BNPS Newsletter

Year 6 News

As part of our current ‘How The World Works’ Unit of Inquiry into ‘Innovation in Technology Impacts Society and the Environment’ we immersed the Year 6 students in a Design Sprint which took them through the following process: 

  • Define
  • Investigate
  • Generate
  • Plan and Manage
  • Produce 
  • Evaluate

 

This activity was designed to ‘hook’ the students into thinking about how we can identify current problems and find a creative, innovative solution using technology. We look forward to continuing the process in preparation for our Exhibition next term. The students will create a prototype of an invention in their chosen field. They will communicate their findings, research and ideas for the future to the school community.

 

Mason, Angus & Henry

When the design sprint started, we immediately ran and gathered materials, then we allocated roles, I was designer, Angus was head builder and Henry was builder. At the 15 minute mark we made no progress, we were struggling to cut the cardboard and were having arguments. At the 30 minute mark we had cardboard scissors and were making decent progress, we had cut out 2 pieces and were making our design!

Then Mason had to go to guitar.

 

So me and Angus kept on building cutting out another 2 pieces.

Then we started taping the 2 pieces and cut 2 more and taped those. Then we cut out the roof and taped that on just at the last 1 minute.

 

We were finished with 4 walls and a roof. Just after we finished

We had to set up a city with everyone's buildings. Then the unexpected happened and Mr Arnold came in with a leaf blower and blew our structure AND IT DIDNT FALL OVER!

 

Krish, 

On Wednesday last week the whole year 6 made a 3d house out of cardboard and boxes. First of all we studied the materials we were going to use to build the house. We chose concrete bricks and a slate roof. Then after that we started to design our house. After we got back from designing and we combined our designs together to make 1 big design. After that we started building.

 

We used cardboard , 1 meter of tape which we did not like we thought it would be easy because we had planned. But it was not. After starting we thought it was impossible because we could not start cutting the  cardboard because it was really thick. We made a big house but then it all collapsed we were really unhappy but we put our heads down and started working again. After that we took a few pictures and put it on our things that we failed and the things that we did right.

 

We had trouble making the garage and the roof of the house. After that the teachers told us we only had 15 minutes we were so surprised that time had gone so quickly we were so surprised we put our heads down and got to work we worked really efficiently in the last 10 minutes and worked hard. We finished and we were not so happy but we finished most of it. Then the next day the teachers got a blower and blower our cardboard houses luckily ours stayed up and we were really happy after we finished.

 

Xavier, Kieran & Tommy

It was Wednesday morning and me phoenix, Kieran and tommy  were starting to build our creation. We had been researching for an hour and we decided what we were going to build was a massive house and we had already done some research prior to our build about certain building materials and house shapes so we had a rough idea of what we wanted it to look like.

 

Once building had commenced we went straight for the biggest box which we later realised was not a good idea. Then the teachers told us that we could only use one meter witch was a bomb shell because we needed a lot of tape. Me and Kieran where building the house while phoenix was sitting a box and tommy was making beds for the home we were making.

 

Ben L, Fletcher & Orson

Wednesday last week, 8th of June, we had the building day for our inquiry. We were all in groups of 3-4, my group had 3, Fletcher, Orson and I (Ben). I thought it would be a challenge, I was right. All we had was cardboard boxes and 1 metre of tape in total

 

Before that we had to design the house. My group did 2 designs, the first we disagreed about, but the second we had to do in 10 minutes. Luckily we got the 2nd design finished so we went with that. We first started to build the base. We had an idea that we would have a big box for the base, make three holes, then put a strip if cardboard through so that it would hold the base down. Then we started the real house. 

 

First we make the real base of the house that connected to the 3 stripes of cardboard. Then we started the walls, at first they kept falling down, but we finally got it to work. We used 1 big strip of cardboard then bent it to go around the base. Then we put a piece of cardboard at the top for the roof. The first one didn’t fit so we had to add another on top. That turned out to add something. Then we started the roof.

 

We had an idea to put a big triangle at the top but it didn’t fit so we made it smaller, then made a door on the side for a balcony. We had to show the material we used for it (or what we would've used) so we drew a bunch of squares on it. Finally we finished it, but the balcony kept falling off, so that was annoying.

 

We waited a day to see if the house stayed together, of course ours did. Then in the afternoon of the next day there was a challenge for all the houses. We lined them up and Mr. Arnold used a leaf blower on the houses to see if they stood up. Ours stood up and didn't move a single inch!

 

Rory, Tom and Orlando

The building day was a very crazy day there were some ups and down some of the roles that we had assigned to each other some of our thoughts were "oh this will be easy."

Tom was the documenter Rory was the cardboard ripper and Orlando was the builder.

 

Some of the downs were first of all the double sided tape kept ripping and falling off and it would not stick and coming apart as well because of  that the cardboard structure came undone and it was pretty hard to cut and we had some disagreements here and there.

 

Some of the ups though we got masking tape after the other tape broke as well as it was not to hard to rip the card board once we figured out how to do it well it survived the hurricane of Arnold and we got it done in the end.

