5/6C’s Class Blog 2008

We’ve bid farewell to our wonderful grade, having celebrated the end of our time together yesterday with our pool party and a Kris Kringle gift exchange.  We had a great year and were definitely the best grade in the whole school – who knows, maybe even in all the state! Maybe in the world? Or the universe? 

The pool party was fun, with the thunder holding off until it was time to get out of the water anyway. We walked back to school in the rain and got wet, but after a day at the pool, no one cared too much. Before we knew it, it was time to say our farewells and go off into the wide blue yonder.

Congratulations to our wonderful grade six students who completed their primary schooling so well – they should all be proud of their achievements this year and are sure to be successful in their secondary schooling. Hopefully many of them will keep up with our blog and their own as well – we’d love to hear from them in the future.

To our grade five students, you are our leaders of 2009. There are many wonderful opportunities for you as you continue your education journey. I am lucky to have some of you in my class again next year – be ready for anything! For those who are moving on to another school or to another grade, enjoy yourselves, learn lots and keep in touch.

Jumping photo by Cross, licensed under an Attribution, No Derivatives, Non Commercial agreement.

Our school recently enjoyed an Aboriginal Culture Day. We had some Aboriginal visitors come and teach us about traditional dancing, some of the different tribes, Aboriginal storytelling and Aboriginal Art.

First, the teachers painted our faces. Big Al, the leader of the Aboriginal group, said they set a new record, painting about 425 faces in 13 minutes! After that, each group rotated through the activities until we’d all had a go at everything. Then we came back together at the end for a dance and demonstration, as well as some yummy damper.

Then our grade had to go and empty the bins.

A couple of weeks ago our class went out to plant a plant called, “Red Chocolate”.  Everyone was a part of it and some people had to move a plant that was in the wrong spot. All classes had a plant to plant. There was a pattern for where the plants went. It went green, purple, green and so on. There were different types of plants – there are longifolia “Katrinus”, “Apricot Queen” and “Red Chocolate”.

Everyone got their hands dirty, especially  the ones that were playing in the mud by digging the hole. We got the “Red Chocolate” plant because our teacher is mad about chocolate!

It looks great outside near the office now. Everyone had a great time helping to plant the plant

In November most of our grade six student will be heading to our national capital, Canberra, for four days of looking, learning and laughing as they see the sights and attractions of this special city which was designed by American architect Walter Burley Griffin.

Some of the highlights of the tour will be Anzac Parade (in the foreground of the photo), Old Parliament House (in the centre of the photo) and New Parliament House on the low hill behind that, topped by the massive flagpole and a flag which is 12.8m by 6.4 metres, or roughly the size of a double decker bus!

Other highlights of the tour include a visit to Telstra Tower, Questacon, the National Museum and the Australian War Memorial.

Image: The house that Australia built
Originally uploaded by Teon

The Blogging Competition has begun! We started a little late with term holidays taking up the first two weeks and then Edublogs being in meltdown mode for the last week, but all should now be ready. Grade 5/6C students, aim to complete a task each week – it doesn’t matter what task and in your first week you have 4 to choose from, so there should be something that appeals to all of you. You will need to timetable your blog comp activities and computer access in your personal learning plan for the week.

Mega-thanks to Miss Wyatt in Tassie for the huge amount of work she’s put in to get this competition up and running. You’re a champ, Miss W!

• Competition Info

• Participant List

• Weekly Activities

 Image by Lara604 licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence.

In the first week of September our school took part in some activities to mark National Literacy and Numeracy week in Australian schools. The festivities began on Monday with a games afternoon outside. We played all kinds of games that honed our English and maths skills – Scrabble and Boggle were favorites of the senior students.

Then we took part in the coin toss activity. We threw 20 cent pieces at a target from distances of 1m, 1.5m and 2m, and tallied the results. It was much harder than we thought it would be to get the coin to stop on the target – many of them hit the bullseye but then rolled away!

The results of the nation-wide activity are now in – you can see them all here. It seems many schools had similar results to ours!

Image: prufrock27 on Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution Licence

The most popular books being read at our school so far are The Potato People, by Pamela Allen for the juniors and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl, for the middle school. In the senior school there is a very wide range of books being read, but the one read by the most students (three!) is Specky Magee by Felice Arena and Garry Lyon.

What’s your favorite book? Why is it your favorite?

Photo credit: Cat Reads, Originally uploaded by Litandmore

What a night! The theatre rocked to the sounds of our fantastic production, “Circus Splendida”! There were clowns, acrobats, tumblers, jugglers, hula hoopers, musicians, riggers, children, tightrope walkers, dancers, sculptors, scooterers and, of course, “Lola, the Disappearing Lady“.

Grade 5/6C will be adding more to this post, as well as writing a post on each of their blogs. Stay tuned!

SCREECH! We pulled up on the side of the road and entered the Science Works in
Melbourne!The first exciting place we went to was the magnificent home. It showed the secrets of what was really inside your home. It showed all the revolting insects that lived beneath your floorboards, and what kind of objects get sucked right up into vacuum cleaner. 

There were plenty of fun things to do around the kitchen area. My favorite part of the kitchen was the sink. It made an example of what would happen if you wasted your water, or gave it to your garden. We learnt many things about our houses and had lots of fun and humor! After a big day in
Melbourne we got on the bus and went home. We got home at 6:00pm and we had a brilliant day.

By Nikita and Zack

 Grade 5/6C and 5/6R went to Scienceworks.  Our Favorite theme was Sportsworks; there were many thing to enjoy! Like racing Cathy Freeman, wheel chair racing and many others.We enjoyed handballing to a footballer and rock climbing and we also enjoyed being judges at the balancing beam competition. On the balancing beam an 8 year old girl does a back flip. IT WAS AWESOME!

 By Corey and Jarrod