The Making of Hogwarts

Our novel study this term is Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. As a year level, we really got into it and transformed our classrooms into Hogwarts, to suit our work.

We have engaged in Novel Study tasks each week, which have involved summaries and analysis’s for each chapter. During our ‘Harry Potter Time’ (time allocated to spicing up the classrooms), Mr Huebl suggested documenting our ‘journey.’

Here is the movie I put together to ‘document our journey’. I hope you enjoy,

Henny

The Making of Hogwarts from SAS Year 6 on Vimeo.

100WC T2W3

I ran through the blazing wind and drenching rain searching for shelter. I couldn’t see any trees or buildings and the violent storm was beginning to grow. Then I saw through half shut eyes a large tree. I ran as fast as I could shivering in my drenched clothes towards the tree, but as I grew nearer I noticed that it wasn’t a tree but a rusty barn. I heaved the door open and peeked inside to make sure it was safe. The barn was empty apart from some hay bales, but it would be good enough for the night

 

Skellig Essays

We have been using Google Docs a bit this term, and we are now working with them. We are using a Google Doc to draft our essays, which is quicker than handwriting, especially when we are editing things by moving them around. The Google Doc also allows our teacher to see how we are going and our parents can also leave us notes as suggestions. So far it is going really well – as long as we are able to access a laptop!

Show Me Your Fractions

Screen Shot 2013-05-23 at 11.55.02 AM

In Mathematics we are looking at Fractions. As part of our Tuning In, Mr Huebl asked us to demonstrate our prior knowledge on working with fractions by creating an instructional video.

As well as being part of our Mathematics Inquiry, they will also serve as resources for students both in Year 6 and lower years that require a bit of extra assistance with different operations with fractions.

Please have a look, refresh your knowledge and leave us a comment!

David, Le-Anne, Milly, DiHan, Alyshia, TK, TP, Scott, Billy, Gillian (featuring the encouragement of Mr Steel),  Jack, Jason, Chris, Marlon, Henry, Josie and Ellaina.

Watching the fraction videos

The Great 2013 Yeast Investigation

This term in Science we are looking at Micro Organisms. We begun our Inquiry last week by Tuning In to what we already knew. Amongst many other things, we established that ONE type of Micro Organism is Yeast. This week we are Finding Out about yeast by comparing the making of bread with and without it. To begin with, we made two batches of bread dough that were exactly the same, except that one had no yeast added at all. When we poured them onto baking trays, we observed that they both looked pretty similar:

 

To observe the difference between them over time, we drew a red line around the two doughs, so that we could see any changes in ‘blob size’. After 45 minutes, we observed that both blobs had overlapped the red line in parts, but the Yeast Blob had expanded further. It was also higher.

Crossing over the red lines!

The Yeast Dough was higher and wider.

As the difference was not enourmous though, we did a bot of research and discovered that yeast thrives with heat. So (not entirely illogically) we decided to put a little bit of each dough into extreme heat (the oven) to see if that would cause a bigger difference between the two.

This finally gave us a clear distinction between the two doughs – the dough with Yeast rose much higher and was certainly much tastier!

The one on the left was much tastier, and yeastier.

Inquiry in Term 2

Our Inquiry Units in Term 2 will revolve around the same concept in both Language A and Humanities. This guy might give you a clue as to what that concept is!

Prizes will go to

a) Those who can identify who this dapper looking fellow is; and

b) What the Key Concept for these units is

Have a good holiday, and I’ll see you all in Term 2!

 

Mr Huebl

Who is this?

Screencasts

This term in Language A (English) we have been writing explanations. A creative outlet for publishing these pieces of writing was to record them as audio. This seemed a little bit down towards the S/A end of the SAMR model, so we redesigned the task to make using technology to present the work less ingenuous. It was decided that the topic of the explanation whould be ICT related, so the students could present their writing in screencast form.

The brief given to the students was to explain how to do something on a computer. This could be anything from changing the size of writing in a word processor, to airbrushing photos in Photoshop.

