Year 5/6 Term 3 Overview

Welcome back to Term 3. We hope you all had time to relax and spend time with family and friends over the break and are ready for another busy term.

Our calendar is already bursting with events and this term we also welcome final-year ACU teaching students into all three 5/6 classrooms! Please welcome Jack Catalano in 5/6A, Sebastian VanDenberg in 5/6B and Tom Preston in 5/6C.

Please note in your calendars

Confirmation commitment masses - Saturday/Sunday 26 & 27 July
5/6B Class assembly - 28 July
Debating Incursions - 29 July, 5, 26 August, 2, 9 September
Emmaus production (Cinderella) - 30 July (Y5)
Aquinas production (The Wedding Singer) - 30 July (Y6)
Power outage day - 30 July
Confirmation Retreat Day - 1 August (Year 6)
ACU Student teachers begin - 4 August
Australian Mathematics Competition - 5 August
STEMania incursion - 5 August
Inform and Empower Webinar - 6 August
Inform and Empower information night - 7 August 6:30pm
National Week of Action Against Bullying - 11 - 15 August
Treasure Hunt (Literacy) incursion - 11 August
School Closure Day - 12 August
Go Girl, Go for IT conference - 13 August
Confirmation Mass - 16 August 2:00pm
Tournament of Minds - 17 August
Book Week parade - 19 August 9:00am
Student-led Conferences - 21 August
Major PA Social Event (Games Night) - 23 August 7:00pm
5/6C Class assembly - 25 August
District basketball - 29 August
Father’s Day breakfast - 5 September
District athletics - 11 September
Y5 Sovereign Hill camp - 15 - 17 September
Y6 Media incursion - 16 September
Last day of term - Friday 19 September @1pm

All other school dates are available on the school online calendar.

Religious Education

In Religious Education this term we will be spending time preparing for Confirmation. We will be learning about The Gifts of the Spirit, Pentecost and The Fruits of the Spirit. Our grade 6 Confirmation students will enjoy a retreat day with our St James friends, learning about the Holy Spirit and preparing for their Confirmation ceremonies.

In addition to this, students will undertake a research project on their chosen Saint, learning about their lives and how they connect to their own values and beliefs. Our grade 5 students, and those not participating in Confirmation, will choose and research a notable person, or someone they admire, and learn about their contributions to their communities.

Inquiry - History

Our term 3 unit of learning is History, focusing on immigration in the 20th Century and how this has helped shape modern Australian society.

Students will look at the journey taken by migrants across the decades, including those undertaken in their own families, sharing their experiences, perspectives and stories. We aim to create a type of ‘living library’ by recording the stories of our families' journeys to make Australia their home.

During the unit students will also look at the significant events that occurred in Australia during this time and describe the continuities and changes experienced by individuals, as well as those experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people during the 20th century.

English

This term in English, our Year 5/6 students will be learning about convict life through the novel ‘Tom Appleby Convict Boy’ by Jackie French. This examines the life Tom experiences when he is sentenced to Botany Bay after being found guilty of theft at just 8 years old.

We will be engaging in a complete literature study unit encompassing speaking and listening, reading, viewing and writing. These will all utilise our novel to encourage our students to build connections and meaning, develop spelling through phonic, morphemic and vocabulary knowledge, examine grammatical structures such as complex sentences and the use of clauses for effect, and identifying textual aspects that include details about historical events, cultural and social contexts.

Students will engage in story and information text writing, conveying moods, feelings, actions and ideas, continuing the development of the skills they have learned through our VCOP (Big Writing) sessions and applying these consistently to their work.

In addition to our literature study, we will have the amazing opportunity to engage in debating workshops over the course of five sessions during the term. These will be run by Debaters Association of Victoria and are aimed at building debating skills in primary school students.

Mathematics

In Mathematics this term students will consolidate their understanding of fractions and decimals, as well as continue to revisit chance, probability and number, including times tables and division.

