15 Feb 2019

Yr6 Curriculum Update – 15/02/19

Working together to achieve success for every child

The Year 6 Team

Welcome to the10th edition of our Year 6 Curriculum Update!

Welcome back! We hope you all had a great holiday and we wish that your new year is filled with prosperity, joy and luck. In the week before the Chinese New year holiday, some Year 6 students joined teachers in planning for the summative assessment for our Sharing the Planet unit. It is exciting to see that our students are taking charge of their learning and partnering in with teachers in deciding what, where, why, with whom and when they learn. This is truly an example of student agency!

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.

Transdisciplinary Learning – It’s all connected!

In Inquiry, some classes are learning about Sketchnotes and Cornell notes, while some classes are learning about the validity of websites and what makes a website trustworthy. We learned that there are 5 rules that help us to find if the information is true or not. When looking at a website, you need to look for:

author
design of the website
time/date when the website was last edited
if the information is accurate or not
evaluate the purpose of the website

Some classes have also been exploring carbon footprint calculators, which is a survey with questions about our use of carbon, with an approximate amount of how many tonnes of carbon dioxide we use. Some classes have also looked at types of action after the events of NGO Day. 6G categorised action in 5 different categories:

Start it yourself action – initiating and maintaining projects such as starting a food drive at your school, taking a pledge and inspiring others to join etc.
Participation action (face to face) -actively taking part in collective action and making appropriate choices- such as beach clean ups, support a charity etc.
Habit changing action – making positive lifestyle changes such as BYOB.
Donation action – donating time, money and other materials to bring about justice and a sense of fairness
Word of mouth action – spreading the word to support a environmental, social and political change such as Ted talks, creating posters for SPCA

In Maths, some classes have explored the units of measurement and which kind of tools to use. Some classes inquired into different kinds of drinks and how much sugar is used in drinks. We found a big disparity between how much sugar was listed on the labels and how much it actually had. Our results showed that Coke had the most amount of sugar- 53 grams per 500 ml.

Some classes have also been learning about perimeter and area and how to calculate the area and perimeter of triangles and squares.

In Mandarin, we have been doing Chinese art with the word “spring” but in Chinese characters. We did them in different colors, like red, orange and yellow, but most people chose red because in the Chinese legend, the monster was afraid of red, so we used red to ward off the monster ( And red was a lucky color for the people). Some classes are using the Chromebooks to type up their recounts about the Chinese New Year holidays.

In Music, we are still working on playing the piece “Canon in D by Pachelbel” and performing it in different forms. For example, in some groups, we started with the base and then entered with the melody playing at different timing, but still playing the same piece.

In PE, We are now playing Endball as we have finished our unit of Athletics. This week, we are starting to play games and revisiting the rules of Endball. Our teachers have chosen our teams for us depending on how confident we are in playing Endball.

Library news: Book Week will be held from the 25th of February to the 1st of March (see below) and activities have been organized by the Year 6 Library Monitors and the Library Team. Through a survey sent to Year 6 several weeks ago, the theme selected was “Find Your Treasure”. When thinking about your child’s costume for this year’s Book Parade, please remember the theme. There will be a book sale, Mother Tongue readers, Mystery Readers reading sessions and the annual book parade to be held in the playground this year. The theme of the parade will be Find your Treasure, meaning dressing up as a character from a book that is treasured by students. Parents you are most welcome to come and watch the parade.

To sign up for Mother Tongue sessions, students should inform their teachers, who will also notify the students about what languages will be available at certain times. We encourage our Year 6 students to dress up this year, as this is their last year at KJS.

Students will also be receiving their new library book bags on 22nd February during an assembly that the Library Monitors have organized and prepared for.