Highlights from Year 4 to Year 6

Year 4

This semester the 3/4 Engineering and Technology STEAM have specifically focused on putting on our Engineer hats, designing and building drawbridges.  The students have learnt that Engineers often come up against issues with their materials, designs and need to continually reflect on the design and the process. This week we focused on coding our dash robots to navigate our makeshift bridge and obstacle course. The students have done an amazing job this semester.

Year 5

The Year 5L class has completed some amazing learning this term across all curriculum areas. Perhaps some of the favourite subjects include Digital Technology, where our students have been building robots using Lego Spike. Working in groups students have followed instructions to build a robot and then the fun began. Students worked with the coding software to create a program which reflected actions in a story. The look of excitement on the student’s faces was incredible as their robot came to life. In Maths we were honing our measuring skills trying to find the volume and capacity of different objects. One student even calculated the volume of her hand! 

In Science we’ve been experimenting with Matter. Students have collected data and raced a range of bathroom liquids to test their viscosity. We used this experiment to practise writing and testing our hypothesis. Ask a year 5 student to share our surprising results.

Perhaps the most exciting moment for our class happened last week as we approached race day. Students had worked tirelessly during the semester to design, build and decorate their billy cart in anticipation of the great race. Congratulations to the Alpha team for winning our first round robin race. A special mention also has to go to the teacher team, who won their race in a nail biter.

We wish you a safe and restorative break and look forward to working with you next semester.

Year 6 

In year 6 we really enjoy applying our mathematical skills to outdoor and other practical situations.

In this particular activity I posed this simple question to my students, ‘What is the area of the gaga pit?’ Being the irregular shape of an octagon, we devised 2 different methods to solve this question and then applied them to find solutions. The first was to create a 1m square sheet of paper using rulers, tape and paper, we would then use that as a template to find the area of the Gaga Pit. The second was to measure the sides of the shape and then divide it into segments and then create a large equation to solve the problem. The students then took their results to the classroom drew their answers on the whiteboard and debated over the most accurate result.

This was an excellent lesson applying our well learnt math skills.”