Above and Beyond

Term 4 Global Connections - Year 5/6

In 5/6, we have worked on the Faith Based Inquiry topic of 'Global Connections’.

Our big question is : "How do our Catholic Social Teachings impact our perceptions and connections to a diverse and changing world?

Catholic Missions STEM Project                                                  - Our 'Sockball Shoot Out'

In FBI, we have been researching  Global Connections with other countries.  We have been looking at ways we can be a Global Citizen through Solidarity, which means providing action for those around the world who need it. 

October was Catholic Missions Month.  We learnt how Catholic Missions Australia provide international fundraising for countries in the fight against poverty. This year’s focus was on providing better nutrition and food security in Ethiopia for the village of Embidir. 

We learnt that many women in the village do not have enough milk to feed their young babies. The Goat Farm Project is like a Community Pantry where the women can obtain milk to nourish their babies and help them to grow. 

As a school, we asked everyone to wear CRAZY SOCKS and aimed to raise enough money to buy many more goats and provide medicine and food to keep the goats healthy. By encouraging students to go without a soft drink or a hot chocolate at the shops and to donate that money to Catholic Missions on Socktober Day, we raised $270, enough for about three new goats for the village. 

We also took part in a STEM Challenge to make our own SOCKBALL. A Sockball is a soccer ball made from recycled materials like plastic bags, packaging, bubble wrap, old 

t-shirts, pants and of course, SOCKS!  

Watch this video to see what it's all about!

We learnt that these Sockballs are made by kids from poorer countries so they can play soccer. Soccer is the most common sport played around the world and by making our OWN Sockballs, it helped us share the experience of kids in places like Ethiopia and connected us to people all over the world, especially those in the poorest of countries.  

We had fun making them and testing them out on Socktober Day in our 'Sockball Shoot Out' .

We have LOVED reading our class novel, 'Then' by Morris Gleitzman, we are learning about the history of some of the countries of the world through literature!

James McD: Howdy folks! This report is about a book that we 5/6 students have been reading, a book based on World War II called ‘Then’. it’s the second book of a series written by Morris Gleitzman. First we started with 'Once' and now we are reading 'Then'. So let me tell you a bit about this book. Well, it would make more sense if I started out at 'Once'.

Once there was a boy in an orphanage named Felix. His parents owned a bookshop and when WW2 started they left him in the orphanage. Then Felix wanted to find his parents so he snuck out of the orphanage to go and find them. Little did he know that his parents were at a Nazi concentration.

Now back to Felix.......he found a house that was on fire and he found two adults, a male and a female, but sadly they had died. There he saw a little girl named Zelda. Felix figured out that Zelda wasn't dead so they stuck together and then later they found someone called Barney.  Zelda, Felix, Barney and some other kids were all on a train that was being sent to a concentration camp. Felix, Zelda and one of the other kids jumped off the train to escape, which they did successfully. This then takes us to 'Then', the next book of the series. 

Then Felix woke up. He and Zelda survived but the other kid wasn’t so lucky. Felix and Zelda were trying to find someone to adopt them since Felix figured out that his parents had died. Then they ran into a turnip man with a cart who tried to take them to the Nazis. Luckily, they both managed to escape. Next, they found a lady called Genia, who adopted them and took them to her home. Felix and Zelda had to change their names and disguise their hair colour so they didn’t have to worry about the Nazis finding them.

Anyway Wilhelm (Felix) and Violetta (Zelda) made an enemy along the way called Cyryl. He tried to help the Nazis catch them, but Wilhelm was too smart for him. And that's all we're up to for now. It's a fantastic book that I highly recommend.  I hope you are having a great day!

We are busily working on our "Country Research Projects" which we will present to our classmates next week.

Emmy : For our Country Research Project for FBI, I chose to research the country of Brazil. I have learnt a lot about Brazil such as the culture, history and the language.

Scarlett: In the 5/6 FBI unit, we are studying Geography. In this unit we all picked a country to research, I chose Thailand. All of the 5/6s got to choose how they would present it. We then researched and found information about our topic. We will all be presenting our topic next week to our Year 5/6 homeroom classes. Did you know Thailand is 5,788 km away from Australia? 

Ava : For the country research project I chose to learn about Chad, which is located in Africa. A few interesting things that I have learned about Chad are that people that come from Chad are called Chadians. They speak over 100 languages, although the majority of them speak Standard Arabic, French and Ngambay. The currency that is used in Chad is called Central African CFA franc, with one CFA being equivalent to 0.0023 AUS dollars.

Our Debating Teams are ready to argue their points in front of a 3/4 audience this Friday. The debating topics have an emphasis on 'Climate Change' and how this affects citizens around the world.

Billy:  In the 5/6 space we all have been working on our debating topics. There are 7 affirmative and 7 negative teams working on separate topics. There are three people in each group.  My group is arguing the affirmative for ‘Compost is better than a worm farm.’ The people in my  group are Ellie, Charlie and me. It has been really fun but also really hard.  We are all ready to present our debates to the 3/4s,  this Friday morning.  

Arthur: Recently the year 5/6s have been practicing debating. I have really enjoyed it, even though it has been tricky at times, but overall now my presentation is finished. I cannot wait to present my argument about how ‘wind turbines are better than solar panels’ to the year 3/4s and their teachers.

Warm Regards,

The 5/6 Team