Senior Report - Term 2, Weeks 9-10

Senior Report - Term 2, Weeks 9-10

It's almost the end of Term 2! Here is everything that has been happening recently in the Senior School, as well as some of the highlights of this term.

Winter Gala Day

Today the 5/6 students competed against other schools in the Mordialloc District Winter Sports Gala Day. The sports included Netball, Soccer, Volleystars and AFL Footy. Across the day the students played in a series of matches for their sports against students from other schools. Each team tried their best, with the Soccer team making it to the final for the day, coming runner-up overall for the district. Every student put in their best effort with each game and showed amazing teamwork sportsmanship. Overall, everyone had a great time and enjoyed playing with their team all day.

District Basketball

On Wednesday 20 students from the Senior School participated in the District Basketball competition. Both a boys and girls team played on the day. Everyone involved gave their best and had a great day.

Production

This week we heard about the production and that we were going to audition next week on Tuesday. 32 different people put their hand up to audition for a role with scene 1 which we can use with a partner. Everyone will still get to be a part of the different dances.

By Kate

What is your proudest moment of term 2?

"Making our STEM car fly because we footy kicked it and had a balloon making it go higher" - Jake

"I have a few highlights but what happened at wroombinda. It was really fun because there a lot of fun activities that we got to do" - Talia

"Maths, especially how I know how to use graphs from our data project and angles because I remember the types and how to measure them. Also that I got into district basketball" - Katarina

"I got into the cross country team and district basketball team" - Amy

"District basketball and cross country. I liked basketball because I got to verse a lot of my friends from other schools" - Sam

"Getting into the cross country team" - Dylan

"Probably finishing my egg drop STEM project" - Carla

"Getting better and soccer and footy" - Rickii

What are you excited for next term?

"I’m excited for PE and doing a different sport each week" - Amy

"For production and Canberra Camp in week 2" - Talia

"I’m excited for the new writing topics" - Katarina

"STEM projects and Athletics" - Rickii

"Athletics day!" - Sam

"The next STEM project and camp. And athletics!" - Jake

"Athletics day and camp" - Dylan

"Camp! Camp!" - Carla

June

Saturday 23rd - Working Bee

Tuesday 16th - Parent Teacher Interviews

Friday 29th - Last Day of Term 2 and the Staff Vs. Student Basketball Match.

Reminder: final payments for camp are due on the 29th, the last day of term.

July

Monday 16th - First Day of Term 3

Monday 23rd - Friday 27th - 5/6 Canberra Camp!

Reading

Hi guys. Today, I’m going to talk about what we’ve been doing in Reading lately. In our Reading Sroups we have 4 activities: spelling, comprehension reading strategy (this week visualising) and a focus group with our teacher. In focus group, we have a book club and we read up to a certain point in our club book. (My group’s is called The Family Tree, it’s about a girl named Harriet, her step brother and her sister.) In reading strategy we have drawn a person from our group book and wrote about them, their role in the book, their actions, their traits, etc. In spelling we are making poems out of our weekly spelling words, and in comprehension we have a news for kids article which we answered questions about.

By Maya  

Writing
In Writing we have been looking at poems including: haikus, limericks, ballads, odes, kennings and cinquain. Kennings are when you describe the animal or place.  Cinquains are poems that have five lines and you use describing words, verbs and synonyms. We had to do poems about our favourite body parts for example: legs, arms, face, mouth, hair and lots more. All the kids really enjoyed doing poems because their got to describe their favourite body parts. We have also just finished our information reports and they all turned out great!By Andjelka, Evie and Tikki

Maths

In Maths we have been looking at lots of different topics from this term such as multiplication, division and angles. Each class did an activity with each teacher to practice our skills. This week we looked at place value with decimal numbers. We did an activity where we ordered lots of different decimals with tenths, hundredths and thousandths on a number line to see which numbers were bigger and smaller. We also played decimal addition bump with partners where we span a pin to get different numbers to add and then on our board put a counter on the answer to try and get four in a row.

