Monthly Archives: January 2016

Our First Day in Year 6!

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We are having a marvelous first day in Year 6, jam-packed with lots of different activities. We started off in the amphitheatre on the playground where we were organised into three different classes: 6R, 6G and 6S.

Once inside our classroom we completed an activity called “Find A Classmate Who….” This was all about getting to know each other better.  It was a fun and thrilling task.

Following this, we got organised with our exercise books.  Each subject was colour coded so we wouldn’t get them all mixed up.  We got this great idea from Ms Goodwin, the 6G teacher.  It’ll make it easier for us to be sorted!

When we completed sorting our exercise books we watched a YouTube clip called “The Learning Brain.”  As you can guess, it was all about how our brain works.  Eating nutritious food, getting plenty of sleep and exercise and drinking lots of water are all very important factors for effective brain function.  We also learnt that our intelligence is not fixed, that it can improve, which means we our intelligence is able to grow and develop.  We can all be smarter than what we are now!  That’s amazing!  Now we know that, there’s no excuse for not doing our best and trying our hardest.

Following morning tea, we met our Kindergarten buddies.  This was the best part of the day.  We chatted and played with them and got to know them.  We’re all looking forward to spending more time with our buddies.

Finally, the last activity of the day was learning how to code.  We used the coding program called “Scratch.”  We’ve got a long way but we certainly had a great time.

Growth Mindset

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This year we are focusing on the premise that intelligence can be developed, that through hard work, persistence and great effort, one will improve and achieve great things.  This is called a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset where intelligence is thought of as being stagnant.   So this year we are going to apply great effort and try to always do our very best.  Our class motto is: “Don’t let anything get in the way of you achieving excellence” as seen in our classroom poster:

Achieving excellence

We’re ready to go!

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Take a look at our Year 6 classroom, you’ll see a mixture of old and new furniture.  Our room is brightly coloured, well ventilated and quite light – excellent conditions for active and challenging learning. We’re all set for the year ahead!

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Here’s our Prayer Space.  Although it’s not quite the season of Lent, we’ll begin the school year learning about Lent as it begins early this year – Ash Wednesday falls on 10th February (week 3 of term 1) and that’s only two weeks away.  

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We’ll be stretching our thinking using de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. We’ll be able to think in different ways, developing various perspectives and getting an idea as to how others view matters.  

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We’re lucky, we have a “cafe table” in our room!  This is perfect for Reading groups and other  general group work as well as teacher conferences.  Brilliant!  

 

Our wall pockets are jam packed with quality reading response tasks which will help develop critical and creative thinking skills.  These strategies will also assist in developing critical inferential comprehension skills.

Literacy Response Tasks

Literacy Response Tasks

 

To help us all keep on track we have 10 classroom rules.  Basically, they all boil down to our school rules:  

  • Respect for self
  • Respect for others
  • Respect for property
  • Our Classroom Rules
    Our Classroom Rules

Coding

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Lets’s try coding!

The Australian Government claims to be a 21st Century Government and stresses the need for school children to learn coding.  The Australian government has in fact included coding for Years 5 to 12 as a mandatory component in the national curriculum.

In preparation for the 2016 school year, I plan to familiarise myself with a few more coding programs for use on laptops and iPads.  I’ve dabbled with Scratch (computers) and Scratchjr (iPads) in the past and would love to explore further programs.  Hence, I pose the following question:

What programs are you using to introduce coding to your Year 5 and 6 students and how do you program the implementation of coding?

All suggestions welcomed.  

Many thanks!

Scratch