Year 6

Dear Parents/Guardians,

I had a great start as year 6’s home group teacher and enjoyed learning about the students. My aim was to provide students with a positive learning environment so they can become long-life learners. Throughout this year, I got the opportunity to not only implement curricular activities but also to conduct activities around discipline, behaviour, organization, short term and long term goals. During Health classes in Term 4, students learned about cyber safety, social media awareness, decision making and peer pressure. In Physical Education classes, students enjoyed playing different sports and learning about the rules for games like Cricket, Hockey, Basketball, Soccer etc.

During Maths classes, students were provided with enriching opportunities to study different mathematical concepts. They developed their understanding through class work, videos, projects, and assignments. Many students found the subject very inspiring and interesting. Most of the time, students enthusiastically worked to finish given mathematical tasks and achieved good scores. In Term 4, students were divided into five different groups; Red, Yellow, Green, Purple and Pink. They really enjoyed doing collaborative work and didn’t disappoint me by talking or misbehaving. Moreover, they did their assigned classroom duties with great responsibility. I am appreciative of every single student for doing this. As a Maths teacher, I tried my best to convey the message to the students that Maths is important. It is something worth doing for reasons beyond the need to just pass the tests/exams.

As the year 6 students prepare to farewell the school, we wish them the very best in their future endeavours, and always welcome them back to drop in and say hello.

Intercampus Debating Competition

On the 29th November, Raihaan Syed, Tahira Quwat and Qunoot Shaikh participated in the intercampus debating competition. We also had Hyder Aletabi and Mehak Ahmad as emergencies. Many of the Year 6 students attended as the audience.

It took a lot of hard work to get organised and get ready. We had to practise 6 different topics, which were:

• Should fidget spinners be allowed in classrooms?
• Should students have mobile phones?
• Should homework be banned?
• Should gaming be restricted to 30 minutes in a day?
• Should trousers/shorts be part of the girls’ uniform policy?
• Should canteens only sell healthy food?

On the day we were very nervous. Luckily we were not the first team to debate, so we had a chance to listen to the other teams. The first teams were Sunshine vs Dallas. In our debate, we were against Keysborough. Unfortunately we lost and were placed 4th. In 3rd place was Dallas, 2nd place was Keysborough and 1st place was Sunshine.

The topic we debated was “Should gaming be restricted to 30 minutes in a day?”

We were the affirmative team; our first speaker was Raihaan Syed, second speaker was Tahira Quwat and the third speaker was Qunoot Shaikh.

The first speaker’s points were:

• The World Health Organization (WHO) has considered gaming addiction as a mental health disorder.
• Kids will be sleeping in class due to gaming addiction at night.
• Socializing with people that you don’t know.

The second speaker’s points were:

• Some games can be violent.
• Eyesight and brain can be affected.

The third speaker’s points were:

• Some games can take more than 30 minutes.
• Rebutting.
• Summarizing.

We had a lot fun and it was a great experience.