Hi Readers!

Last week the grade 6’s went to our hall for a leadership day. One of the most challenging and fun activities was a planking contest. A plank is when you go onto your lower arms, hands and toes then hold the position like a flat bridge shape for as long as you can. To make it a team challenge, we made it so that we had to have at least 60% of the group planking at any time. We made it work by communicating with the team saying when we needed to stop and encourage someone else to plank while the other recovered.

I learnt that everybody has different abilities in planking. That I did more for others because I plank a few times a week at swimming. People asked me and other group members to help and I said “sure” and in return I also got to rest and recover as well. I learnt that I’m quite strong and can be helpful to others in my team this way.

This activity was fun because we celebrated coming in the top 5 with icy poles! This shows how important cooperation and communication are for leadership.

What leadership activity’s have you done before?

In class we read a gripping novel called A Monster Calls and then we watched the movie (the book’s still better!). Here is my analysis.

 Missing characters

In the movie there were some missing characters who were really important in the whole context of the book. They were: Lilly, a girl who was actually friends with Connor and passed him a note in class saying “I see you”, Miss Kwan, who is Connor’s teacher that supports him in class and the nightmare monster who I think represents cancer (what his mum had) because it tries to take Connor’s mum out of Connor’s hands.

12:07

In the book, it is not explained why the Monster always comes at 12:07 but in the movie it shows you that it’s at 12:07 when Connor’s mum dies and the Monster goes away. 12:07 is the most important time in the book.

Main theme

The main theme of A Monster Calls is to always tell the truth even if you are scared or don’t want to tell anyone. The Monster’s message is “ if you tell the truth you can be cured”.

Have you ever not wanted to conceal the truth?

This cunning member of the canine family is more than just your local pest but has a way to survive and thrive without humans as well.

Foxes are usually found in grasslands with deer, rabbits and chickens. They have long, thick, curly fur on their belly to protect themselves from some animals bigger than them.

Some features are: fur the colour of their surroundings, their padded paws help them sneak up on prey, their big, pointy ears help them hear prey and their noses help them smell out animal burrows.

They eat mostly chickens, sunflower seeds, deer, rabbit, mice, rats and scraps from dead animals killed by other animals.

The fox will use it’s keen sense of smell to sniff out burrows left behind by other animals to make a home and have it’s cubs in spring.

Have you seen a fox before?

This year we read a variety of Book Chat books. My favourite was a mystery book called The Fall by Tristen Bancks.

It’s about a boy named Sam, who witnesses a murder. He sees someone being pushed from a balcony six stories high but the murderer has seen him. Sam sets out to find who the murderer and victim are.  The victim’s body has disappeared by the time Sam went to look and now Sam fears his life is also in danger.

Sam fears that the murderer might be anyone, from the police to his own Dad! Everyone in the area is acting suspiciously and he doesn’t know who to trust.

Sam never gave up, leading him into even more trouble. That’s all I can say without giving away the exciting storyline. Hopefully this is just enough to make you read more.

This was my favourite book because:

– it was really suspenseful

– it keeps you hooked so you read it from cover to cover in one reading fest

– the characters seemed to come to life from the page because the writing style was descriptive.

my question to you is, ‘Would you be a detective or trust the police with your story and why?’

Camp Toonalook

Our time at Toona was a great experience of camping and fun activities like,
• Kayaking
• The “famous” Shoe game where you have to throw a shoe at a water bottle and nock it over
• Bike riding
• Eating delish foods cooked by a staff member called Trish #wewanttrish
• Expo where we set up tents and sleep for the night
• King ball (full scale four square)
• The Toona Challenge
These activities were all really fun and cooperative.

On the first day we all got on the bus and watched a Mr.Bean movie then we met our group instructors who took us kayaking and bike riding.

The next day we went to see the Water police and they showed us the beds and the cockpit. A few people did a re-inactment of the I’m flying titanic scene. We also walked to Expo which was challenging because our feet got super tired.

We also made a video of Toona camp shown below this,

Please comment end on the video!

overall camp was great and we even got to skip stones along the water! I did 5 skips and I was proud!

I would rate this camp a 9/10 overall.

My class has participated in the Student Blogging Challenge! So far we’ve had to create an avatar that looked like ourselves! This is mine:

I made my avatar have wild blond hair like mine because I never brush it. I also have a tonne of black hoodies like my avatar! I also love smiling because it shows your appreciation for others and you can even have a smile on the inside. I love LEGO and video games.

What do you like to do?

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This unit was about the gold rush. It was really fun! We went on a camp to a cool place called Sovereign Hill (read more in my Cool Camp Reflection!!!) where we learned a lot about the gold rush era. 

Life in the 1850’s was tough and violent because people were blinded by wealth and gold was, and still is, one of the most valuable resources in the world. To find it you had to dig underground or pan and cradle in rivers and lakes. 

The people who came to Ballarat and surrounding towns had to pay 5 pounds for a gold licence and if you were caught without one you would be tied to a log, tree or post until you could pay the money and if you didn’t you would be put in jail. The 5 pounds was a lot of money in those days, equivalent to a month of paid work.  

The licenses caused a revolution where miners affected by the gold licenses came together on Bakery hill and swore an oath to fight for rights and liberties, or in other words, to oppress the government for being unreasonable. 

Leading up to this, a man called James Bentley, who owned the Eureka Hotel, murdered James Scobie outside his hotel and was let off free of charge. The miners were furious and burned their licenses to ash. Peter Lalor led the angry miners and on the 3rd of December they made a fort called the Eureka Stockade. The battle lasted 15 minutes and was won by the government’s redcoats because they attacked on Sunday morning which was the lord’s day of rest. The miners never saw it coming.

As part of this unit, we recreated Sovereign Hill as a diorama. We each chose a building on the Main Street to make out of shoe boxes and craft materials. Mia and I chose the Hope Bakery because we really wanted to make little bread rolls out of clay. Bakeries were important to the community because they made daily food for the town. 

A PLA I demonstrated was collaboration when I worked with Mia to make the Bakery and courage to really immerse myself in 1850’s School life and dressing up in clothing from the era. In the end school was a lot more fun than I thought because we played some fun games.

In class we programmed a Sphero to go around our diorama and explain the buildings as it passed. Here is ours,

we also had to give directions to get from one place to another on our diorama. Enjoy!