Year 6 - 12 Class
Welcome to the final newsletter for the term. It’s been another busy one. The year 6-10’s have covered a lot this term, here are some highlights…
English 6-10
We completed reading The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas with watching the film and making comparisons. The students finished the book study by writing a creative piece, imagining how they would cope in a similar environment. At the moment students are working on their autobiographies. This has been hard going for some, it seems remembering something interesting about your life so far isn’t as easy as first thought. I guess the kids haven’t really lived that long yet! After some brainstorming, and a bit of teeth pulling, we’ve all managed to get some ideas down, and writing is well underway. We are also spending some time looking at the literary device’s authors use to make writing more interesting. So far, we’ve looked at idioms, sarcasm, parody, and satire. We will delve more deeply into this next term.
HASS 6-10
Our unit on World War Two is now complete. The final assessment task was a report on the Sandakan Prisoner of War camp in Borneo. All students completed this task to a high standard and should all be very proud of themselves. Having completed World War Two, the logical next step is to look at the Cold War which closely followed. So far, we have looked at how it began, and the relationship between the United States and Soviet Union. We have also looked at some songs in popular culture at the time and analysed the way music is used to portray a message. This week we’ve focused on We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel and I discovered I’ve been singing the wrong words for many years! There are too many Cold War references in that song to mention, and students are currently working their way through researching some of them. This will lead us into next term where we will look at American and Soviet influences on the Korean, Vietnam, and Cuban conflicts, and also the space race.
On Fridays we have Karmy helping us with HASS and we focus on Aboriginal perspectives. The Aboriginal perspective of the Cold War has been learning about the atomic bomb testing at Maralinga. We are also looking at Dreaming Stories and will be working on creating our own next term.
HPE 6-10
After looking at the impacts a high sugar diet has on our health, we have changed gears and are now looking at resilience. What is it, why is it important, and how do we get it? We have talked about the difference between resilience and confidence, and also looked at the physical changes in the human brain when we engage in things like exercise, relaxation, and stepping outside our comfort zone.
During PE we have been playing softball, soccer and still a bit of basketball which seems to be the firm favourite. The past couple of weeks have been focused on track and field again in preparation for the Quorn sports day in week 10.
HPE F-2
The latter part of term three has had a safety focus for the F-2 class. We have covered sun safety, medicine safety and bike safety so far. We will see if they remember any of their safety measures when we have wheels day in week 10!
For PE we have been learning how to play T Ball. The kids have enjoyed it and are getting the hang of it, even though we don’t have any gloves small enough for them!
Home Economics 6-10
It’s been a huge term for Home Economics. The cooking component was completed with students cooking a three-course meal for their parents, with the help of chef and front of house experts, Shaun and Steph Kraft. The students all stepped up on this very busy day and I’m extremely proud of them. Not only did they learn to cook a restaurant quality meal, but they also had tutorials on correct knife skills, and were shown how to correctly wait tables and carry three plates safely. I can’t thank Shaun and Steph enough for volunteering their time and sharing their expertise, and I can’t overstate how proud I am of all the students. My only regret is that we were all so busy we forgot to take photos! Well done kids. Super proud of you.
The last few weeks of the term have been spent in the garden, where we have planted tomatoes and herbs for summer.
Next term we will switch to textiles with the help of Deb Youle, that’s still in the planning stages, so watch this space.