The Sport Project Group ran a very competitive Lip Syncing competition. Season One ran in Term 2 and Season Two ran in Term 3. It was a tough comp, with lip syncing and dance moves to rival those of Jimmy Fallon! Each week 2-3 people would compete and the winner for that round proceeded to the Grand Finale. Anna was the extraordinary winner of Season One with her rendition of ‘YMCA’ by the Village People and Tim was the amazing winner of Season Two with his take of ‘Turn Up The Love’ by Far East Movement. You can watch these competitors in the grade final if you click on the links in the Blog Roll. Enjoy!

 Make sure you check out the Camp Video link in the blogroll! 

Make Sure you check out the ‘camp’ link in the blog roll to see some funny videos!!!

As I’m sure you all know our class went to camp, with all the other classes. Also, I’m pretty sure you know we were gone for four days which was a lot of time for the camp (camp Howqua) to put us through their cold and treacherous activities. All 6 of them. Hehe, I’m joking. They weren’t as bad as they seem. They were actually quite fun. Not that anyone doubted them… We went on a flying fox, waterslide, high ropes course and we did archery, horse riding and a survivor course. The flying fox was awesome! I’m not sure how long it was but it was long enough to scream, lose your voice and then come close to peeing your pants. We also went on a waterslide. I think the record of going up and down it was 41 times.  Now, I know now you’re probably thinking oh, that waterslide doesn’t seem as long or as scary as my child made it out to be. Trust me it was. I am a living and speaking victim of that slide. It was so steep that the part of the slide where you slowdown was almost as long as the slide itself and I have bruises all the way up and down my spine!!   The high ropes course was great, with the four petrifying courses to choose from. Archery was cool but almost impossible. Horse riding was one of the best, I think. The horses were beautiful and didn’t get too annoyed when you randomly made them stop in fear of falling off. And the survivor challenge. No place for sooky-lalas. All the year 6’s agree it was the best camp so far and a great way to end their camp years at Hawthorn WestJ

Survival challenge

The survival challenge was insane! You had to do these barbaric but amazing courses. We had to climb through electric fences that had about 400 to 420 volts inside them, so we had to turn our inner Tarzan on. When we had completed flinging a wet beanbag so our partner could catch it, climbing over a gigantic net, running through a wobbly bridge we had to bang this massive piece of metal so the next partners could go. At that stage we all thought it was done, but then we had to climb through a tiny tunnel which had dead possums in it. It was at this point we started to get tired, our inner Tarzans were starting to wear off it got much harder. Next we had to climb on a rope and if we fell off… 5 push ups were coming our way, then we had to climb around a massive grain wave which didn’t taste as good as the actual ones. Then the last obstacle was in front us… the tires! You had to climb over them and sprint to the finish when you got off them. However, that isn’t the end, that was only the beginning, now we had to climb across a ladder and if we fell guess what we landed in? Possum poo and mud it was amazing! When we were done with that the worst was still to come… climbing under a net in the mud and possum poo! We then ran to the water slide, the water was lake water, it was colder then cold! It was freezing.

Waterslide

The water slide was cracked, dinted and the water that went down it was melted snow. It was pretty crazy and cold but everyone would say it was so fun. The record amount of times going down the slide was achieved by Archie and Ned, they both did 41 times. By the way, that is insane! Most people only did it 3 or 4 times because it was so cold.

Horse Riding

Horse riding was great we started going around in circles and when everyone had got the hang of it we took it to the tracks. We had ago at trotting which was quite uncomfortable but everyone thought it was probably the best.

High ropes

The High ropes were scary and really got the adrenaline going. It was basically tight ropes but with a harness (thank goodness), it was pretty insane. I think everyone had a go and all enjoyed it.

Flying Fox

The Flying Fox was when we had to jump off a platform and pretend we were superman, well, you didn’t have to pretend you superman but I did. When we going down we clocked up to about 45 km per hour, which is pretty fast when you are just tied to a rope in the sky.

Archery

Archery was fun…because we all want to get that bulls eye. But this time they ran it differently, you had to pop a balloon! It was very hard and I don’t think anyone in my group popped it. Everyone didn’t like the thought of archery but everyone ended up enjoying it.

By Bertie

This term the grade 5 students have been learning about and strengthening our leadership skills. We have learnt about teamwork, presentation, organisation and responsibility. We started to learn these in Term One and we have finished them off by doing the organisation and responsibility aspects this term. We have done some activities with our buddies which all relate to what they are learning about in class, which is weather. Last term we taught the buddies, but this term they taught us and we went to their classrooms. The grade fives did a few lessons and we taught the foundations. We have made some special things for our buddies to give to them at the end of the year, we hope they like them! Last week we did a weather report on the weather yesterday and today. Our buddies showed us pictures of whether it was raining or not.

