5/6C's Class Blog 2008 » Class work

Towers of Paper

Mrs C — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:01:05 +0000

Yesterday, while the Grade 6 students were off having fun at Secondary School for the day, the Grade Five students were given a challenge, to make the tallest free-standing tower possible using only:

ten sheets of newspaper
10 icypole sticks
10 drinking straws
half a stick of Blu-tak
masking tape

We had to design our models first, then build and evaluate them. The building part was the best – working in groups of three it took us about an hour to build our structures. The challenge was to get them to stand up without any support or without sticking them to the ground!

When we had our 15 minutes left warning, the teachers decided to try the challenge for themselves. Miss K, Mrs B and Mrs C collected the allowed equipment and in less than 15 minutes had built a tower that stood 3 metres (10 feet) high! And it stood without help! Such champions, but some of the kids said it wasn’t fair because the teachers had bigger brains with more science in them. Hmmm. The last picture in the gallery below is the teachers’ tower – what do you think?

Of the students, one groups were wildly successful, with their tower standing 1.8m (6 feet) high. Some other towers had to be measured lying down, as they fell over – and of course, the aim was the highest, not longest tower! So 10cm high and 2 metres long doesn’t win.

We learned a lot about how to make things stand, where to put the heaviest parts and what shapes are strongest. But we can’t tell you here because next week we are going to challenge the Grade 6 students and we are aiming to beat them!

How My Friend was Murdered!

Stacey — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:36:42 +0000

”Once upon a time lived a girl named Tracey. But thats in the past of course, she’s dead now. I’m here to tell you the classic story of How My Friend Was Murdered!
It was a dreadful night and the rain was pouring but worst of all, there was a killer in sight. Her name was Micky and she was known for her craziness of murdering people with an axe.
That night Tracey was out for a walk as well as her chooks on a leash. She saw a dark shadow in the distance. Suddenly it came charging for poor young Tracey. Tracey reconised the muscley figure of Micky and decided to start sprinting.
Tracey was much too fast for Micky and her tough abs so instead she just threw the axe straight into Tracey’s back. But that didn’t stop Tracey, she kept running with the blood running down her back and on to her chooks.
Eventually Tracey started to slow down from starvation so she headed towards her mega shredder factory where she put all of her chooks into a mega shredder and ate them all up. Except for one which she ate raw. Just as Tracey was licking her fingers from such a good meal she forgot all about the killer that had been stalking her. When Tracey wasn’t looking, Micky and her evil powers pushed Tracey right into the largest shredder. Out the other end came Tracey sliced, shredded and dead.”

”AND THAT’S THE STORY OF HOW MY FRIEND WAS MURDERED!”

The End

By Stacey and Nikita

Class Parliament

Jarrod — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:31:46 +0000

This term we have been studying Australian Parliament and how it works. We have also been running our own parliaments, pretending it’s the real thing.

First it was Miss R’s grade vs Miss K’s grade. They were fighting about longer school hours. Second it was our grade vs Miss R’s grade fighting about one hour of television a night for kids. In the first argument between Miss R’s grade and Miss K’s grade, Miss K’s grade won; and in the fight between our grade and Miss R’s grade it was a draw, 22 votes to 22 votes.

Then it was our grade vs Miss K’s grade an the topic is that Australian families could only have one pet. There were lots of arguments presented against this law, especially when we worked out that we had 100 dogs and 60 cats in our grade alone!

Class parliament is a great way to learn about how laws are made and how to make a good argument.

By Jarrod and Josh.

Note from Mrs C: there was no fighting, really! Just spirited debate.

Election 2008

Mrs C — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:00:37 +0000

(Not to be confused with the US Election)

Fourth term will be full, busy and fun. We will be learning about the Australian government system and running our own election campaign in our school. Students will be devising a platform to run on and a detailed advertising campaign which will include television, radio and print media ads. Each team will put their media on their wiki pages for other teams to examine, then there will be a press conference where all teams present their work. Finally, there will be THE ELECTION, where all students and teachers cast their ballots and determine the winning party.

Term four will also see most of our Grade 6 students travelling to Canberra for a four day camp, after which they will be preparing for Graduation in December. Grade 5 students will be preparing to take on their role as senior students next year.

Stay tuned for further developments!