Year 5 Newsletter

Racing. That’s what we’re doing at ENPS at the moment. Racing.

Racing to events. Racing in events. Racing from events. 

Last week was one of the biggest events we have had here at school. The 100 Year Birthday of our amazing school. We began the morning with a ‘Welcome to Country’ with a series of Didgeridoo rhythms that had the kids feeling like they were on a Nightclub floor rather than on the Assembly Court. The children filed through the cleansing smoke and listened to the choir sing about our history as a school. As the day progressed, the children created jigsaw pieces of their experiences at school that will be locked together to form a display. It was a wonderful experience and something the kids are unlikely to forget in a hurry.

This week we sped off to ‘Athletics Day’. The 3-6 Students all participated in events such as Long Jump, High Jump, Hurdles, 200m, Triple Jump, 1500m, 800m and the Olympic glamour event - the 100m sprint! Many students returned looking like a Christmas Tree under the weight of all those multi-coloured ribbons. The weather was perfect and we want to say a huge thank you to all our amazing parent helpers for the day.

We had some super long distance runners complete last week and make the school proud. Some of the best of these are racing off to District Athletics this Thursday. Good luck!

Also, while we’re talking about sport, every week we have Year 5’s filling in on Friday, for Inter School Sports. There are still plenty of weeks left, so make sure your child has permission and has runners at the ready, in case Ms V gives them the tap on the shoulder. 

Back in class, each class has been racing to finish their Literacy Circles each week. While they get used to the schedule and meeting a deadline, some students will find this stressful at first. Our advice is to take it home for homework until they feel they have the work under control. While many would say 5 sessions a week is plenty of time to finish the work, we all know that staring out the window and poking friends can be very time consuming for some. If Literacy Circles is becoming overwhelming for your child or you have had a crazily busy week at home, please contact your teacher and we can help you with a solution to reduce the stress. Believe it all not, as the term progresses, many students love Literacy Circles and the opportunity to discuss a story with their friends. 

In Spelling we have learned the new morpheme - trans and reviewed previous affixes such as pede / circ/ circum / peri / per. Regular Nouns and plurals have been our focus in Grammar. In Narrative Writing we have been fleshing out our Protagonists and Antagonists for our stories and playing with varying story starters to capture our audiences attention. 

In Maths, we have been racing through Subtraction and Multiplication. Students have been learning mental counting strategies and ‘tricks’ to make the calculating part of the process, far quicker. They have been completing problem solving tasks that make them use their operational skills, plus learning the vertical algorithms to figure out more daunting sets of numbers. There is nothing better for us as teachers, when the students have that ‘ah-ha’ moment when it all comes together for them. We have been getting plenty of those moments recently!

The Amazing Race is almost at an end for our classes. We have raced through Asia, America and now Europe, where we’ve decided to stay awhile. This week we’ll start our ‘Travel Guides’ portion of the unit where the students will research Italy before locking in on a country of their choice from the continent. The students have loved frantically scrambling for information about places over this part of the term. We hope they love the Travel Guides part just as much.

With all the racing, we expect there to be a lot of exhausted students tumbling in through your door every afternoon. The finish line is in sight though and thankfully, with all the momentum we have created, we can start to glide away from all the exciting events and just enjoy the end of the term. 

Once again, thank for all your support

The Year 5 Team