By Heather and Natalie

The Welcome

Everyone arrived at school at 8:15 with open minds and lots of enthusiasm. We boarded the bus with big smiles for the long ride ahead to Camp Howqua. In the bus we listened to music and watched movies. When we got there we raced off the bus to see a large structure ahead of us. We were lead to a huge room with a stage and lots chairs. They told us to sit on the ground and listen.  A man started speaking; saying welcome to Camp Howqua his name was Mat. He went through all the rules and expectations of camp.

CABINS!

Once the speech was done it was time to go to the cabins, it was manic getting out because everyone wanted to go to their cabin quickly to get the top bunk. I saw people sprinting up the hill as fast as they could. Inside we got are sleeping stuff out and laid it down on are beds, everyone’s cabin had yelling and screaming. Suddenly a speaker came on asking everyone to come to the lodge. “So that is what that big structure is called”, I thought.

Night time FUN.

The dinners were…ok. It was good for camp food I guess. We were able to spend time in the table tennis room after each dinner before our night time activities. The first night we strutted our stuff on the dance floor at the disco. It was pretty funny seeing some of the teachers dancing! The next time was our concert, all the acts were great! The was a draw for first place, Anna and Rachel with their line dancing and Finn, Will, Jules and Ned with their disco dance to ‘Staying Alive’. The last night was a quiet movie night as we were all pretty tired. We watch Night At The Museum 2, it was fun all watching it together. We were rugged up in our sleeping bags on the floor of the hall.

All in all it was an awesome camp!!!

By Rex

This week the grade sixes started planning for graduation. We are learning the three things that make an audience more engaged with a public speaker. The two things we focused on today were: body language and how we say the words. To some of us, but not all, it was a surprise that body language was the most important one when it comes to public speaking. We also chose the main colours and the food for our graduation. We know it is a long time until graduation…but we can’t wait!

Bye Mikaela and Yeliz

This term 5/6E has been working on challenged based learning (CBL). CBL is a challenge that teams work on to fix in their community or school, our big idea is apathy and we are working on fixing apathy in our school.

WHAT IS APATHY?

Apathy is not having the desire to know or care. Our class came up with a list of words and phrases on the topic of what it means to be apathetic. Some of these phrases were selfish, not excited about anything, not concerned about anything and a bit of a downer but there were a lot more. As you can see this is not what we want people at Hawthorn West to be described as.

STAGES OF CBL

Stage one

In stage one we had to accept the challenge, create the solution teams and create the challenge proposal. The teams that we made were: The chatter bins, J.E.G.M.M, B.O.G.Y, S.B.B.M and M.O.A.T. All the teams have a challenge and we are now up to the next level.

Stage two

In stage two we had to develop guiding questions, resources and activities. We also have to research answers to guiding questions and brainstorm solutions. We all did this really well and we all have successfully completed this stage.

Stage three

In stage three we had to do initial testing of the solution prototypes and then do the final solution presentation. We are all up to this level of CBL now, and today the 13^{th of}  September two of our teams are going to show their presentation to two ¾ classes. We hope they go really well and their solution works.   

 Stage four

In stage four we have to implement a plan, solution, implementation plan, data analysis and presentation. We are not up to this stage yet but we are working fast towards it.

Stage five

Stage five is the last stage of CBL. We will do solution videos and reflection videos in that time. Hopefully our solutions will go well and it will make an impact in our school.

Conclusion time I think…

We hope you now understand a bit more about CBL and the things we do in the time we have for it. Our teams are working really well to make an effect on apathy in our school and we are having a really fun time doing it. Thanks for reading.

By Grace and Olivia J J

On Monday some students in our class did the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Most of you may know what we are talking about and some of you may have done it yourself. If you do not know, you get a bucket of water and ice and tip in on your head! Fun right!?! Our class have raised just over $100 to buy a class pet but we needed a lot more money to get everything we need for a lizard. So, instead we are going to donate the money to the ALS [Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis] cause. We had lots of fun doing the challenge and we hope the money we raised helps those with ALS and maybe even find a cure. We were nominated by our teacher Emily and we nominated our principals Glenys and Justin (haha!). Good luck guys, look forward to seeing you do it!

Follow on the address below to see our video, or find it in our ‘Blogroll’ section on this page.

-http://vimeo.com/105707451-

By Will and Olivia

All of level 4 is back for Term 3! We are all excited for the upcoming events such as camp and the concert. This term we are focusing on a project called Challenged Based Learning. The big idea is apathy and we are all looking forward to unpacking this idea. Level 4 had a great start this term with Hoop Time. Everyone had a fun time and the Future Stars Hawks team won the grand final and we all wish them good luck in the next stage Division. Term 3 is here!   By Anna