Year 6 - 12 Class
Welcome everyone to the new school year. There are some new faces in our class and some returning ones and it’s been lovely to see them all.
We may as well go in age order and start with the small people first…
F-2 HPE
So far we have looked at balancing and catching and throwing, with lots of games and fun. The students have enjoyed the throwing and catching games the most, with some having a bit of difficulty with balancing (or maybe difficulty staying still??).
For health we are looking at the healthy eating food groups, by reading about The Very Hungry Caterpillar and analysing all the food he ate on his way to transformation.
Year 6-9
English: The beginning of term has been about revising and testing so we all know where to start from. We have completed a Cold Write, where students write on a specific subject for an allocated amount of time. They are assessed on their word choice, sentence structure, paragraphing, spelling and grammar. Students have also undertaken the Waddington’s spelling test which will allow me to sort them into spelling groups starting next week. We have also started reading our class novel Red Day by Sandy Fussell which is an Australian novel set in country New South Wales. The genre of writing we are focusing on this term is persuasive, so my apologies if your children come home with some excellent arguments!
HASS: We are starting HASS with a history unit on Ancient India. Students are learning about the Caste system, where it originated and why, and what effects it still has on people living in India today. This has been pretty eye opening for us all, and the students have been fascinated to learn about the different levels of society.
HPE: For the health component of HPE we started by viewing That Sugar Film which documents the hidden sugars all around us, often in ‘healthy’ food. We have also looked at goal setting and talked about how important goals are for our growth and wellbeing.
The PE component has been basketball. We are focusing on ball handling, dribbling and lay ups at the moment, and will move into more complex drills as the students improve. They also need a bit of a brush up on the rules and positions, which we will cover despite the complaining it causes!
Home Economics: In Home Economics we started with basic kitchen safety and hygiene and have spent some time looking closely at bacteria and how it infects our food if we allow it. Our practical sessions have been a little disrupted due to swimming carnivals falling on Fridays but we have managed to cook a couple of recipes so far. Firstly we cooked Texas ham and pineapple muffins which the students thoroughly enjoyed. After baking we analysed the taste, texture and appearance of the finished product and came up with some ideas on how it could be improved. This week we made stuffed potatoes which were all devoured in seconds.
Year 12 English: Stage 2 English got off to a great start with some excellent work and results on the first assessment task (we got a bit of a head start on it last year). We are now looking at the relevance of Shakespeare in modern media, which will lead to the second assessment task, a video created on book creator. From there we will be writing a comparative essay and start looking at the creative writing component of the course.
That’s all from me for the beginning of the year! If anyone wants to contact me at anytime regarding their child, or any of the content we are covering you are more than welcome to email me or contact the school.
We are going to try REALLY hard to use diaries appropriately this year (this is me also, I tend to forget!), they SHOULD be in your child’s bag every night and I would like to see them signed on Fridays.