St Jude’s Catholic Primary School

Year 6 really rolled with it when learning about volume, creating 1m³ cubes using nothing but newspaper! Armed with 12 rolled up paper rods and 12 joiners, they crafted 3D cubes like pros. Who knew newspapers had such volume? As the students measured and built, they found that volume wasn’t just something you turn up on the radio—it’s also the space inside their handmade cubes! By the end, the room was packed with ‘paper creations’, proving they were on a roll!

Congratulations to all our candidates on receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation! Today, many of our students were fully initiated into the Catholic Church as they received the seven gifts and nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. They were reminded to use these gifts daily, living their faith by spreading God’s love and following Jesus’ example in all they do. This special day marks an important step in their faith journey, empowering them to live out their Christian mission in the world.

Students from our Year 6 class joined together with students from our afterschool classes for a day of retreat and reflection as they prepared to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation later in Term 3. The retreat was led by Sr Maree from the Mary MacKillop Centre in South Perth and was a day of reflection centred around the Sacrament of Confirmation as students learnt about the life of Mary MacKillop (Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop) along with the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit.

In Year 6, the students had a skele-ton of fun creating paper skeletons! They whipped out the tape measure, transforming classmates into life-size paper strips. It was no “small” task, but they used their powers of ten to convert centimetres to millimetres and metres, proving they were a head of the game in math. After some cutting and pasting, the classroom was full of paper skeletons—no bones about it, this project was a “measure” of success!

Students took part in a 3 Day camp in the beautiful surrounds of Nanga Bush Camp in Dwellingup. The camp begun with a liturgy centred around ‘talents and gifts’ which linked in well with the classes RE Unit on ‘Vocations’. This theme was then linked in with ‘leadership’. While there, students participated in a number of activities centred around teamwork and leadership while other activities encouraged students to take risks and challenge themselves!

This term our Year 5 and Year 6 classes are focussing on the narrative genre during our whole school ‘Talk for Writing’ program. The model text being used is titled ‘The Red Eye’ and is about finding a lost map. Many maps have clues in which to follow, usually leading to a treasure. For our ‘hook’, students worked together to solve a number of puzzles to unlock different challenges using the website ‘BreakoutEdu’. While some challenges were relatively easy, others increased in complexity and really required team work in order to triumph.

The term began full steam ahead with Swimming Lessons in the first couple of weeks. We look forward to a special year ahead as our Year 6 students work towards being leaders of our school and prepare to leave their mark. In the coming weeks, students will learn about ‘vocations’ and ‘leadership’ along with many other learning areas with increasing complexities. The Year 6 students have already completed their first leadership task as they worked together with students across the school to develop our ‘Whole School Student Code of Conduct’. Welcome to Year 6!