Year 6 Excursions

It has been a busy end to the term in Year 6 and most recently students were given the opportunity to attend an author's presentation as a part of the terrific Writer's Festival and learn about cultural expression through art at the NGV. 

National Gallery of Victoria

On Monday  9th of September,  Year 6 embarked to the National Gallery of Victoria to gain some further insight into how culture can be expressed through art. This excursion tied in nicely to our current Non-Fiction unit and it was very interesting to be shown some contemporary and historical pieces from Tibet, India, China, Afghanistan and Australian along with Catholicism, Buddhism and Hinduism. 

Writer's Festival

Forty students wrote an application as to why they believed that they deserved to listen to Oliver Phommavanh's presentation at the State Library of Victoria on Wednesday the 4th of September.

Oliver is a teacher, comedian and writer from Sydney who enjoys entertaining students with his books based on hilarious, culturally diverse characters that are very relatable.

He gave students an insight into his writing process and  draws inspiration from Andy Griffiths, Morris Glitzman and Paul Jennings.

Here are a few of his writing tips:

• Embrace the weirdness
• Ideas are like Pokemon- you have to catch them all so always carry around a notebook
• Look around, walk, ride, travel and explore!
• Start with a BOOM! That's how you get into a book straight away
• If you want to be a writer- you have to read!

Short Stories

The Year 6 students have been working on writing their own short stories. Making decisions on their tone, purpose, sentence structure and including elements such as 'flashbacks', internal conflict, character dialogue and figurative language.

Please enjoy some or their pieces.

The walk home was slow and painful for Rook. His head was trying to process a difficult maths equation. Lilly suddenly stopped and Rook bumped right into her “Hey what was that for!” Rook exclaimed, Lily still didn’t answer. “Hey Lil, are you okay?” “Oh no!” Lily whispered. Rook looked in the direction that his sister was facing, his jaw dropped at the horrifying sight that was in front of him. The forest he and his sister had played in when they were little was being chopped down.

Lily and Rook ran into the woods as fast as they could with the builders sprinting after, but they were falling rapidly behind  the twins.  As soon as the builders were out of sight the twins stopped running and slowed to a walk. “Phew, that was close” said Rook. “Yeah it sure was replied Lily. The twins walked around taking in the familiar sights knowing it would probably be the last time they would walk these paths. Indi, 6A

 

7 years later…Clover ran her hands along the strange door, Papa told her never to go in the room but of course she did. He was gone. The door resisted but with Clovers great ferocity and force it clicked open. Clover is an ordinary girl, apart from the fact she lives in a house her great grandfather built into a cliff. She never knew why, but when she found that room her life would change forever. She ran her hands along the dusty panel, to find what seemed like a control board. She knew she shouldn’t but the red button was a horrible temptation. She slammed her hand down and realized the cliff was pushing the house out. She screamed knowing that this was the end. She braced herself but there was no impact. She slowly and cautiously walked towards the thick glass window and her mouth dropped open. Violet, 6B

The hot, Aussie sun burns my skin, turning it a piercing bright red. Gum leaves crunch under my heavy duty mountain boots, my brother and I are bird watching in the dry, sandy Australian outback. We are having an unbelievable time, when Suddenly I hear soft cracks coming from the ground I look down, but it was to late, I watch as the dusty, mountain edge crumbles to the ground, taking me down with it. “Jason!” I hear my brother scream.

The sickening smell of hand sanitizer and medicine, fly up my nose, as I take in a deep breath. My eyes flicker open, to find my family huddled around me. My head is in excruciating pain and my legs are wrapped in a thick, white bandages. I can hear my heart beat, thumping, slowly in my ears. My brother Max throws his warm arms around me, “I’m so glad your ok”. Sara, 6C

We have just launched you up at full speed.” Andrew’s voice echoed around the rocket. 

“Okay got it. Over.” Beep beep beeeeep. The keyboard flashed a blurry red over and over again. “What’s going on? “Hello?” I said aggressively pressing the button. The rocket was starting to heat up and crisping the leather on