On Thursday, 15 September, the Year 6 classes took part in the Year 7 Endeavour Orientation Program. Students were quickly organised into three tribes, introduced themselves, smeared on a bit of face paint, showed off their tribal chant, and then raced to complete a team puzzle. Each group worked well to put the pictures in order.
Next, they were off to their first rotation. All of the rotation activities were very exciting. In “All About Pi” led by Ms Smoker, students learnt that Maths can be fun! They got to measure real food such as doughnuts, cookies and pies (and even eat a few!). They realised that if they divided the circumference by the diameter, the answer was always the same: 3.14159265…, a number known as Pi.
During Science, students watched some exciting experiments conducted by Mr Taylor. He captivated his audience with chemical reactions that involved fire, bursting balloons and erupting foam. Students then completed an investigation by themselves where they explored the colour change of different solutions of metals when exposed to a flame. They found that strontium changed to red, barium to green, lead to white/purple and calcium changed to bright orange. The purpose was to show that these metals are used to create the colours in fireworks.
In Design and Technology with Mr Kuipers, everyone made a wooden spinning top. They designed their handle, shaped it using a band saw, sanded off the rough parts, glued the axle down, decorated the top, wound up the string and then gave it a whirl! Students enjoyed competing with each other to see whose top could remain spinning the longest.
After lunch, the tribes competed over a lively game of “Crab-Soccer Volleyball”. Using a beach ball, they had to hit it over the net whilst crawling around the floor like a crab. It was fun to play and pretty funny to watch too!
Overall, everybody had a wonderful day and are looking forward to Year 7 next year. Some comments from the class are:
“I enjoyed using the Bunsen burner and learning about chemical reactions” – Thomas Oe
“My favourite part was making the spinning top because it was fun to battle at the end” – Tiaan Hunter
“I really like meeting new people and learning about Pi in Maths, because we got to use real pies and eat them afterwards ” – Anna Murphy
“I learnt how to play crab soccer volleyball. It was very fun!” – Caitlyn Randall