STEM

In the past few weeks, the senior school made cars with

wheels and axles for our STEM project. This week, we were allowed to officially test out cars. For the first few tries, my car failed and didn’t go 1 meter.

well and travelled over 2 meters!!! After everyone tested their designs, the

But after making a few adjustments, (making the axles shorter) it worked really

cars, elastic cars, balloon powered cars and motorised cars.

whole senior school had a race with their cars. There were 4 categories: push

By Victoria

What has been your learning highlight of the past two weeks?

"How to order decimal numbers." - Carla

"Probably division in Maths Groups and poems because they’re not too hard and not too easy to do and they’re pretty fun" - Jake M

"Probably doing poems. I learnt how to do a haiku better." - Dylan

"Doing poems in writing. My favourite to write was ballads." - Katarina

"For writing I enjoyed completing the information reports and in Maths I enjoyed the statistics project because they were really fun to make." - Talia

"The Sports Data Project because I like footy and Richmond." - Amy

"Poems because we got to do poems about our favourite body parts of our choice." - Rickii

"Poetry. I loved learning about all the different types of poems we have." - Sam

STEM

Senior Report - Term 2, Weeks 7-8

Senior Report - Term 2, Weeks 7-8

Marine Amabassadors

On Tuesday the Marine Ambassadors went to a workshop. We went to Mordialloc pier where we got the chance to do litter surveys in the beach and on the surrounding streets. To do that we split up into two groups. I went with Katarina to do the street survey. We put on some gloves and got tongs and some biodegradable plastic bags and got to work. We were so surprised how much rubbish you could find in only 7 minutes. We found a lot of plastic: straws, bags and just general plastic but what there was most of was cigarette butts. There was just sooooooo many we even learnt that a sea bird has adapted to make it’s nests out of cigarette butts, how scary is that?!?!? After we walked down to the creek to look at the rubbish trap which trapped all the rubbish that came mostly from Dandenong on it’s way to the ocean. The information we collected will go to the Dolphin Research Institute and will help the government understand how much rubbish there is in that area.

By Lua 

World Ocean Day
On Wednesday the entire school dressed up in blue, green or as their favourite sea creature for World Ocean Day. The costumes form across the school were absolutely amazing with students and staff dressing up as dolphins, jellyfish, lobsters, fish, turtles and even as plastic waste. The whole school watched videos about the plastic currently in our ocean and made pledges to reduce their plastic use. The school also raised $266 dollars to go towards the Dolphin Research Institute. Everyone learned a lot about how we can make a difference to protect the ocean and every creature in it!

Woorabinda Camp

On Monday the 28^th of May selected students from 4 different schools got to go to Camp Woorabinda! We got picked up at Aspendale Gardens for the bus trip, which was about 2 hours with one stop. When we got there we worked out our groups and went for a bushwalk. Then we got to the camp and got our bags. Some of our favourite activities were the zip line, high ropes and canoeing but over all the best activity was the quest. The camp was outstanding and the Mentone Park students had so much fun.

By Ben, Daniel and Oscar

Buddies

In buddies the grade sixes and their prep buddies have been doing exploring time. During exploring time we played with toys, Lego, drawing on the whiteboards, board games, playdough, puzzles, cup construction and shape drawing. As you can see we have been having lots of fun in buddies. I even think some of the grade sixes had more fun than the preps with these activities!

Baylin

Basketball Tryouts

Last week the 5/6s got to choose if they wanted to do the basketball tryouts. We played mini games like 5 on 5 with boys and girls. Most of the 5/6s showed up. We got tested on all our skills like dribbling, passing and shooting. There are 2 teams: 1 boys team and 1 girls team. On Friday the basketball teams will be announced at assembly.

By Alannah and Amy

Remember No Trash Tuesday each week! Pack a lunch with no rubbish and go in the draw for a prize.

June Dates

Queens Birthday - Monday 11th June. This is a public holiday so no school.

Winter Gala Day - Friday 22nd June

Staff vs. Student Basketball match - Friday 29th June. Time TBC.

Last day of term - Friday 29th June.

