House Teams Running our House Teams for Sports

House Teams Running our House Teams for Sports Day was a challenge. We had to organise our agendas for our team meetings and get the Year Sixes on side by giving them more responsibility. Karalta

Taltarni

Wirrana

Meetings We have weekly Whole Class Meetings. During the week we put items to discuss on the agenda. We take turns to chair, take minutes etc. Our meetings are confidential otherwise no one would be willing to share opinions.

Whole School Meetings We also have Whole School Meetings on Thursdays. People decide in their class meetings if something is important enough to bring to the Whole School Meeting. We speak, vote, make decisions and share celebrations.

Words by Brianna, photography by Hannah

Mt Ainslie: At Mt Ainslie we saw a great view of the city. Here we saw Parliament House, the War Memorial, Old Parliament House, and many others!

National Gallery and Questacon This is a small display of a bird’s eye view of Canberra. It also lit up and told you lots of interesting things about why it was set up the way it is. At the National Gallery there was a lot of information on how Canberra became the capital of Australia, also things like how it got the name, why it was picked to be the capital, and basically all its history. This is the giant drop at Questacon, “It was so much fun!”

Indonesian Embassy and Film & Sound Archives. At the Film and Sound Archives we heard about what they do and watched the first feature length film, it was about Ned Kelly. We also saw the most popular TV series, which was Neighbours. The class in front of the Indonesian Embassy.

Old Parliament House and Electoral Ed Centre Role playing at Old Parliament House – passing a bill!

CSIRO Investigating, analysing, experimenting, problem solving, drawing conclusions…

The War Memorial The names of all those who died at war. The Reflection Pond and the Eternal Flame

Parliament House This is the House of Representatives at Parliament House. This is the Senate; when they want to make a law it goes through the House of Reps first then on to the Senate.

Whole School Newsletter Students helped to publish a spread for the newsletter, informing the school community of our Canberra Tour.

Parliament House, SA Some of us visited Parliament House in Adelaide and the Electoral Office with the Year Fives and Sixes. We interviewed Mr Iain Evans, MP.

The Cheek Pinching Bill We shared what we found out about how to pass a bill in Parliament by writing a play and presenting it on Grandparents’ Day. It was a smash hit!

MP Visit We invited Dr Andrew Southcott, our MP to visit our school. He said good leaders had to learn to argue logically and be resilient.

Dr Southcott presented us with certificates

Action Groups Some of our best action as leaders was in our Action Groups. We met every week with other interested students and worked on improving things.

Funraising Group We raised money and awareness for people with Albinism living in Barundi, Africa. They are hunted and killed for their body parts. We helped fund safe havens for them by running Casual Clothes Days.

Sports Team We raised the fitness levels of the staff and students by holding lunchtime netball tournaments for every class and the staff. We have also designed a fitness trail which is about to be installed.

We ran a massive Cup Cake Day to raise money for an interactive whiteboard. We have earned enough for just over 1% of a whiteboard! Next we plan to employ the Green Team to run a Native Animal Show to raise more money. Resource Rangers

Green Team We help improve the environment. We run lunchtime workshops to educate the other students on how to look after the environment including its animals…

…we organised for Greening Australia to give us 50 trees and help our team plant them …

…we visit the local wetlands to clean up rubbish and monitor acidity, turbidity and salinity …

…and we manage the bins and recycling, including raising money through the Money Tree Bin program. The money is helping the endangered Cassowary.

Keeping parents informed of the wonderful things we do!

Next … we’d like to continue working in our Action Teams. If we hold 56 more Cup Cake Days we will have enough money for an interactive whiteboard. We want to make sure the fitness trail gets finished and we plan to hold lunchtime soccer tournaments. We want to keep helping the people in Barundi. Apart from continuing our wetland visits and workshops, we also want to plant trees in the reserve down our street. Some Year Sixes are helping us organise things so they will have a good idea of how they could lead next year. These are our goals for next term.