Late last year, Year 6 students were involved in creating a ‘Passion Project’ where they focussed on a strong personal interest and shared this passion as an oral presentation to a specific target audience and for a specific purpose.

Zahli chose to explore concussions in AFL, to raise concussion awareness with SANFL juniors.

“Within the passion project, we could do anything we wanted and were passionate about. I am really passionate about football and wanted to go deeper into the sport, so I chose to investigate concussions in football. It’s personal to me as one of my friends was concussed when she was rucking.”

Zahli is an enthusiastic footballer playing in the half-back flank and midfield. She aspires to reach the highest level she can in her future football career. The purpose of Zahli’s project, was to teach other students playing football how to tackle properly and safely.

“I am passionate about this topic in football. I wanted my project to be powerful, and ensured people were safe when playing the game.”

Emmanuel chose to explore Egypt as the topic of his Passion Project.

“I choose the topic of Egypt because I wanted people to understand and learn more about the country and not just think it’s a hot desert, but a civilisation where people live. I wanted my class to learn and understand Egyptian culture, religions, and beliefs.”

“To present my passion project I created a PowerPoint, Kahoot quiz, and a puzzle. I got the whole class involved and the presentation was successful.”

Ava is passionate about Greyhound adoption and choose to explore this topic.

“I chose the topic because I think Greyhounds make great pets and deserve a second chance at having a good life. I own a greyhound myself and a lot of people think greyhounds are scary because they are big dogs.”

“For my project, I created a Powerpoint presentation on why Greyhounds should be adopted and then I made a video about my pet Greyhound.”

In Ava’s findings, she discovered the many benefits of owning Greyhounds including “they are not jumpy dogs, they don’t bark much, and they encourage active lifestyles for their owners as they need to go on lots of walks”. 

Year 6 teacher Sarah Hughes shares “These students and the entire class did an amazing job researching and presenting their passions. I was so impressed to reverse the role and be the person learning so much”.

Undertaking the Passion Project provided the Year 6 students with an opportunity to enthusiastically research their interests applying agency over their own learning, and then present their findings with peers and younger students.