Yr 4/5/6

As part of the Sustainability Summit, the students in Year 5/6 worked on presenting to students in other schools about reducing plastic waste such as having nude food lunches which is lunches with no plastic wrappers. This initiative was led by our Greenforce team. 

The plan moving forward will be for our school to start participating in nude food lunch days in order to become a more environmentally friendly school.

In Maths, the Year 4/5/6’ students have been working on Fractions. They have been estimating and finding equivalent fractions. At the beginning of the topic, the students made paper snowflakes and estimated the fraction cut out. At first, the students found it quite tricky to estimate how much of the fraction was cut out but we investigated some strategies to find a more accurate way of estimating.

For both the students' Procedure unit for writing and their maths unit for fractions they made pizzas. The students first made the pizzas and then wrote exactly how they made the pizzas as a procedure. They were then required to cut the pizza into equal parts and compare it with a friend who had a different number of pieces. The students learnt that the smaller the pizza slices were the larger the denominator was that is, the bottom number of the fraction. Whereas, the larger the pizza slices were the smaller the denominator was. The students were very engaged during this lesson and had so much fun making pizzas and investigating fractions. 

As part of the students' writing unit on Procedures, which is defined as a sequence of actions or steps needed to make or do something. The students first followed a set of instructions to make items such as stress balls, Oobleck, ice cream and houses. The houses were made out of paper to suit a particular character. They then had to write the structure of the procedure, including a title, goal, materials, method and a tip or warning. 

As part of our Changemaker program, the Year 4/5/6 students have been creating and running stalls to raise money to build a library for a school in Pakistan. These stalls have included bake sales, lolly digging scavenger hunt and a fun game of jiggly toss. Thank you for your support. These stalls have been a huge success raising over $500 towards the cause. The students have also really enjoyed creating and running these stalls.

To end our Procedure unit, we read a story called “Enemy Pie”. This story is about a child that has an enemy. His dad suggests making a pie that will get rid of his enemy for good but he would have to spend one day with his enemy. The students were told to make a pie for their enemy and to write a procedure on how to make their pie. The students were so engaged thinking about what disgusting things they could place in their pie. For example some students used toenails, jelly fish and rotten cheese.  

For Inquiry, we learnt about Democracy, how to take part in voting, what the levels of government are and about our local council. The students got to see a lot of this in action when we went to Canberra and the Boroondara Leadership Day. The students even got to do a role-play where they were the politicians trying to pass a bill through the House of Representatives to have more team sports at school. The bill didn’t get passed because the opposition disagreed with the motion. 

As you would have seen from our social media posts, the students went on a camp to Canberra. The students participated in a number of fun activities including: a tour of the High Court, a role play in Parliament House, a visit to the Old Parliament House, indoor rock climbing, voting at work at the Australian Electoral Commission, cycling around lake Burley Griffin, a visit to Questacon, CSIRO, the Australian War Museum and Mt Stromlo Observatory just to name a few.  The students had a wonderful time and learnt a lot during this trip.

The Australian Government recognises the importance of all young Australians being able to visit the national capital as part of their Civics and Citizenship education. To assist families in meeting the cost of the excursion the Australian Government is contributing funding of $45 per student under the Parliament and Civics Education Rebate program towards those costs. The rebate is paid directly to the school upon completion of the excursion.

The students in Year 5 worked on preparing and delivering their leadership speeches for the leadership team for 2023. These students read clearly, confidently and enthusiastically. The staff and I were so proud of the effort each student put in.  

Mr Jack Cirillo & Miss Maddi Durrant

Year 4/5/6 Classroom Teachers