Team 5/6 News

Welcome to all our grade 5 and 6 families this year!

We are off to a wonderful start, and look forward to 2023 being an exciting and productive year. 

As is our process at BPPS, we begin each year with a start-up program.  This enables our students the best chance to make a smooth transition from one year to the next, and settle well into their new classes, rooms and routines.

As part of our start-up program we reacquaint ourselves with our classroom rights and responsibilities. These are: 

• We all have the right to feel safe.
• We all have the right to learn. 
• We all have the right to be treated with respect. 

As grades, we discussed our collective, and personal, responsibilities in ensuring that these rights are achieved. 

Importantly, each grade worked together (with their teachers) to determine the rules and expectations for their rooms; including establishing what a good learning environment looks, feels and sounds like. 

One particular area that lead to many engaging, deep and thoughtful observations, was when we talked about what an effective learner at BPPS might look like.  

We brainstormed together, and then students created their own templates to represent their views. 

During our first week, we also re-established our understanding of the 6+1 Traits of Good Writing. The traits are what we use to help our students understand the main components and characteristics of high-quality writing. They are: 

1. Voice,
2. Ideas, 
3. Conventions, 
4. Organization, 
5. Word Choice, and 
6. Sentence Fluency.
   ...the +1 is Presentation! 

In focusing on the writing traits this year, we incorporated an inquiry into what it means to be an Australian.  We looked at our anthem, Indigenous stories, and other sources to deepen our understanding of how the 6 traits can be used to produce powerful messages. 

Further to this, we investigated the important differences between a Welcome to Country and an Acknowledgment of Country; then created our own Acknowledgment of Country for our own classrooms. 

During week 2, students have been reintroduced to the Learning Assets and the role they play in our rooms and ourselves. 

Students have been challenged to think about what it means to be a collaborator, communicator, self-manager, thinker, and researcher, and apply those understandings to a group inquiry on paper planes. 

It has been a phenomenal start to the year, and we look forward to many exciting events, learning opportunities, and more in 2023!