In addition to this we will focus on the following topics across the term:

location and transformation
fractions (addition and subtraction)
angles
decimals (ordering, multiply and divide by powers of 10)
measurement (choosing appropriate units, converting)
time (elapsed time, timetables)

Social Emotional Learning

This term in Year 5/6, we continue to strengthen both our learning and wellbeing through a variety of engaging programs. Our focus on Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) will continue to support students in making respectful, responsible and safe choices, helping to build a positive classroom and school environment.

We’ll also continue exploring our Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) through The Resilience Project, with a strong emphasis on Gratitude, Empathy, and Mindfulness (GEM) strategies. These tools help students build resilience and develop healthy coping skills that support their overall wellbeing.

As a senior cohort, we will also participate in the National Week of Action Against Bullying, reinforcing the importance of inclusion, kindness and being upstanders. Our goal is to continue to foster a strong, connected and supportive community where every student feels heard, valued and empowered.

We are looking forward to another rich and meaningful term of growth, leadership and learning in the area of SEL.

Digital Technology

Digital technology (digitech) forms a big part of our daily lives in grade 5/6 and our students continue to build their skills with a range of digital applications and programs.

Wherever possible, digitech is integrated into other learning areas. We regularly utilise learning applications such as Essential Assessment, Seesaw and ReadWorks to support our Mathematics and English learning. Furthermore, we also enjoy using creative software tools such as Canva to complete tasks in Inquiry, RE, STEM and all areas of the curriculum.

In Term 3 we will look at some of the finer details of digital technology including how it works and the language of computers: binary numbers. We will also look at how binary is used to create pixels and have a go at making our own images. This will help us when programming micro:bit images and lead us into larger programming tasks using blockly through online learning platforms such as Grok Academy.

We will continue our digital citizenship learning with Inform & Empower. This term's webinar focus is on Cyberbullying. Each live stream is 50 minutes in duration. Learning this term will focus on navigating uncomfortable situations. We will explore strategies for being an upstander as well as how and where to seek help. We will also discuss the importance of consent in online interactions.

Finally, our grade 6 students will have the opportunity to participate in a media incursion at the end of the term while our grade 5’s enjoy camp. The incursion will focus on creating and hosting a podcast and we think our students will really enjoy having a chance to share their ideas and experiences with a live audience.

STEM

Our Term 3 STEM unit will focus on electricity and circuits. We have already enjoyed an incursion by Mad About Science to introduce our topic and now everyone will have a chance to build on their knowledge through experiments and investigations.

We will look at what electricity is and how it works. This will include types of electricity, different types of circuits, insulators and conductors. We are looking forward to a fun and informative unit.

Home Learning

Home learning will once again be given to students in the 5/6 area on a fortnightly basis beginning in Week 3 of this term.

They will receive a matrix of curriculum based activities, with occasional supplementary activities such as maths practise or spelling. Students are also encouraged to read on a daily basis, aiming for approximately 15-20 minutes per day.

We see home learning as a terrific opportunity for students to develop and improve in their organisational skills as well as time management in preparation for high school, and we greatly appreciate family support with this.

Weekly Specialist Timetable

5/6 A

Wednesday - Chinese

Thursday - Visual Arts

Friday - P.E. and Performing Arts

5/6 B

Wednesday -Chinese

Thursday - P.E.

Friday-Performing Arts and Visual Arts

5/6 C

Wednesday- Chinese

Thursday - Performing Arts

Friday - Visual Arts and P.E.

Communication

Effective communication between family and school is an important factor in a student’s learning. Please make contact with us if you have any questions, comments or concerns.

We will endeavour to respond to emails within 24 hours, during weekdays.

tfarrar@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au

abayliss@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au

mbox@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au

Our classes are as follows:

5/6A - Tracey Farrar, Diane Lewis (Monday) and Kim Wilson

5/6B - Marisa Box, (Tues-Fri) Amanda Hill, (Monday)

Julie Carroll (Mon-Wed) and Nicola Brooke

5/6C - Allison Bayliss, Elina Li (Thursday) and Keyla Gleciano (Mon-Thurs)