaneously finishing the good copy of our graphs and data work.

Preview for Learning: Students will be diving into division with a focus on the following big ideas:

Division can be solved using sharing, grouping or inverse multiplication facts
Real-life contexts provide meaning to ‘remainders’

Students will be exposed to the following strategies to support their ability to solve division problems:

Using known multiplication facts to solve division problems
Bundled grouping
Exploding dots
Standard algorithm
2 digit divisors

Inquiry

By Bella Gr

This week in inquiry we have been working on our Geography slide. Well, "what’s a Geography project" you’re probably asking. Well, our Geography projects are on different countries in these 3 continents; North America, Asia and Europe. Each group picked a country from those continents and since then have started their project, researching Arts, Culture, Location and so much more. We will be presenting these projects at our Celebration Morning, so I won’t spoil too much. Last Tuesday in groups of 3 we tried to make FIRES on the basketball courts! Sadly no one succeeded. The reason we were making fires was because we were learning about Australia, more specifically the cuisine of Australia. The way that ties into fires is that the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders before colonisation made all their food over fires, we were trying to recreate that. I’ve got to give points to the teachers on that, it was quite smart to make us do something fun so we’d learn about how different life was for the indigenous.

Wellbeing

Stress Management

This school year is almost halfway through, and it's starting to feel like high school is just around the corner for our Grade 6s. This means there is no better time to discuss and learn about healthy ways to manage stress. Students have been brainstorming a variety of ways to deal with their stress, such as taking a walk with a friend, listening to music or writing about their feelings. We have also been exploring scenarios where stress might occur, and discussing how the situation could be approached in a healthy way.

Automatic Negative Thoughts

We all have automatic negative thoughts (ANTs), which can be pesky but the Grade 6s have been learning how to squash them! The Grade 6s have been learning that it's normal to have a negative voice that pops up in our head sometimes, but we also have the power to shift that voice into a more positive frame. For example:

I'm not good enough at maths ----> I struggle with maths sometimes, but I have made lots of improvement over the years.
I don't have enough friends ----> I have a small group of friends who I get along well with.
People at school don't like me ----> I have some good friends at school and it's ok that not everyone wants to be friends with me.

Sport

By Jack G

Next week the senior school is going to compete in the winter round robin where Mr Thomas will select a sport for them to compete in. They will go head to head against different schools. All schools that get through to the next round will compete against each other until the state finals, if they are able to make it. Good luck to everyone for next week.

High School Transition

STATEWIDE YEAR 6 TO 7 PLACEMENT TIMELINE 2024-25

FOR YEAR 7 PLACEMENT IN 2025 SCHOOL YEAR

Calendar and Events

May 23rd - Knox Division Girls AFL Carnival

May 24th - Winter Round Robin Day 1

May 29th - Knox Division Cross Country

May 31st - Winter Round Robin Day 2

June 13th - Regional Cross Country

June 26th - Celebration Morning

June 27th - Senior Hooptime

June 28th - Last Day of Term 2

Exciting times ahead in STEM!

We are thrilled to share some exciting updates about our STEM program! As we continue to inspire and empower our students to explore the wonders of these vital fields, we are reaching out to our wonderful community for support.

Your generosity has always been instrumental in helping us provide enriching educational experiences for our students, and we are once again asking for your support to ensure the success and sustainability of our STEM initiatives.

Your support makes a significant difference to our students' learning opportunities and the success of our STEM program. Here are a few ways you can contribute:

Opportunities to help:

Donations of Timber/Wood, appropriate for construction E.g. Billy Cart bases or other small vehicles.
If you own or are a part of a company or business who would be willing to sponsor our engineering program.
If you have connections with hardware stores/companies, help us to make contact to obtain suitable engineering resources.
If you have any household STEM-related materials such as; plastic bottles, milk bottle lids, masking tape, balloons, wooden skewers, plastic or paper cups, unwanted CD’s or DVD’s, Aluminum Foil please drop them off outside the STEM room.
Construction Crew: If you're handy with tools and have some basic experience in woodwork or mechanics, we would be delighted to have your help in the upcoming terms to assist with our Grade 6 Science and Engineering program. Please email sophiechamberlain@lysterfieldps.com or melissaadams@lysterfieldps.com

Thank you for your continued support,

Melissa Adams & Sophie Chamberlain

STEM Leaders

At Lysterfield Primary School, we promote high expectations for all our students, and want to encourage our students to challenge themselves and tackle new and interesting opportunities. In light of this, we are encouraging interested students in Grades 3-6 to participate in the Australian Mathematics Competition this year.

The Australian Mathematics Competition, run by the Australian Maths Trust, is Australia’s longest running, largest and most well-known maths competition for school students. It is made up of 30 unique problems designed to challenge and extend students’ problem solving skills.

Students have 60 minutes to complete the competition which will occur at school sometime between Tuesday 6th - 8th August (exact date and time TBC).

Every student who participates will receive recognition and an award at their level of achievement. The levels are:

Participation
Proficiency
Credit
Distinction
High Distinction

The competition will cost $8.50 per student.

For more information about the competition, watch this video from AMT, check out their website, or contact Zahra Harvey (zahra.harvey@education.vic.gov.au).

If you are interested in your child participating in the Australian Mathematics Competition this year, please add their names to the form below by Friday 31st May:

Australian Mathematics Competition Expression of Interest