Year 6 Leadership Conference!

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During the Lead Yourself Into The Future Conference, we joined together with the Donvale students to perform various group tasks. Our teams task was to build the tallest tower, using only newspaper and masking tape. 

We had to work together as a team to build the tallest tower that was still standing at the end.

When the timer started, we decided it was best to discuss all our ideas on how we were going to build the tower so we could come up with the best plan. We didn’t make the tallest tower, but I think it was a good team effort. My group worked well because we used communication and teamwork, and there were no disagreements or people not contributing. Everyone played a part!

From this conference, I learnt that leadership is an action, not a position, meaning that you can’t just say you are a leader, you actually have to be a leader by helping, guiding, teaching, encouraging and being respectful to others.

I think I am a good team member because I like to contribute and help, and I enjoy working with other people and their ideas.

What do you think leadership is? 

Year 5 2019

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Wow! This year has gone so fast! I have learned so much and I feel much more confident in certain subjects. I have achieved stuff that I would never thought I would do at school before. I had the year 5 production, captain speech ( which took a lot of courage ), making dioramas from sovereign hill, year 5 market ( which took some teamwork ) and coding. So much fun all packed into 1 term! 

My favourite highlight of this year was the year 5 production. It took a lot of courage to say my lines to the audience, I thought that I would forget my lines. I also had to say a speech to thank Helen for making props and costumes for our show. It was scary speaking in front of the audience. There was a red sentence saying for Helen to come and collect a present from the teachers, but the teachers said not to say the red part, because they didn’t have a present for Helen. I was scared that I would forget what the teachers said and say the red part but fortunately I didn’t say it. 

The thing this year that took the most courage was my house captain speech. I had to plan what I was going to say, write it and then say it to the whole house. I really am glad that I had a go and I think I am now more confident with public speaking. 

I am also more confident in maths, spelling and writing. I am more confident in spelling because I feel like I now know how to spell more words. It helps me with my writing. I am more confident in writing because I now feel better in writing sizzling starts. I feel confident in maths because I not only know how to work out problems, but I have multiple strategies to work with to solve maths sums.   

I really enjoyed the year 5 market. It was fun making the products, selling them and making our stall stand out. It really got us to work as a team and use communication, collaboration and connectedness. It was the first time that I had run a market stall and I actually really enjoyed it. 

Overall, I think that 5Q was the best year for me at Carey and I wish Miss Quodling was my teacher every year! I have had a lot of fun with the people in 5Q and I have learned so much. I have learned that I can do anything if I put a lot of effort in. I also know that I am actually not that bad at speaking lines on stage! I loved this year and wish I could do it all over again!

From Georgia  

Animal Adaptations

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Shake, shake! The leaves rustle as the snow leopard hides in a bush and gets ready to pounce on a small bird. 3…2…1…Pounce! The snow leopard grabs the bird with it’s sharp claws and starts ripping it’s pray to pieces.

Keeping Warm

The snow leopard’s habitat can be in the snow or mountains of central Asia. They don’t get cold in thew snow because of their thick coat of fur that keeps it warm. At night, when they sleep, they wrap their tails around them to keep warm. That is why their tails are 100cm long. They have wide and short nasal cavities so it warms the air before it gets to the lungs. Another way they keep warm is that a female snow leopard covers it’s home with it’s own fur. A female snow leopard weighs 34 to 54 kg. Snow leopards can also be found in trees, bushes and plants. They also store a layer of fat under their skin. They have to adapt to the cold. 

Hunting

Snow leopards have a coat that matches the colour of the snow so they can pounce on pray without being seen. Snow leopards can pounce up to 15 meters! Snow leopards pull their claws into their paw pads to keep their claws sharp and clean. They need to keep their claws sharp because they need to climb the snow and if their claws aren’t sharp they won’t be able to climb. The snow leopard needs to have sharp claws to grab onto it’s pray. 

Diet

Snow leopards eat goats, sheep, birds, monkeys and any other small mammal. 

Fun Fact

A snow leopard can’t roar but they can yowl really loudly. 

Our Year 5 Production！

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‘ Should have gone to Supersavers!’ That is what the entertainers on the stage said when they found the tea ladies glasses that she had lost. Recently, the best experience ever, we had our year 5 production. It was a very weird and funny journey through Australian history. It was called Hanging onto the Bottom of the World. I was 3 characters, a Bridesmaid, a convict and a women who was fighting for womens rights. I really liked preforming and seeing all the audience laughing. It was really exciting. My first character was a bridesmaid. I had a bouquet and I had to act very proper and perfect. It was really fun when we had to eye down the other brides because we were suppose to act jealous of the other brides. After that scene I was a convict. We had a shirt with dirt marks and we had to look really sad and tired. We came down the stairs with a cardboard boat while we sang a song called Through the Eye of the Needle. There was sand on the stage for us to stand on so it looked more realistic. There was Australia painted on the stage as well. 

