Year 6 - 12 Class
Welcome to the end of another hectic term. The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur! The year 7’s of the class headed off for the camp to Monarto last week, and the year 8 and 9’s were to go for a hike on Friday with the R-2 class, so it’s all happening!
English – 6 - 11
We have combined the class this term with all students from year 6 to 11 undertaking an in depth study of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. This was met with some trepidation to begin with but everyone got involved in the story and enjoyed it once we got past the Shakespearean language. A highlight was students coming up with their own Shakespearean insults, where they discovered that some words have a different meaning in Shakespeare’s time than they do now.
A couple of favourites include:
“Thou art a beslubbering tickle-brained minnow” (You are a slobbery, feeble minded midget)
“Thou art a sheep-biting, rank-scented measle” (You are a mean, bad smelling disease)
“Thou art a clay-brained, eye-offending, mushrump” (You are a stupid, hard to look at, fungus)
Students are currently working on a journal entry from Lady Macbeth’s perspective recounting the night of King Duncan’s murder, and how she felt about it. I’ve read a few of these and they have been entertaining so far.
HASS – 6-8
We started HASS with a look at economics, Australian trade partners, and looking at where Australia sits in the global economy. We defined a recession and depression, and this brought about some great conversations in light of the current state of our economy.
We then switched our focus to business, and looked at the types of businesses there are, what makes a good business, and also took into account the social responsibilities of running a business. We included some teamwork activities where students learned the importance of testing an idea, working out what did and didn’t work, and testing again (prototyping). We then looked at marketing, budgeting and advertising, and the students came up with their own business ideas which they will begin to implement in week 10, and into term 4.
Below are the students building prototypes using the marshmallow challenge. They had to build a structure out of spaghetti and balance a marshmallow on top of it. The highest structure won.
Only one team actively planned their attempt and then tested it. This team was the winner of the challenge – well done to Annabelle and Tayla. Stella and Callie came in 2nd with Jack and Rihanna coming 3rd. All found the task more complicated than they thought!