We survived Camp Cooba!

What a blast!  Camp Cooba was a huge success for all, with a big thumbs up from every student and teacher.

All students (and teachers) challenged themselves on a range of activities including:

• the leap of faith
• the giant swing
• the assault course
• bubble soccer
• team manoeuvres
• and of course the mighty gladiator!

We loved the off site accommodation in Berridale and are looking forward to heading back there again next year.  Students enjoyed hanging out with their friends, playing handball and walking down to the nearby oval for a jog with Mr A, game of footy with Miss Rossiter or some impromptu yoga with Mrs Layton during our spare time at the end of the day.  The trivia night was also great fun with the crowd joining in and singing along with the 'guess this song' round of the quiz.

Well done to everyone for your bravery, adventurous spirits, great efforts and behaviour at camp.  Thank you also to our amazing year 5/6 teachers, as well as Mr A (who couldn't resist joining us again this year), Ms Francis and Hayley for all their hard work and great care while we were away.  We also need to give a special shout out to Mr Nicholls, who did all the hard behind the scenes work to organise camp, even through he wasn't able to join us for the fun.

Listening carefully to the safety briefing at the Leap of Faith.

We couldn't have asked for better weather - blue skies every day!

More safety instructions.

The giant see-saw!

The team wall climb on the assault course.

Nice view from up there!

Katniss Everdeen in the making!

More teamwork on the Gladiator course.

"You mean we have to climb ALL the way across that wall?"

Friendly competition!

I can do this!

So can I!

Having a blast in the bubble balls!

Its pretty cozy in there!

Multiplication Mania!

Year 5 and Year 6 have just finished a short unit in maths about multiplication.

The Year 5's have been learning about factors and multiples and the Year 6's have also looked at prime and composite numbers.

We have discovered that many students do not have automatic recall of multiplication facts.  This means that problem solving in maths becomes extra challenging for them as they have to rely on slow strategies to solve multiplication facts before they can even make a start on solving the actual problem.

Developing automaticity (fast and automatic recall of facts) is an important step to becoming a capable mathematician and this is where we want your help!

All maths groups are currently practicing multiplication facts as a warm up for our maths lessons, but some extra practice at home would also give your child a boost in this area.

Some fun and simple ways to practice include:

  Putting one of these..

 

somewhere prominent that your child regularly spends time.  My mum was smart and had one in the kitchen, AND one on the back of the toilet door.

You can also spend some quality family time playing card or dice games to reinforce the multiplication facts. Try this one for starters:

  

Spiral Multiplication

1. Use a deck of cards to make a spiral game board starting from the centre.

2. Place your game pieces at the start.

3. Player one rolls the dice and multiplies the number on the dice by the number on the playing card their piece is on. If they answer correctly, then they move the number of spaces that were on the dice.  If they are incorrect, they do not move.

4. Take turns and repeat until someone reaches the end of the spiral and wins.

There are also plenty of online games that your child can play to practise as well.  One we use regularly at school is Hit the Button.  Check it out at Hit The Button.  Oh, and did you know.... there is also an app for that!

Finally, there are many fun you tube videos with raps and songs to help those multiplication facts stick (perhaps annoyingly in your head too!).  Check out Mr De Maios playlist as a starting point, but make sure you go looking for some other fun ones with your child ... and why not ask them about what they have been learning in our cyber safety lessons while you're both at the keyboard?

Have fun getting those maths facts down pat!

Cute Cars and Super Jets

We are already winding up our first projects in Maths, focusing on place value.

Students had great fun last week searching for cars and jets to 'buy' online.  Year 5's went hunting for fast cars, while the Year 6's went hunting for luxury jets.

Students had to select five cars/jets to buy and show their understanding of place value using their purchases.

Check out the quality of their work!  (Please note that names have been blacked out in accordance with school policy for blogging.)

YEAR 5

YEAR 6

"What A Waste"

Our art unit this term focuses on art activism and the influence that artists can have on our community via the messages in their artworks. 

We have viewed art from a number of artists who are concerned about our consumerist society and our immense use of materials that are harmful to our environment and wildlife.

Art with a message

Recycled materials can help to send an important message in our community

We also watched a National Geographic video about a group of artists who traveled to the remote west coast of Canada to see the impact of our use of plastics on the precious landscape and wildlife.  These artists wanted to send a message through their art, that we need to reduce the amount of waste we produce, so that we stop harming our fragile planet and the wildlife that we share it with.

Many students were inspired by these messages and are already starting to take action of their own to collect rubbish from our playground and consider how they can reduce their use of plastics.

Students were motivated and got busy collecting rubbish from our playground

Our art project will be to plan, design and create a sculpture or collage made entirely from recycled materials.  Students will be thinking carefully about the message that they want to send to our community through their artwork.

WE NEED YOUR HELP WITH THIS!