The formal writing process was undertaken initially, with planning, sequencing, editing and drafting taking place with gold old pen and paper. When the piece of writing had been suitably crafted and completed, the students then got the laptops out and began the presentation process. Using Quicktime, the students recorded the action of their process, while reciting the ‘script’ which was their finished explanation. Others chose to use the creen capture to record only the on screen actions. This movie was imported into Garage Band, and the students narrated over the top.

We are all very happy with our finished products, which all students have posted to their personal blogs. Below we have three, selected by the Year 3 students the videos were designed for. Please visit individual student blogs to view the rest of the videos. Enjoy!

 

Eva Screencast from SAS Year 6 on Vimeo.

Henry Screencast from SAS Year 6 on Vimeo.

Laura’s Screencast Final from SAS Year 6 on Vimeo.

 

Henny’s Math Lesson

Today, Mr Huebl asked all the people who had finished their enlargement, to find something productive to do. Somebody piped up with the bright idea to give everyone a cartoon to draw, so we could do a 6HU Mash Up, of lots of different characters.

I explained to the class what we would be doing this Math lesson, and we made a list of the characters everyone wanted to do. Instead of enlarging, we were going to be reducing our characters. Mr Huebl even joined in himself, because he decided not to interfere with my teaching. Over all, my lesson went well, Mr Huebl finished first, and everyone enjoyed themselves.

We will update with the finish product when it’s done!

“I think this Math lesson was very interesting, because to choose our own characters to draw, and it was a change from enlargement to reduction.” – Henry

 

Laura and Maggie
maggiesas.edublogs.org
laurasas.edublogs.org

Emily and Eva
emilysas.edublogs.org
evasas.edublogs.org

Mr Huebl & Laura working on their reductions
laurasas.edublogs.org

Sharing in the 100 Word Challenge

In 6HU, we are habitual participants in the 100 Word Challenge, a global writing challenge that develops writing skills in students by asking them to respond to a stimulus in only 100 words. This is indeed a challenge sometimes, as it can be difficult to frame our ideas into such a small amount of words. Similarly, some students can find reaching 100 words without ‘waffling’ the real challenge.

Usually, the challenge stimulus is a picture or a phrase. These really allow the students to develop ideas around a theme and apply their writing skills to the task. Every week, we will frame our responses with whatever our focus has been in the classroom for writing or grammar. For example, we might all incorporate direct speech into our responses, or perhaps the focus will be on the use of adjectives. Some students like to try incorporating their spelling list words into their responses, while keeping the meaning of their writing relevant.

This week, the prompt was not a picture or a phrase, but rather an introduction to a concept. This concept was that of sharing, and can be seen here. The contrasting nature of the images brought to mind by an Ethiopian child with the description of the child’s actual reality was one that took some of us some time to get past. This boy did not seem to live in poverty, or want for food, but our preconceptions led us to assume that he would be. In fact, he was being held up as an example of the joy to be gained from sharing what we have with others. These mixed feelings that the prompt elicited in us, held us back as we began our writing.

Despite that fact we had been given the instruction of beginning our responses with “If we share…” a lot of us were unsure of what to write, as more often than not, our responses are narrative based and this seemed to require something quite different. Using a variation of a Y-Chart, we unpacked the concept of sharing, examining what it meant to share as well as some of the more abstract uses of the word; share a meal, share a decision, share an experience.

In the end, everyone was very pleased with what they came up with. We will not highlight any individual posts here, as we feel everyone did very well, so we are listing them all. We would really value your comments about how we have chosen to represent a concept through our writing.

Billy, Harry, Jack, Henri, Ellaina, Charlotte, Paris, DiHan, Chris, Thomas, Scott, Cooper, Emily, Nathan, Laura, Alyshia, Henry, Eva, Cody, Henny.

 

Building our understanding

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

In 6HU, we are aware that learning is an ongoing process. It is not a case of the teacher telling us something, and us remembering it. We continually build on what we have discovered, creating our own meaning over time. We are showcasing this trait this week, by sharing our learning journey on the topic of cyberbullying. We reflected on a post we made last week, and expanded on those initial thoughts. Some of us chose to make this elaboration more meaningful by presenting using audio or video.

Here is a selection of links from our class:

Maggie

Ellaina

Billy

Chris

Henny