 

Oskar, Annabel & Namkha

THIS DAY WAS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!

On Wednesday the 1st of June we had a hole day of inquiry. This day introduced us to our new unit of inquiry which is innovation of technology impacts society and the environment, the main activity was designing and creating a model of a house out of carboard and other materials. The people that was in my group were Oskar Edwardes, Annabel Potts and Namkha Palo La Gerche which was a verry productive team. The roles where Oskar as main note taker, Annabel as design and construction and Namkha as construction.

 

Veronica, 

We started off building thinking that it would be easy peasy... well, let me tell you it was  not!

I can't believe that we actually went with the idea of a slanted roof, bad, bad idea.

I reckon we could've got it done in 30 minutes if it wasn’t for that stinkin' roof!

I mean, I had pretty low expectations already but our so called 'house' didn’t even have

Walls on the second floor! The only good thing about this 'house' was that when the

'cyclone'  came through, our house was still in one really ugly but surprisingly secure 

piece. We were all quite proud of our...umm... 'creation', yeah, lets call it that for now.

Even though it took two hours, the experience was still very fun.

 

Chloe, 

A couple weeks ago, the teachers set us a fun inquiry challenge to start off our new unit, how the world works. The week before we had been told to bring in cardboard boxes and plastic waste. Everyone was very confused because we didn’t have a clue as to why we were bringing these items to school. The first thing in the morning, we were told to go into the great space to watch the three little pigs. The reason we watched it was to learn about house materials, and what's weak and what's strong, for designing a house. 

 

We went into groups and were told to research sturdy materials for constructing a house. Once we finished researching, we all split up and we were told to design a house individually. When we finished, we all came back together and combined our ideas to make one design. The teachers told us to get some materials and make a replica of what we had designed. We also had to document our struggles, and our achievements throughout making our house. We faced many challenges, but we managed to build a strong house and we were very proud of what we had designed and how it turned out.

 

We left our designs there for the night to see if they were damaged over the night or if they had held up. At the end of the day, Mr. Arnold asked us to put our designs on the floor as he got out a huge leaf blower! Everyone was so excited to see what would happen to their buildings in the strong wind.

 

As the strong winds hit our house, we were hopeful that ours would stay up and withstand the leaf blower. Mr. Arnold finally turned the leaf blower off. Ours... SURVIVED!!

 

We had an awesome time making our buildings and it was so much fun watching them all fall. It was amazing!

 

Flynn, Jamie & Tom

We were doing are plan when we heard a noise the noise was loads of children running for carboard 

So we ran out got some carboard we were able to get a big bit of carboard and a strings box.

 

We made our design and a plan  are design was a three layered house the main house ,basement and roof are plan was Flynn would do the basement ,Jamie would do the roof and Tom would do the mane bit of the house.

 

We got to work and started to cut the carboard but we couldn't cut it . It was to hard so we got some help from Ms. Lowers helped us to cut the paper .

 

By Max, Liam and Lachie

I looked at Liam and Lachie and we made our group, then we sat down and the teacher said "ready, set, go!" Sadly, we were the group furthest away from the cardboard so by the time we got there, there was no cardboard left for us to grab. We just had to hope that someone would donate some cardboard back into the middle. Instead of standing there carrying on, we decided to plan some more on how we were going to build the house. then max came and got and got a big cardboard box! Someone had donated some cardboard into the great space! We shouldn’t of got our hopes up though. After receiving the cardboard we find out that it's so hard to CUT THE CARDBOARD!

 

But then we trying to figure out we have to find out the walls and the floor, then we find out we had to make a floorplan but then we wasted all our time on making the floorplan. Then we started to make the walls but we could not stick it on so one of the teachers help us and we tried it but it did not work and it all fell down. Only because we change our mind on what we doing and we took to long on the floorplan and cutting cardboard.

 

And we miss out on our house getting destroyed.

 

Campbell,

It started when we watched 3 little pigs building houses out of hay, sticks and brick. After that we had to plan our houses individually then come together as a group and combine all the houses together then after that we built for 45 minutes, not that much time. We chose Campbell's plan after that we grabbed the nearest piece of cardboard, but there was a twist we could only use one metre of tape. We got to cutting right away it was really difficult to cut the cardboard and we needed to cut a lot of cardboard. After 15 minutes we cut the walls and the roof. We used about ¾ of the tape just making one section of the build. 

 

All of us documented the build so far and took a photo of what it looked like, it was barely standing up but we kept on working. Our build was very delicate because we didn’t have a solid base. By the time we hit the 30 minute mark we had 10cm of tape. We used 15cm on Campbells big window for the second floor. We were running out of tape and time we had 5 minutes left and we couldn't finish because we ran out of tape! So we used a piece of cardboard to support the big window up.

 

Times Up! We were taking out to the great space. We put our builds in a town like format. Then the Ryobi leaf blower. There were gasps and chatter then we saw everyone's creations be destroyed lucky our build stayed solid somehow. Our build had survived the Ryobi leaf blower.