Your help to encourage your child to collect, wash and bring to school (in a labelled bag) recyclable materials would be ENORMOUSLY appreciated.  Please rummage through your recycling bins and help your child to wash any materials that we could use to create these important artworks.  It is critical that all materials are clean - so no dirty pizza boxes or smelly milk bottles please!

Magnificent Microorganisms

So the last 2 weeks have seen us busy exploring the world of microorganisms.

In our first experiment, we conducted a fair test to see if we could determine which conditions were most conducive to the development of mold.  Sounds pretty icky right?  Well it was...

Students tested the effects of light, heat and moisture on mold growth in bread.  We wet some bread and left it in the classroom, we stashed bread into dark corners of the room and we left some outside in the Canberra heat.  After a week, we checked out what had happened.

Dark conditions

Moist conditions

Hot conditions

We clearly discovered that mold grows best in moist conditions!

  

We also transformed our classrooms into a scene from My Kitchen Rules, with Master Chef Ms Hall treating us to a demonstration of how to mix the ingredients with yeast (a microorganism) and create the perfect conditions for it to grow and transform our ingredients into yummy warm bread - hot from the canteen oven.

Mixing the ingredients

The ball of dough

Resting the dough

The risen dough

Punching down the dough

Ready for the oven

Cooked at last

Yummy bread - heading for our tummies!

Thanks Ms Hall for our fantastic, gastronomic science investigations!

And we're off and racing!

Well, week one has just flown by...

In Unit 3 we have:

• got to know one another through group work, games and activities
• established our classroom routines and expectations 
• organised our supplies and equipment so we can be efficient and productive in our classrooms
• completed a spectacular science experiment 
• decorated our room with 'alien art'
• written a super summer recount to share our holiday adventures
• designed a sustainable 'dream car', as part of the Toyota Dream Car Challenge (be warned, your child may seek your permission to enter their design in the competition in the hope of winning a trip to Japan!)
• spent time discussing the great books we borrowed from the library
• started our class novels
• leaned some new maths games
• worked together in teams on our scavenger hunt
• and burnt off some energy during PE lessons

Phew!  No wonder we are all feeling a little tired at this point of the week.

Teamwork during our scavenger hunt

Checking we have chosen a 'good fit' book in the library

Building our  dream cars with a sustainability purpose

Writing about our sunny summer holidays.

SOME REMINDERS:

Fraser is a Sun Safe School with policies in place to help protect your child.  Please make sure  your child brings a wide brimmed hat to school every day.  Students without a hat will be asked to sit in the unit shelters to protect them from the harmful rays of the sun.

Parent information session - Thursday 15 Feb at 8:30 in Unit 3

IMPORTANT DATES THIS TERM

Parent Information Session	Thursday 15 Feb 8:30 am
ACT Police Cyber Safety Visit	Wednesday 21 February  & Thursday 22 February
Swimming Carnival	Thursday 1 March
5/6 Camp	Tuesday 27 March - Thursday 29 March
Progress Meetings	Tuesday 3 April - Thursday 5 April

Welcome to Unit 3 in 2018!

Welcome to all our new and returning senior students and their families. We hope you've had a great break and are refreshed and ready for an action packed Term 1!

The 5/6 teaching team are very excited, as we have been working hard during the break to plan a fun-filled first term.  This will include our visit to Camp Cooba in Week 8 (Tues 27 - Thurs 29 March).  Notes with details for camp will be sent home soon - please make sure they are returned promptly as we need to finalise details with Camp Cooba very soon.  
Our camp this year runs straight into the Easter long weekend, so if you are planning a family trip for Easter, please be aware that students will be returning from camp on the buses by approximately 4 pm on Thursday 29 March.  We plan to hand over some very happy (but probably tired) children.

This year we have five 5/6 classes and six full-time teachers, to ensure that every student gets the support and encouragement they need to succeed.  We will have three classes down the larger end of the unit (Ms Vanderfield, Ms Rossiter and Mr Nicholls), and two classes up the other end (Mrs Layton and Ms Hall).  Ms Harding will continue to use the wet area for small group work.  We will also use a range of spaces throughout the school when we break into smaller groups for Maths lessons and other activities. Bailey Lutton will also be spending some time with us as our Learning Support Assistant.

We would like to welcome Ms Hall (who many of you will know) and Ms Rossiter to the Senior teaching team.  They bring a wealth of teaching experience and some wonderful, fun ideas to our unit.  Please make sure you introduce yourself to them as you visit the unit.

Another important date for your calendar is our Unit 3 Parent Information Meeting, which will be held in our unit at 8:30 am on Thursday 15 February.  We aim to keep this meeting short, sharp and shiny, so you get all the information you need but can also get off to work or other activities.  We are looking forward to meeting you and answering any of your questions.  

So again, welcome back...we hope you're all ready for a big and exciting year! 

The Unit 3 Team 

Back row L - R: Guy Nicholls, Bailey Lutton, Becky Layton, Brooke Hall

Front row L - R:  Chelsey Vanderfield, Natalie Harding, Sarah Rossiter.