Yr6 Curriculum Update – 18/10/19
Working together to achieve success for every child
The Year 6 Team
Welcome to the 4th edition of our Year 6 Curriculum Update!
We wish Happy Diwali to all the families who celebrate this Hindu festival.
For the last two weeks, our students have been very busy, collaborating with each other on the design challenge. It was exciting to see how our students were engaged in exploring solutions to complex, real-world problems, enabled by the Design Thinking Process to devise creative and innovative prototypes and systems. A big well done to our budding engineers, designers and makers!
Transdisciplinary Learning – It’s all connected!
In Inquiry, students have started to work on the design challenge, where they will have to make something effective and useful for the shared area and Year 6 community. Firstly, students start empathising by surveying other students, teachers and EA’s. Before they created any survey, they had to find a problem in the shared area, such as “noisy spaces” or an“untidy reading area”. Once we identified a problem as a group, started to think about how might we empathise with our clients. During this process, we found out that it is better to do a real life interview, because unlike online survey forms, you can get more detailed information from your clients. Next, we analysed the data from the interviews, and defined the problem to form a problem statement.
Afterwards, we used the skill of generating novel ideas to create ideas that were suitable, helpful and as sustainable as possible. In our groups we had to use group decision making to choose the best idea and finalise it. After that, we created a blueprint on isometric paper for our prototypes. We needed to make sure that we showed different elevations, used accurate measurements and scale to draw the blueprint. After that we began building a testable prototype. Lastly, we tested to test our product to see if it worked or not.We also contacted our clients to evaluate our prototype and give us some feedback. Tomorrow is the last day of the design task where we are going to showcase our designs in the Design Expo and vote for the best designs. The students whose designs get the maximum votes would then be invited to design and set up our shared area. We will update you on the designs in our next update; so please watch this space!
In Mandarin, some classes have been finishing off a recount writing about their half term break. The students have also returned to exploring their textbooks, including new chapters and revision.
In Music, students had to create their own groove in their own group of 5/6. The students were given a choice towards what music genre they would like to compose their groove to, there were several specific songs chosen by the music teacher for each genre. They were also given grids in the total of 4 beats to help them out with organising their timings for each bar, a verse, and chorus were both encouraged.
In PE, students have been working on their innovative Electric Slide dances. By that we mean changing up the usual dance, to a better, entertaining and fun performance in just 90-180 seconds! Each student picked a style of movement, eg basketball, hula hoops and skipping ropes, parkour and gymnastics to incorporate into their choice of movement into the Electric Slide dance. Students have also been learning about BEST. BEST stands for B- Body, E- Energy, S- Space and T- Time. Students have to use these 4 elements to create their Electric Slide. Their new dances must be in time with the same music, they must be repeatable and they must entertain the audience (our classmates and PE teachers). This past week, the students have been practicing their dances and changing up the important details.
Library News:
The results of the Unusual Reading Spot Contest have been released! Congratulations to the three people who have won: Yeji Jun (3J), Teho Kim (3J), and Kaylee Yeung (4D). But just remember, everyone who participated is a winner! Click this link to learn more:
Another notice is that Scholastic orders is delayed until the first week of November.
Action
As part of the action for Y6, students need to bring fruits/vegetables or food that is home-made in reusable containers. In order to reduce single-use plastic, we have pledged not to bring in snacks wrapped in plastic, such as chips and biscuits. Year 6 is aiming to be more eco-friendly, so we advise that students should drink water instead of juice, soda or other drinks.
Important dates
23rd October Hong Kong Camp meeting for the parents
Friday 25 October Diwali Celebration Assembly
31 October & 7 November 3 Way Learning Conference (3-6pm)
We Need Your Help!
As one of our sustainability goals for Year 2019/2020, we are going to replant and propagate our plants from the last year. We believe in partnering with parents to boost our students learning. As part of the process to develop the shared area, our students would like to set up a nursery to help them with the repotting process. We will need soil packs, planters, big clean yoghurt tubs, or any other big clean plastic containers. In case you have any of the above items at home, kindly send them to the school.
OUR LEARNING JOURNEY
