31 Oct 2016

Yr6 Weekly Update – 04/11/16

How the World Works

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Update on our student governing system…

Our governing system has been chosen!  Congratulations to Bosco, Ryan and Naomi from 6A.

 

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Blind class elections were held in Y6 this week. We elected our class representatives who will now join our student council this year. Thank you to all of the students who took the time to write a statement and show their interest in the student council.

Congratulations to the following students:

6A – Ohm & Suhana

6M – Joshua Carlos-Noble & Nicole Won

6T – Harold Kwong & Nishita Kirpalani

6RB – Kapil Chakravarti & Jessica Tam

6W – Clarence Chen & Rika Kasuya

 

PARENT MEETINGS

Thank you to all of the parents who made it in for Parent Meetings. We are sure it was an interesting and informative evening. We look forward to meeting the rest of the parents next Thursday evening.

 

STUDENT LEARNING

We continued with our unit this week by deconstructing the Central Idea and then asking students to come up with their own questions about this unit, using the 8 key concepts. We often talk about burnable and non-burnable questions to ensure that the questions we are asking are good questions that can be answered.

For literacy in this unit our writing focus will be on Explanation writing. This is writing to explain how something works or why something happens. Students often get it confused with persuasion writing which presents one or two points of view with reasons.

Students were asked to think about their favorite toy or gadget and explain to a partner how it works. Then independently they were asked to write an explanation about how it works. We will now be looking at all of the features of Explanation writing so that we can be successful in our own writing.

We will also be focusing on the thinking skill of Synthesizing. Synthesizing involves merging new information with existing knowledge to create an original idea, see a new perspective, or form a new line of thinking. To help at home, please encourage students to interact personally with what they are reading by prompting them to assimilate the words, pictures, and ideas with their own personal thoughts.

We will also be looking at research skills particularly collecting data. Students will be required to locate, organise and synthesise information from a variety of sources, including the library, the internet, people in the school, family, and the immediate or global community.

We have introduced the terms ‘quantitative’ data, which refers to charts, tables, and percentages, and ‘qualitative’ data which refers to opinions, articles, and interviews. Both of these types of information are needed for debating.

For maths we are continuing to discuss and experiment with different mental and written strategies to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Multiplicative thinking was introduced this week and some students found it quite challenging. Multiplicative thinking is indicated by a capacity to work flexibly with the concepts, strategies and representations of multiplication (and division) as they occur in a wide range of contexts. We are not only asking students to solve the problem, but to look at it in a systematic way. We start by activating our prior knowledge, what do we already know about the problem, then we look at ways we can solve the problem, then we try to work it out and finish with a reflection.

We have started a 5 week rotation in PE this week. The students will spend 5 weeks with each teacher, learning a different kind of sport or fitness. There will be invasion games, where students will demonstrate the skills of the game and be able to play as part of a team in small-sided/full-version of a game. They will learn the basic defensive and attacking strategies for that game. In dance, students will learn  basic movement composition and expression through dance. They will develop an awareness of rhythm and aesthetics. In health related fitness the students will  participate in high activity levels, some circuit training, and aerobics.

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