The Hero's Journey

What makes a hero?

A hero could be defined as someone who overcomes great trial and tribulation in order to achieve his destiny. He is courageous and is the epitome of all that is good... 

In English this week, we have exploring what makes a hero. We have been creating our own superhero's and then considered some of the reasons why they are used in stories. Superhero's help us to see some of the best qualities that exist in people and to help teach us that we can be better people.

An author named James Campbell has written a book called "The hero with a Thousand Faces". He analysed many different stories about heroes including superheroes, and found that there were similarities in the stories. The following video shows the outline of what has been called the "The Hero's Journey".

It explains that the Journey has twelve parts as shown by this diagram:

To help understand how this journey is represented in a story, we watched the movie "Big Hero Six". This is a story about a young boy who becomes the hero of the story. This comes about as a result of his brother's death. His brother was creating a robot, Baymax that would help people. The outcome is that Baymax helps Hero to not only learn to forgive but to realise his destiny.

It was encouraging to see Years 5 and 6 students start to apply the stages of the story to the Hero's Journey model. As we discussed the story, we also discovered that their was a back story of the villain or the antagonist. The students were able to give other examples of how in the hero's story that there is another story being told too. 

At the end of the discussion, one student's comment was "that it was all really interesting!" 

The next part of this will be to have the students map the story on a story map and then discuss what they felt the different phases of the story were. 

Who is your favourite hero? What was his or her journey? 

NSW Cricket skills clinic

Drawing Tessellations

The opportunity to combine Art and Mathematics came about while looking at Two dimensional shapes. This aspect of mathematics lends itself to some creative exploration, through repeating shapes in many different ways to create patterns. 

Two dimensional shapes can be reflected, rotated or translated so that a pattern is formed.

We created a grid consisting of 7cm squares. This took some time as we needed to be accurate so that the pattern would be effective. We then created a 7cm square grid. Shapes were drawn on two of the sides and then cut out. They were joined back to the grid. This formed our tesselating shapes. 

The shapes were then traced around on the grid. The shape was translated or moved forward to the next square and then traced around again. This was repeated until all of the grid was filled.

The students then used coloured markers or pencils to colour their tesselations in. The activity took a little longer than expected but the results have been worth it. 

The students have been able to see how a square can be turned into a tesselating shape. They also had the opportunity to know how to translate a shape in a hands on way. 

What do you know about tesselating shapes? Do you know of an artist that uses tessellations in their artwork? 

Kung Fu Punctuation Assembly

Stage 3 2015 from Peter on Vimeo.

Learning Grammar and Punctuation is generally regarded as being somewhat of a boring task, but in Stage 3 we think we have overcome that issue by practicing "Kung Fu Punctuation".  Please watch our video for a demonstration.

Thank you to all of our students who showed their fantastic skills, with such wonderful enthusiasm.

Included below is the power point of "Kung Fu Punctuation", so if you wish to practice at home and show your Kung Fu Punctuation moves then its available!

What is the best thing about Kung Fu Punctuation? Are there any other Punctuation moves we could add? 

Kung fu punctuation from Vissy Profson

Cows by Design

The next part of our Picasso Cow Project is designing how our cow is going to look. It needs to reflect the research and discussions that have been occurring through the previous weeks about the Dairy Industry. 

Picasso Cow Project - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

The students showed enthusiasm and came up with a lot of great ideas. They discussed and drew how milk moves from the paddock to the being on the supermarket shelf. A great idea was to create a milk powered Backpack...powered by Calcium. Another idea was a Milky way filled with Dairy products. It will be very hard to choose a design.

A key part of the project is to keep a journal of all that we are learning and doing about the dairy industry and our Picasso Cow project. We have a special blog that has been set up so that we can keep track of the great work that our students are doing. Please take time to visit and feel free to leave a comment on the blog. Please click the photo below to visit our Picasso Cow Project learning Journal. 

Mayor for A Day

A leader is someone who knows how to listen and serve those around them. Jesus Christ demonstrated this when he washed the feet of the disciples. Leadership and public speaking are skills that we can all acquire.

Last term, we focused on what makes a confident public speaker. When we are confident with our voice and make eye contact, then we know we are engaging our audience. These are skills that were developed last term, but came to the fore for one of our students.

Each year, Camden Council offers Year 6 students from around the area the opportunity to give their thoughts about why they would like to be "Mayor for the Day", The areas that they were being judged on were not just their presentation skills, but also their knowledge of local government and the issues that they face. Only one student is able to represent their school to speak and must be nominated by their principal or teacher.

Nikita Elliot was given this daunting task to represent our school and give her thoughts about why she should be chosen to be Mayor for the day. Nikita spoke about how each one of us can be make a difference, no matter how young or old they are. She also said that to be a good leader, is to be a good listener as well.

She was one of twelve students from many different schools who spoke. There were many different topics from environmental issues to raising awareness about bullying. Every student spoke with confidence and were to be commended for the thought that they gave about the topic. The Winner was a student from Cobbitty Public School and the Runner up was from Macarthur Anglican College.
Thank you Nikita for the way that you represented our school. It is true that we can all make a difference!

Nikita from 6T receiving her award for competing in the Mayor for a Day Comp from Mayor Lara Symkoiak and Camden Citizen of the year Ted Gilroy. Great achievement today. #lovemacc

A photo posted by @maccprimary on Aug 6, 2015 at 11:33pm PDT

How would you serve the community, if you were made Mayor for the Day? Who inspires you to make a difference?  

This week's award winners