7 Sep 2018

Yr6 Curriculum Update – 07/09/18

Working together to achieve success for every child

The Year 6 Team

 

  

 

Welcome to the 2nd edition of our Year 6 Curriculum Update!

In each update you will be able to see glimpses of the learning journey that our students have been involved in over the previous two weeks. Our Learning Journey is written by teachers and students.

One of the most exciting thing that happened this week was that Year 6’s met their Year one buddies. It was amazing to see how our senior students took on the role of ‘buddies’ and showed a caring attitude towards our new Year ones – another step in the direction of building positive relationships and strong social skills across school.

Transdisciplinary Learning – It’s all connected!

We began our second unit under the Transdisciplinary theme ‘How We Organise Ourselves’. In this unit, Year 6 students are learning how “People can collaborate to make a difference in the community”.  As part of our tuning in phase, a UNICEF staff member visited our school and spoke to the year 6 students about the 17 global goals and why we have to achieve these goals by the year of 2030. Please ask your child to discuss their ‘takeaways’ from the UNICEF talk.

For more information, please follow this link https://www.globalgoals.org/

In Writing some classes have been investigating rules for spelling. They have also been learning about the features of persuasive text and have begun planning and brainstorming a persuasive piece of writing. Some students have started taking action and writing a persuasive letter to Mr O’Reilly about something they want changed or added in the school.

In Maths, Students have been doing The Hailstone strings theory ( or the “Collatz Conjecture”). This challenge is actually a theory proposed by Lothar Collatz. You can also notice this by its name “The Collatz Conjecture”.

“I learned a lot about the Collatz Conjecture and what interests me so much is that there are so many ways and paths to get to one. I thought that speed was important before doing the Collatz Conjecture but now I know thinking deeply is more important.” by Nathaniel-6G

In Maths, the students got to work in groups with people from different classes and had to crack a code of numbers that were written in different scripts/languages. There were 30 numbers, and they were all in a checkerboard sequence. Students had to figure out which numbers were in which scripts and write the number 51 in each of the script. During the process, the children discovered lots of patterns to solve the problems. Some of the patterns were really easy to find, while others were complicated.

“ It’s really nice to get some choice of who to work with so that we can contribute our different ideas, and the scripts were actually various languages, so some students may know some of the languages.” – Sia 6E

In Art, some classes have been involved in  creating unique portraits with tessellation backgrounds. A tessellation is basically a shape which is rotated, reflected or translated to fit into another of its own shape like a jigsaw piece. They used either cool colours or warm colours in the tessellation, and the opposite in the portraits. Other classes created their own version of ‘The Son Of Man’ painting. The Son Of  Man portrait  was a Surreal painting by René Magritte.

In Physical Education, classes have started their first PE unit : Movement Compositions. Strength, core muscles and body control are the 3 main points in this unit. Students first did some activities related to the unit, and then discussed what the unit might be all about. Then, they practiced some movements to test their ability to hold in a position for a certain amount of time.Classes have also been inquiring into problem solving and teamwork. We learnt various new strategies to solve problems.One such strategy that we explored this week was called The ‘ABCDE’ strategy It stands for ‘Ask, Brainstorm, Choose, Do it, Evaluate.’ Talk to your child and see if they know what does this stand for. Students have really been enjoying these lessons.

During Music, students were assigned to make their own instruments using reusable things like bottles and boxes. Some different kinds of instruments that we tried to build were percussion, wind, electric or string. We looked at some videos that showed us the science through music and how we could make these instruments.

In Mandarin, some of the classes learned how to write recounts and they reflected on their learning. They have also learned to increase their range of vocabulary.

Here is a glimpse of some of our classrooms:

Library news: Year 6’s learned about the new Junior fiction setup that the librarians did over the holidays so it would be slightly easier for students to find books. Instead of the author’s last name, the books were sorted in topics, such as the animals, scary, and reality.

Please note that the deadline for handing in the cheques for Scholastic Books Order is 19/9/2018. Any cheques sent after the deadline will not be accepted.

               

 

How you can help at home?

Explore the Global goals with your child and how these goals are important to solve the issues that are affecting our world at present.Check out some great ideas for how to make a big difference with small but significant ideas and actions with teaspoons of change.

 

We believe in partnering with the parents to boost our students learning. As part of the process to develop the shared area, our students would like to use items that are made of natural materials such as empty cans, glass jars and baskets/containers. In case you have any above mentioned items at home and you wish to donate them, kindly send them to school along with your child. Before sending in, please ensure the items are clean and labels have been removed.

 

  • Friday 14 September             KJS Lantern Festival & PTA AGM

 

Kind regards,

Year 6 Teachers and Students Editors and Photographers

(Indira 6A, Nathaniel 6G, Clive 6P, Simona 6L, Queenie 6P, Azara 6A, Adrian 6G, Charlotte 6L, Rhianna 6L, Jayden 6E, and Sia 6E)