My third role was a women, who was fighting for womens rights. I loved playing this character because I had a beard on at the start, and when they were thinking about giving the vote to women I ripped off my beard and revealed that I was a women. It was fun. 

Some positive learner attributes I used were courage, because it was really scary speaking in front of an audience, and I used imagination to picture that the production was really happening. 

 

Overall, I really enjoyed the production and I really love being on stage and can’t wait to do it in senior school!

 

My Favourite Book Chat Book

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This year, my favourite book chat book was Toad Rage, written by Morris Gleitzmen. I would say it belongs in the humour and fantasy genres. I found it humorous at times however it wasn’t as funny as I was expecting it to be. I think it had a some fantasy in it because a cane toad doesn’t really have a lifestyle of a human. It is set in a make believe world where toads live. It also had some true facts because people are killing cane toads because they are a pest in Queensland because they are poisonous.

This book is about a Toad called Limpy, who goes on an adventure to find out why humans hate cane toads. He is sick of watching all of his family and relatives getting squashed by the cars on the highway. When they dry out, Limpy scrapes them off the road and stakes them all in his bedroom. He doesn’t know why humans don’t bother to stop the car and let the cane toads cross, instead they just run over them. 

I enjoyed this book because I found it was really interesting to step inside the life of a cane toad, and see things from a cane toads perspective. I felt like I was reading a diary of a cane toad!

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and if you ever get a chance to read it, I hope you enjoy it as well. It is a really informative experience to step inside the life of a cane toad and learn how they live. 

Tell me about your favourite book!

My Family Tradition

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My family celebrate Christmas. We decorate a tree with lights, tinsel and baubles. It looks so pretty in the lounge room when the lights are off!

We have a Christmas lunch at our families’ houses on my mums side and dad’s side. We have cooked vegetables and chicken. For dessert we have fruit salad, cheesecake, pavlova and tiramisu. It’s really yummy! We crack Bon Bon’s with each other and I love getting little surprises, jokes and a paper crown inside! Everyone gives gifts to each other and I love un wrapping the christmas paper! 

For us, Christmas is all about spending time with family and friends. On Christmas eve, We leave cookies, and a carrot on a plate with a glass of milk on the dining table. We do this because when Santa comes to deliver presents he has something to eat. He would get very hungry because he has a lot of presents to deliver! We also leave letters by the christmas tree for Santa. Sometimes I also leave a chocolate bar for him as well!

Here is something that you can make at Christmas time!

Print this out and cut along the bold lines of the cube. (This template makes to Christmas gift boxes!)

Colour them in if you like. Then fold along the dotted lines and put glue on all the tabs that say Glue. (Not the big one)

Glue them together so to have two boxes with a lid.

Take some string, elastic (or anything you can find at home) and tape it to the inside of your cube so there is still some hanging out. It is meant to look like a keyring so you can hang it somewhere.

Close the lid and there you have a Christmas gift box!

Here is what it should look like:

Tip: Hang them on your Christmas tree and put surprises inside!

What does you’re family celebrate?

Learning about the 1850’s!

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In this unit I learnt what life was like in the 1850’s. There were lots of important events that I didn’t know happened such as the eureka stockade and when gold was discovered in 1851. A whole lot of people came to the goldfields to dig for gold. It was also really rough on the goldfields. Lots of punching and violence. At first, I didn’t know what the eureka stockade was or what life was like in the 1850’s. We went to sovereign hill for camp so we could experience what life was like on the goldfields for a child. We dressed up and we went to school. We did sewing, drawing, learnt how to write with an ink pen, read poems and learnt times tables. We always had to remember our manners, We had to call our teacher ma’am and always had to stand up when talking to an adult. Back then children were seen but not heard so we always had to wait for an adult to say we could speak before we could say anything. It was really fascinating because we could have just being told or researched about the gold rush but we were actually put in the picture at sovereign hill. I loved finding out a lot of information about the gold rush. I really liked walking around the streets in costume with my friends because I felt like I was actually living in the 1850’s. When we got back from sovereign hill we made a replica of sovereign hill. We were in partners and we were allocated a building and we had to make a model of that building. My partner and I were given two buildings so we had two dioramas. When everyone was finished making there dioramas we put then together on a piece of wood and we had made a model of sovereign hill. It looked really realistic!

Some of the skills I developed in this unit was compare and contrasting in reading rotations and mapping and location in maths. Comparing means what features are similar between certain things and contrasting means what features are different between certain things. We were presented with two texts about the gold rush, we then had to create a venn diagram finding the similarities and differences of both texts. In maths, I also learnt mapping and location, we had to draw our whole diorama from a birds eye view point and turn it into a map. We had to add coordinates, a scale and a compass. 

In writing I have also developed some writing skills. We had to write a newspaper article about our chosen building (which was the Smelting works where they melted the gold). I wrote my newspaper article about the welcome nugget which was the biggest and first nugget ever found. It was discovered by 22 miners from deep underground in the mine on the 9th of June 1854. There was a huge celebrations involving beer and champagne. 

