6G News

Year 6 Gold have made an awesome start to Term 2! Along with our friends in 6 Blue, we are enjoying the opportunities that come with being leaders of our school community and are especially excited for our excursion to Canberra next week! Below is a snapshot of what learning looks like in our class. 

Learning Spaces 

6 Gold is a positive learning community. Supporting each other, having a growth mindset, taking risks, and celebrating our own and our classmates' achievements are the keys to success. As we learn in a contemporary classroom, we use the terms ‘Campfire, Waterhole and Cave’ to define our flexible learning spaces. Based on the research of David Thornburg, these terms replicate how communities have gathered, met and learned since ancient times. The campfire is a space where we gather to learn from teachers, guest speakers and fellow students. The watering hole is a space where we can share information and discoveries by working together as both learner and teacher. The cave is a private and often silent space where we can think, reflect and have individual time. Together, we wrote and agreed upon what learning should look and sound like when we are in each learning environment. 

English 

In reading we have been exploring figurative language in texts such as alliteration, personification, similes and metaphors. We are analysing how these literary devices make the reader form images in their minds.  In writing we are learning to compose personal responses that express our opinion of a text. An important strategy we use is our ‘Bump It Up! Wall’.  This wall assists us in knowing what is required to be successful, as well as showing us 'where to next'. To help us aim high, we worked in teams to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of four different example texts, judging against a Success Criteria that we devised together. These were then put on display on our ‘Bump It Up! Wall’ as a powerful resource for us to use when we write and assess our own personal responses. 

Mathematics 

Mathematics in Year 6 is a lot of fun! We undertake multistep investigations where we get to apply our knowledge of Maths to solve problems and justify our answers. This term, we have been busy exploring BODMAS (Order of Operations). We completed an investigation where we had to use this knowledge to solve a very tricky problem titled “I’ve found a million dollars!” We applied our knowledge of number, area, volume and mass to solve it. This investigation was challenging and created a lot of discussion. What do you think...could a 50cm x 40cm x 10cm suitcase contain one million dollars' worth of $50 notes?

Religious Education 

In Religion we are learning to understand that we are made in the image of God and exploring the idea of our responsibility for one another and for creation. We recently looked at Genesis 1:27, "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”, and asked what does that say about each of us? We then drew self-portraits and around it, listed the things we need to survive and added pictures of creation to the picture showing how we are also part of the world around us.

Science 

This term, Year 6 are learning about the materials we use when building and creating items, and the purpose and reason behind these choices for specific materials. The premise for our unit is based on a scenario where…  

“You have been dropped on a tropical island with little or no supplies. To help you survive you need to research and design a sustainable and safe shelter that will protect you from the wind, rain and sun.  On the island you discover a shed with a number of materials that you will need to investigate to determine whether they have the appropriate properties to be used for your shelter.”  

We are understanding what ‘fair testing’ means and undertaking experiments to test the properties of various materials. We’ll then use this knowledge to build our structures! It was great at the recent open day to have so many parents and grandparents come along and help us discover how waterproof various materials were! 

HSIE 

In History this term with Ms Powell, we have undertaken investigations into how life has progressed for Aboriginal people over the past fifty years or so. We have investigated the Freedom Riders, the 1967 Referendum and The Racial Discrimination Act (1975). We are currently researching the Mabo decision and how it was significant to the plight of the Aboriginal people in Australia.

Art 

In Visual Art we are learning about and appreciating surrealism. We looked at some famous surrealist pieces and then used Microsoft publisher to edit and create our own appropriated surrealistic artworks! 

PE 

We prepared for the athletics carnival by participating in running, shot put and long jump practice in PE lessons. We are proud to be leaders of our school and really enjoyed taking on that role at the Athletics carnival last week! At the end of the day our voices were almost as sore as our feet, but we did ourselves and our school proud. Great job everyone! 

A Purr-fect end? 

In 6 Gold we love (or is that loathe??) dad jokes! This is a picture of Mr Watt’s cat “helping mark” some of our work. Luckily, none of it got damaged. You could say it was nearly a CATastrophe!