6KN

Lucy and Savy demonstrate how the digestive system works

On the 11 of October 2010, at Ocean Grove Primary School, a science expo took place in a classroom. The expo was about the systems of the human body.

The children or should I say, doctors of the future, put on an impressive show with diagrams, games, quizzes, and contraptions to show how the systems work. The systems on display included the digestive, the muscular, the skeletal, the immune, and the glandular. But all the time and effort put into this is a different thing all together.  The children had to ride down to the shops in the blistering weather to get only one pack of jelly beans that would be later consumed by the whole group instead of being given out as prizes, battle with parents to go down to the hardware store to get 1.5 metres of tubing, and finish of a minimum of 2 fizzy drink bottles that could be shared out with a family of 7, just to make the most educational presentation! (Well I’m probably exaggerating this a bit but…you get the point!).

We interviewed the visitors to see what they thought about it, and we started getting sick of the same answer. ‘It was great!’.

Liam H

This week we have looked at a persuasive text that questioned the relevance of the Commonwealth Games.

The author tried to persuade us that even without the problems that were experienced in Dehli in the lead up to the games, there are more pressing issues that reduce the significance of the Games.

We then discussed as a class other issues that impact on the relevance of the Commonwealth Games. These included:

• the cost of holding the games
• the cost of funding the sports
• what else this money could be used for

What is your opinion?

Remember, opinions are much harder to argue against when they are backed up with relevant and credible evidence.

Post your opinion and your evidence as a comment below.

Shelfari is a social website like Facebook but the topic of the website is books! We have started using Shelfari in class and library this term.

You can add books to your main virtual bookshelf and edit the info about the books you’ve read, reading now or even put books you plan to read on your shelf for everyone to see.

You can make groups about any topic (not only book ones) and post information and conversations on your or someone else’s topic in your groups.

You can find friends by name or meet new people with the book finder. This matches books you’ve read or reading to other peoples books on their shelf and it says on your home page the people who are like you (like each other’s books).

Each book also has a wiki that any member can edit.  This then becomes a great resource to learn about books.

I think using Shelfari has allowed me to discover more books, talk about books and find more books to read. Overall I would recommend it to anyone who likes books or likes to read.

DJ

“Tomorrow when the War Began” is the class book we are reading at the moment.

As you may know, it has now been made into a movie, and we want to finish the book before the holidays so we can see the movie in the holidays.

The book starts off with Ellie, the main character writing down all the past events that she and her friends had been through. So she gets together a group of friends to go on a camping trip to a place called Hell near Tailor’s Stitch. They camp there for a week, but something strange happened while they were camping. They woke up one night and saw jets flying over head. When they got back, they went to check everyone’s houses, but no one was home. By then they knew a war has started.

After that, they have lots of run-ins with the invaders, and in one of them someone gets shot.

I’m thoroughly enjoying this book so far, and I can’t wait to watch the movie. There are also a series of books following this book. The story behind all the books is that when John Marsden taught up at Timbertop, in the Snowy Mountains, he couldn’t find any books that interested the boys in his class, so he decided to write them himself. Now it has become world famous and has been translated and published all over the world.

In class we are also doing some writing on other characters points of view, as the whole book is written in the first person you only get one perspective.

Overall we recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a decent read, but remember, READ THE BOOK BEFORE THE MOVIE!

Liam H

Last week 6KN put their learning into action. After investigating similes and metaphors we turned our hands to song writing.

Firstly we looked at the lyrics while we listened to a couple of songs that contain a lot of similes. They were “Black Stick” by The Cruel Sea and “Hawkmoon 269″ by U2.

Then, we listened to “Zebra” by the John Butler Trio without the lyrics in front of us. The first challenge was to identify the obvious two similes (there is one other that is a lot longer and harder to remember). We had a lot of fun with this as the class played a version of misheard lyrics. After a while we worked out the words we did know and turned it into a cloze activity. Eventually we got there!

• I can rich like a wandering gypsy
• I can be poor like a fat wallet lost

After looking at the rest of the lyrics, I set the class a challenge. We decided the premise of the song is that John lists all the opposites he could be, e.g. “I could young man or I could be old”. We were to change those lines, to match the two similes we found.

The class paired up and set to it. We then shared each line and we voted for the best. What we have so far has been collated into the one document which can be viewed here. Some of the highlights include:

• I can be silent like a well trained Ninja
• I can be cold like an ex-wife’s heart
• I can be violent like a UFC fighter
• I can be first man like Usain Bolt, or I could come last like Rueben Gonzalez (someone we looked at the start of this year, a Columbian luger who always comes last)

Here is a link to a great podcast about Metaphors – http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-similes-metaphors.aspx

While you are listening to the podcast, make some notes in your Lecture Pad under the heading Metaphors. Remember to start with a definition and then some examples.

Your task then (and this could be fun) is to find examples of metaphors in song lyrics. Post the example with the name of the song, artist and the line in the song.

In class this term we have brought back the serial novel. Our first one was the story “Jetty Rats” by Phillip Gwynne. The lure of a story about fishing (bad pun!) proved very attractive as fishing is a very popular pastime in our class.

As these comments show, all the class loved it!

Hello 6KN, while I am at the football finals, here is what I expect you to complete.

1. Sound Waves spelling sheet (they are on the chair at the front of the room)
2. Add some examples to our list of Visual Imagery from the novel you are now reading
3. Draw a picture of a character, eg. an alien, write a description of your character using the Show Don’t Tell strategy (in your Lecture Pad). Then, have a partner draw your character from your piece of writing. The accuracy of their picture will tell you how accurate you were.
4. Continue with our Are We There Yet? Maths task. Remember to include images and highlights of the towns in your itinerary.
5. If you have nothing left to do (as if!), complete a new book review.

Complete this activity to learn about what conjunctions are. These are a very important element of persuasive writing.

World Cup Fever has hit 6KN this week and we have taken the opportunity to welcome the world game into our Aussie Rules dominated class.

In the Boy’s group we ventured outside to play some football. The use of witches hats as impromptu vuvuzelas was a definite highlight.

Then in 6KN we played our own World Cup using the cards from here. A dice was rolled to determine how many goals were scored (with 6 being a 0-0 draw). Then the attributes were randomly drawn to see who scored each goal (a 5 saw 5 attributes drawn out).

Australia (Lochie) beat Germany (Jayden) in our final and we thought it was going to be a good omen.