Camp

The forms for camp are due back on Tuesday 12th. The due date for final payment of is Friday 29th of June.

Writing

Over the last 2 weeks we finished our information reports. Firstly, we chose our topic out of animals, places and people (famous). Maya did the Great Barrier Reef and I (Victoria) did dragons. Then we wrote down what we already knew about our topics, then we had a session to research. Next, we planned what we were going to write and how we would set it out. Finally, we were ready to start our draft copy. After that, we published our report on a coloured piece of paper!

Fun Facts about our topics:

The Great Barrier Reef: There are 1,625 species of fish in the Great Barrier Reef

Dragons: Chinese dragons are the symbol of Yang, the symbol of heaven and is often used in celebrations like the Chinese New Year celebrations.

By Maya and Victoria

Maths

For the past few weeks we have been doing our Maths Data Project. In the project chose a sport team which was our topic. Next we researched the statistics for our team, organised these and made graphs based off our statistics. Teams we have researched include The Kookaburras Hockey Team, Richmond Football Club, Melbourne United Basketball and the Golden State Warriors. The graphs we used were: pie, stem and leaf plot, bar graph, line graph and dot plot. Next we calculated the mean (the average), median (the middle number) and the mode (the most reoccurring number) for each of our graphs. After that we did the analysis, which means we looked at our graphs/data and summed it all up. Our teachers were all proud of us and our work.

Alex and Kate

For the last couple of weeks, we have been doing a graph project based on what we have been learning. We could choose whichever kind of sport we wanted to do. We had to create a Line Graph, a Bar Graph, a column Graph and a pie chart. We collected data on what sport we were doing and put them in graphs. We did the pie chart on the computer and the rest in hand. After that, we had to find the Mean, Mode and Median of the data we collected. Then we had to write an analysis on our project. I chose to do my project on the 2016 Olympics and I had great fun doing it and I hope everyone enjoyed it to.

By Arunita

Inquiry

Over the last couple of week for inquiry we have been learning about Australian Federation and all the different colonies from colonisation. The classes in the 5/6 area have learnt what the map of Australia looked like and how it changed a lot before we became Australia. This includes:

Tasmania before was once called Van Diemen’s land.

Western Australia was once called Swan lake.

And many more.

By Irene

STEM

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. For STEM, I am doing a model car that can travel for more than 1 metre(compulsory). We also use recyclable materials and my group was inspired by a set of instructions from our research. When the testing begins, the teachers give the model a gentle push, we have to work in groups of 2 or 3.

By Holly

For STEM, I’m making a car that can at least move one meter by itself. We get to work in partners of three. My partners are John and Kade. We are planning to get a tissue box and put Lego wheels on it and we will use a sling shot to fire the car for a metre.

By Julian

Student Writing

People should use much less plastic
By Layla

Plastic is everywhere which is not good at all! Plastic is something that can’t be recycled and just gets dumped into landfill, harming so many things. We use tonnes and tonnes of it each year! We have to use much less rubbish or it will badly affect our world.

Every day we use lots and lots of plastic and all of it goes to landfill and I KNOW that it’s not good for our lakes, Earth, oceans, animals and much, much more. If you don’t believe that it’s very bad for the world then look it up! I believe with all my heart that I will not stop until we use much less plastic… Hopefully none at all.

Plastic does not break down. Every bit of plastic in landfill will stay in landfill forever. All the bits of rubbish in the world staying there and what will we do when there is too much plastic? What’s going to happen? We can’t live in a world surrounded by plastic! I don’t think you would like it either, would you? 

I 100% know that we need to stop using so much plastic. I hope you like swimming in the sea with clear, fresh water. Enjoy it while you can! At this rate the sea will be pretty dirty with plastic floating about in it soon. Do you want that?

If you want to help, do little things like bring your own reusable bags when you shop or bring a reusable coffee cup. Whether you use a reusable cup or help clean up the beach or just limit the amount of plastic you use, remember every bit counts!

Marine Ambassadors Workshop

World Oceans Day