Year 5/6 Team News
with Christina, Emma, Molly, Bianca I, Bianca R, Matt & Brittlee
Year 5/6 Team News
with Christina, Emma, Molly, Bianca I, Bianca R, Matt & Brittlee
Welcome back for another term! Term 3 will pack in many things including grade 5 and 6 camps, the annual disco, our inquiry demonstration day and the annual footy and netball day celebrations! We will keep you well informed of everything via the newsletter or by email.
During Term 3, our Respectful Relationships program will begin to look at some complex topics. This includes exploring types of violence, gender-based violence, protective and assertive behaviours and recognising and respecting the rights of others within interpersonal relationships. These topics are more complex that those explored during the first half of the year and may result in some questions and conversations at home.
Student Voice: Update from our Stand-Up Project student leaders:
This year the grade five and six students have been given a chance to get a new leadership role for the Stand Up Project (SUP) as a leader. This is where students can help encourage people to stand up to bullying. The students that are a part of this program are going to be going into grade three and four classes to teach them about different types of bullying and what bullying is. Students have also had a session with parents and teachers letting them know a bit about the project already. In these sessions the SUP leaders played games and told stories about the bystander effect and what that is.
Jack K, 5/6S
What's coming up in the Classroom:
Reading: During Week 3 and 4, we will continue focusing on Chris Van Allsburg texts to demonstrate our fluency when reading aloud. Students will perform their texts to the class and use a rubric to assess fluency of groups and provide feedback. We will also continue to have small group-based tasks targeting our various independent reading goals. Inferencing is a key skill that many students are continually working on, if any opportunities arise at home to support this it would be great to build into their everyday life.
Writing: During Week 3 and 4, we will be exploring our creative writing skills. We will take ideas from Chris Van Allsburg texts and editing our writing with a focus on word choice, sentence fluency and writing conventions. We will aim to take one of our free-choice texts through the writing process to publication.
Willy Kids: Willy Kids are learning to be resilient this term. During Weeks 3&4, Willy Kids are brave. This will involve lots of conversations about the importance of being brave. We will make plenty of time to share our worries and concerns about camp and work together to share ideas of how to be brave.
Maths: We have begun our work on Fractions. During Week 3 and 4, we will work through modules that allow students to gain some independence around accessing tasks and teacher sessions based on their fraction-based learning goals. From their pre-tasks we will be looking at equivalent fractions, comparing fractions, converting improper and proper fractions, and using the four operations to solve problems with fractions. In Week 4, we will make the connections between fractions and decimals using tenths and hundredths.
Inquiry: This term we look at the question, ‘What do Consumers Want?’. Will begin working on our progressive project for the term that has launched today, featuring the project brief and structure. Students will work in groups to design a new or revised product. With many components of the brief to work through, students will show details about design, materials, use of technology, sustainability, and production of possible prototypes. In addition to this, groups will need to consider target audience, advertising and persuasive techniques that can be used to gain consumers and investors. It is certainly a popular project among students, teachers and parents!
Respectful Relationships: This fortnight we will look at our first topic, ‘What is Violence?’ which will include exploring various types of violence and their effects. To begin with these more complex topics we will establish class norms around respecting the conversations we have, confidentiality when sharing ideas and questions, and ensuring students’ understanding that this is safe space with no judgements or put downs.
Interschool Sport Finals: We have had some very successful results as many of our summer and winter sport divisional and regional finals have begun! We congratulate all teams and wish them the best on their next steps:
Well done to all teams and coaches for the extra training, efforts, and Willy Kid sportsmanship at these events.
Final Reminders:
Have a great fortnight!
Warm regards,
The Grade 5/6 Team - Christina Crosland (5/6C), Emma Chang (5/6E), Molly Hedditch (5/6H), Bianca Italiano & Bianca Russo (5/6I), Matt Eason-Jones (5/6M) & Brittlee Salvo (5/6S)