Monday 29 February 2016

HIGE Geography Research


Year 6 have been working hard researching about countries throughout Asia.

They have been intentionally finding out information about the languages, religions, income levels, distance and direction from Australia, education levels, economy, demographics and customs. A particular focus has been on the indigenous cultures and the current government structure. The conversations and discoveries have been lively and engaging. So far we have groups researching China, Vietnam, Cambodia & Japan.




Sunday 28 February 2016

Collaborative Maths

Today we learned about inverse operations. We learned that addition and subtraction are opoosites an they undo each other. Students applied this knowledge by writing problems for each other they posted in our Google Classroom. They then chose each other's problems to solve. At the end of the lesson, authors marked the problems they'd written. Students wer very engaged and enjoyed working together in his way.

Wednesday 24 February 2016

Holograms, Mystery Skype and Narrative Writing

It has been really active in Year 6 with our authentic learning experiences. Today we discovered in Science how light can be reflected to create optical illusions such as holograms.


We also had to opportunity in HIGE to connect with another class from around the world and compete in a game of Mystery Locations. We are finding our skills with mapping, latitudes and longitudes and questioning improving. Please watch this video that Mia put together to discover where they were.


Finally in English we discovered the fun of planning a new piece of narrative writing. We saw short examples Shrek and other short animated films as ways to identify the key elements of a narrative. We then watched the following video as a stimulus for our own narratives ideanation.



Tuesday 23 February 2016

Plan for Success in Writing

Today we talked about narrative texts and the importance of planning writing ideas. There were posters around the room with different headings, like "setting", "hero" and "villain". Students had to go around and add one idea to each poster. These ideas are now on display and can be combined in endless combinations to produce original stories. There were some very interesting ideas shared!








Wednesday 10 February 2016

Breakout

Today Year 6 were given a mystery to solve - how to open the mysterious locked box that appeared in our classroom. It took teamwork, guesswork and thinking skills to solve the problems and put all the clues together. We finally opened the box to find the secret message inside! Thanks Mr Host for setting it up for us.







Mystery Skype

On Wednesday of Week 3 of Term 1, we participated in a class experiment called “Mystery Skype.” Mystery Skype is a game designed to get children up thinking and learning about geography and history in a fun way. What happened was our Year Six class skyped a class in Victoria, Melbourne. Their school’s name was Aitken Creek Primary School. We didn't actually know where they were or who they were and the point of the exercise was to find what Country, State, City, and school they were in under 30 minutes only using yes or no questions and answers.


It was challenging at first but exciting collaborating with another school in a new way. Mystery Skype incorporates and involves maps, atlases, thinking skills and previous knowledge like direction and country. Our intelligence on geometry has grown through this activity and will continue to over the next few Skype chats. The first question we asked was if they were in the southern hemisphere. That question narrowed it down for the next questions. We found that some of the questions were too specific (skinny questions) and as a result they were asked too early in the game.

Skinny questions are questions that help you find a little bit of geographical information but fat question are ones that help a massive amount information. We found that fat questions give big answers and can be equal to 5 skinny questions. The next good question we asked was "are you on an island?" and "are you near the Tasman Sea?" as they helped us to define their location before we began to use the more specific questions. The answers to these questions were able to give us the state of our oppositions, which were in Victoria, Melbourne.

It was a challenge that caused us to think outside of the box and problem solve. It made geography real so that we understood it and found purpose for it.

Written by Hannah F and Cameron L. Photos by Max D.















Monday 8 February 2016

Literacy Groups

Each literacy group is reading a different book set in Asia. My group is reading Little Brother by Allan Baillie which is set in Cambodia in the time of the Khmer Rouge. It tells the story of Vithy, an 11 year old boy who escapes from the Khmer Rouge and must undertake a perilous journey to reach the border and safety.

Today we discussed the story so far and then read the next few chapters in small groups or pairs. The students are learning to read the book and then think about what they've read. They're learning to give opinions and to justify their ideas by referring back to the text. Enjoy these photos of the students at work!