Some PLA’s (positive learner attributes) I used when building my diorama were imagination because we had to imagine what the building looked like, communication and collaboration because we had to work as a team in order to get our diorama done and knowledge because during our time at sovereign hill we had to research our building so we would have some facts and information to refer to while making our diorama.

I really liked this unit because I learnt lots of new facts and important events of Australian History.

I really liked making our dioramas because we could be creative and the finishing product was a huge success. 

 

Book Week

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Last week was book week and we did lots of book related activities.

First we had a guest author, Oliver Phommavah, come to our school and take us through a writing workshop. He gave us lots of ideas and writing tips about how to write a story and told us all about the books he has written. All his books that he had written had some twist of humour in them which I liked because I like reading funny stories and having a laugh! I am reading one of his books right now called Don’t follow Vee. It is about a girl who’s mum takes photos of her every second of her life to put up on instagram. Her whole life is out there along with 150,000 followers. One day she decides she has had enough. She is going to try to get her mum off instagram. She hates getting up in the morning and having a flash in her eyes because her mum is taking a pic. I think it is a really good book so far. I enjoy reading it because I like to read books from another porsons perspective. It doesn’t relate to me because my mum doesn’t use instagram. I really like reading about what happens in Vee’s life.

Another part of book week was a dress up day on Friday. We all came to school dressed up in different book characters. Everyone was creative and each costume was unique. I loved walking around at recess and lunch looking at everyones costumes. I dressed up as Billie B Brown, it was one of my favourite books when I was younger. 

I think a good information book must have real or drawn illustrations because it helps you picture what the text is about and it adds to the text. It should also include a few paragraphs of information and facts along with a heading. A information book should also include a page at the back or front that lists the websites or links where the authors got there information or images from. This is called Sources. But sometimes the authors or illustrators draw or paint there own images instead of getting images off the internet. People write information books because they can pass on knowledge about a certain topic.

My favourite shortlisted book from the shortlisted book category was called Sorry Day. It is a heartwarming and non fiction story. It is about a girl who is going to a presentation about sorry day with her mum. She accidentally tripped, falls over and when she gets up she can’t find her mum in the crowd. The book has a short story in it about the day white men came and took all the indigenous children away from there families. The book explained that we are now sorry to those who had there children taken away from them. In a library session at school, we read and explored all the books in the shortlisted book category and this book really stood out to me because it made me feel lots of different emotions and this is why it is my favourite book. It was a short story that meant so much and had so much meaning behind it because what it says in the story happened in real life. I would say it is a non fiction book that has a story in it. At the back of this book it has real photographs of what sorry day really looks like. It also has some real information about why and how we celebrate sorry day. It also had a little bit more information about what sorry day is.   

Overall book week was lots of fun. I really enjoyed it and I can’t wait for us to do it again next year.

 

Sovereign Hill

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Sovereign Hill was an amazing camp. It was so great to experience what life was like in the Gold Rush era. I loved it! 

One of the positive learner attributes I used throughout Sovereign Hill was imagination. When we were dressed up in our olden day costume we really had to step into character and act as a child living in the late 1800’s. Children were meant to be seen, and not heard, and girls had to stand with their hands clasped infront of their cloaks, and boys had to stand with their hands together infront or behind their backs. I thought that it was very unfair and very strict!

The teacher randomly chose students to stand up and answer her questions. I had to show courage and stand up, even when i wasn’t sure what the answer was.

Really when I think about it, i actually used all the positive learner attributes during my camp!

I loved dressing up and wearing the olden day costume, and I loved having my hair plaited each day by my teachers. But I didn’t like the pantalets because they let a lot of cold air through, and if I could have worn 2 pairs of tracksuit pants, I would have! It was freezing!

The main thing that I learnt from the past was that life was really hard and difficult. People didn’t have much and lived in very poor conditions and slept in tents. Only a few people, such as those in Government, were rich and lived in houses. 

I enjoyed the school program. I liked learning how to write in copper plate handwriting with a pen and ink. It was really fun!

I thought it was interesting how the schools turned into a church on the weekends. Everyone went to church on Sundays, and always wore their best outfit. 

The Aura light show was fascinating, but hard to believe. I had never really thought about how the world began. I certainly didn’t think it started by a flash of light! 

Sovereign Hill was a great experience, and I feel like I’ve learnt so much about our history. I loved getting into character and attending the school to feel exactly what it would have been like to be a child in the Gold Rush era. I really recommend a visit to Sovereign Hill with your family and friends.

Would you be interested in visiting Sovereign Hill?

Year 5 Market

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On Tuesday we had our year 5 market! I loved it and it was a huge success! My group is called ‘Luckey’. We made Grass heads, Lego keyrings and bead keyrings! My group sold all of our products!! Here is a poster reflection about it!!