We are excited to announce a new program 'Stowers High School' which will give the Grade 6 students experience at being at secondary school for 2 weeks. Please read the attached letter outlining our program and be prepared to answer any questions your child may have of their transition to secondary school. We want to make the transition as smooth as possible, so we feel this program will really benefit all of the students. We welcome your feedback from a parent point of view of your thoughts about the program and how your child finds it.
The swimming notices are due back to school on Monday 12th October. Thank you to those who have returned the form and payment already. The swimming program operates each year as a vital part of your child's whole education. For some students who already swim outside of school, it may be seen as a chance to further improve endurance and overall fitness. (The Grade 6s are constantly looking forward to sporting opportunities here at school!) For others, it is an opportunity to improve general swimming skills. One very important part of the program is the water safety aspect.
Just like as teachers we are required to update our First Aid and Anaphylaxis training regularly to ensure we have current skills and knowledge to know what to do in an emergency, the swimming program each year gives your child practise at rescue. It also reminds them of what is safe and unsafe around pools and at the beach as they are about to enter the teenage years - a time of their lives when they may not always make the smartest decisions when having fun with a group of friends. It is important they can think of what to do in an emergency and act quickly, having experienced a role play scenario. Since there are still quite a few notices outstanding, I hope we see as many students as possible participating in the swimming program. Those not going will be completing work at school. We are all looking forward to our full dress rehearsal on Monday. Your child needs to come to school in their school uniform. Underneath their uniform they should wear bike shorts, skins or shorts, as well as a tank top or crop top. Their costume will be worn over these.
Dancers should wear their hair in a low bun that can accommodate their cap. All other performers must have their hair off their face, but may choose how they would like it - pony tail, clips, plaits, etc. Make up is NOT required on Monday. Everyone must bring a small backpack with their morning tea snack, lunch and a full bottle of water inside. There can be NO canteen orders. iPads and money should NOT come to school. Homework tasks have not been set as we have a huge week coming up, including the Athletics day on Tuesday. The children will be tired. Anybody who has not received their Whitehorse tickets yet, will receive them on Monday. This term, our integrated topic has been 'Care for the Kids'. Through this topic, the students have been learning about the customs and cultures of different countries, as well as having a look at the difficulties facing some developing countries. We have also been able to tie our maths topic of 'integers' into our integrated topic. By studying each countries average temperatures, population size and land mass, the students have learnt how to add and subtract by negative numbers and how to create line, bar, pie and stem and leaf graphs.
I just wanted to make this post to praise the effort of our students have put into their continent assignment this week. I was blown away by the amount of work each student had clearly put into completing this task. As a teacher, there is nothing that makes me more proud than to see the kids going the extra mile to get the best out of themselves. Once again, well done guys!
Just a reminder that our continent assignment is due this Friday. So far we have had a couple of excellent submissions from two students in our class. It's great to see the extra effort the girls have put into their assignment to ensure it is of the highest standard.
If you are interested in being part of an organising committee for the Grade 6 Graduation dinner at the end of the year, please click on the following link to view a special invitation.
https://voice.adobe.com/a/gNOrQ This week the class has been designing a graffiti style poster of their name on grid paper. Once they had finished writing their name, the challenge was to calculate the perimeter and area of their design. All of the posters turned out great and they show a lot of creativity and flair.
This week in science the class has been studying a historical significant scientist. The students were given a brief overview of a number of different scientist, from which they had to chose one that they had the most interest in. As part of the task, they had to gain a better understanding of what is involved with their scientist field of science. Then the kids give an overview of the scientist's lives, as well as an acknowledgment all of the their major contributions to their chosen field. The students then presented their work as a poster for display. The level of commitment that has been demonstrated in the collaboration, research and presentation of these posters, from every group has been unbelievable! Every group should be proud of the effort they have put into this task.
This week has been Education week and our school has been focusing on maths and trying to encourage the students to adopt a positive attitude towards the subject. As I am sure most of you are aware, one of our initiatives has been Mathletics. At the beginning of the week, I set out class the challenge of trying to reach the top 10 class leader board. At the time, I thought this was an ambitious challenge, but would be a fantastic confidence builder if we were able to achieve it. I explained to them that the class score is the average score of all the students in the class, so if we wanted to be successful, we had to view our class as being a team and like any great team, if we wanted to be one of the best, we all had to contribute and put in the effort.
It is fair enough to say that our class has completely exceeded all of my expectations. The kids weren't satisfied with being the top class in the world, they wanted to see just how far they could push themselves and what they were capable of achieving. The class was so successful that we even drew the attention of the head of the Australian Mathletics department. On Friday afternoon, she contacted me and asked if they could feature our story in their blog. You can read all about it here: http://www.3plearning.com/behindthesceneswithmathletics/ At this stage, the kids are probably sick of hearing how proud I am of them, but I thought I would mention it one more time. Way to go guys! |
|