Victoria Cross

We found out about the Victoria Cross while learning about the ANZACs. We found out that this was a medal given to soldiers for bravery in the face of the enemy. The award was named after Queen Victoria. During World War 1, 64 Australians were given the Victoria Cross. Each Victoria Cross has been made from the same cannon that was from the Crimerean War. 

Penpals are on their way...

We wrote wonderful introductory letters to our penpals and finally managed to get them all complete! It was a little tricky with a number of our class being struck down with chickenpox! Finally we got them done and Mrs Taylor's boys posted them in the big red post box.

It was great a week later to get a reply from Mr Calaizis who said that his 3/4 class were so excited when the letters arrived and loved them. They've been trying to get their letters written too, but they've also had people away and are trying to get them all done so that noone misses out when he sends them back. I guess this is why they call it snail mail!

We should receive our replies at the beginning of next term and hope that the turn around next time is much quicker!

Buddy Hat Creations

Last Friday we began our buddy hats. Most of us remembered to bring in crafty bits and pieces to share with our buddies. We had coloured eggs, stickers, glitter, feathers, ears and more. Some of us carefully placed the things we brought exactly where we wanted them and others chose a more creative method of putting glue down on their hat, throwing bits and pieces at it and seeing what sticks. 

We have ended up with some masterpieces that will be worn with pride. Tomorrow we will be finishing them off ready to walk with our buddy class next week.

The best part will be the chocolate eggs that we also get to eat afterwards!

Harmony Day 2015

At school we had Harmony Day. We had many year six groups teaching us about diffrent countries. First we had South Africa. We went on a plane ride to South Africa with passports and they taught us a lot of things. - Amelia (3)

Harmony Day was a resounding success with the year sixes really enjoying their time as 'teachers'. They were engaging and all of 3/4T feel like they learnt something from the three sessions. We had South Africa up first with talk of braais (barbeques) on our international travel experience. We even got a South African passport that was stamped.

Next was Pakistan and talk of cricket, soccer, their emblem and traditional clothing. 

Finally we learnt about Scotland, got to do a Scottish dance, throw poles (cardboard tubes) and find out aboue what they eat, how they speak and the sports they do and the music they listen to.

Fantastic effort year 6!

Friday by Lucy

Today it's Friday, at half time in lunch I do swimming, some other people in our class are doing 

PSSA. The teams are junior cricket, senior cricket, t-ball and soft ball. Today was also assembly. We did reading groups in the morning with 4S. We read an ANZAC book with a partner. We had a picture of a hand. On the fingers you had to write who the people in the book were, what they were doing, where the story was set, when it was and why the event happened. In the palm of the hand you had to write the main idea. After recess it was the 3 to 6 assembly. This week Abby and Daniel got the award. Our class also won the assembly spy. After assembly we did catchup work and free writing. 

Half way through...

Week 6 and an introduction to a new comprehension strategy - questioning. Good readers use questioning to help clarify their understanding. We played a game as a class where we read short paragraphs and had to ask questions to unlock the door to the castle. We went room to room asking and answering questions to unlock doors and find more information.

After our game we worked with a partner reading articles and using a question chart to create questions about the articles we were working on. We have to wait until tomorrow to share our work as we had to rush and pack up so that we could meet our buddies for 'Clean up Australia Day' in our school. We worked with a buddy to pick up rubbish in our designated areas. Many hands make light work and before you knew it the playground was spotless!

Number groups and then some HSIE where we looked at some of the wars that Australia has been involved in. We talked about World War 1 and how the landing in Gallipoli was a part of this war. We also looked at the Vietnam War and discovered which countries were involved. We visited Google Maps and explored the different places that we had spoken about. Some of us wanted to know why we would be involved in wars of places so far away from us. We spoke about the British Empire and how in WW1 many Australians felt a strong connection to the mother country (England) and wanted to not only fight for the 'Britsh Empire' but also for Australia.

The afternoon was spent looking at persuasive texts and planning out our arguments for convincing Mrs Taylor to let us sit next to a friend in class. We then had to elaborate on these arguments. This week we will look at using a hook as an introduction to our exposition. We talked about using a hook to grab the reader's attention and listened to examples of different hooks. Eg. Beginning with a question, an exaggeration, an idiom, onomatopoeia or by painting a picture. 

We finished a very busy and productive day with some graphing and chance work. 

Tomorrow we need to finish our penpal letters and send them to the school we have formed a partnership with in Shell Cove. There have been some very keen children asking about what is happening with our penpals and I've finally been able to say that we're going ahead! Very exciting!