What's happening in our classroom
Hello Mackellar families! As a Grade 5 team, we have been working hard this term within all areas of the curriculum. With Grade 5s sitting NAPLAN for the very first time, teachers focused on preparing students with regular practice of NAPLAN style questions, clarifying complex vocabulary and extending their stamina to focus for extended periods of time.
Here is an overview of what we have been learning in Term 2:
Reading
This term, the focus for Reading has moved on to adopting the whole school approach to the literacy block, under the mentorship of Stephen Graham. The approach involves a single mentor text each week supported by a series of stimulating and interesting activities related to the text. These include making timelines, locating past-tense verbs, definite and indefinite articles, phrases of consequence and direct speech. Students also continue with independent reading, summarising stories and analysing themes, characters and the structure of both factual and fictional narratives. Students also participated in English extension sessions each week in order to consolidate their reading strategies and to build good reading habits.
Grade 5 students will soon undertake the Premiers Reading Challenge selecting books by well known authors. Following feedback and requests from students for a list of good books by great authors, teachers are assisting their students in book selection. To date, Grade 5s are enjoying books such as the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis, the Dragon Keeper series by Caroline Wilkinson, The Northern Lights by Philip Pulman, The Rats of NIMH by Robert C O’Brien to name but a few. Mentor texts have included Stolen Girl – an account of a child from the Stolen Generation linking with our Inquiry unit on Australian History, The Little Refugee by Anh Do and other factual narratives dealing with Immigration since World War 2.
Writing
This term, Grade 5 students have been focusing on factual narratives. We have explored a range of factual texts and created a timeline to plan out all the significant events. We then followed a specific plan to create our narrative which formed a factual narrative. What an amazing imagination and creative minds the Grade 5 students have! Our factual narratives have included an orientation, problem, four events and a resolution. Language features that we have explored have included using phrases of consequences, direct dialogue, correct use of articles and past tense verbs.
Spelling
This term, we’ve had the opportunity to engage in some new learning that Stephen Graham has been working on with us. We’ve learnt some new words that are associated with spelling and the way in which words are categorised. The 4 knowledges are:
*Phonological-focuses on how sounds correspond to letters
*Visual-focuses on the way words and letter combinations look
*Morphemic-focuses on the meaning of words and how they change in different grammatical forms
*Etymological-focuses on the origins and meanings of non-phonetic words
Our spelling words are now linking with our current text types which have been narrative and factual narrative writing. Each week students are involved in categorising certain words into the 4 knowledges and unpacking words. Below are some examples of the learning students are involved in.
Numeracy
This term, our main Number focus has been decimals. We have been ordering and comparing decimals using our place value knowledge to thousandths and placed these numbers on number-lines from 0 – 1. We have also been working on data and collecting information to create graphs. We chose suitable graphs, such as columns graphs or pie graphs to represent the information we collected, then interpreted this data by comparing data sets.
Below is a link to online graph creator that your child might like to explore at home to create various graphs:
https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx?ID=d5ddbb57073443a8b6ef2c20490a0f0b
Inquiry
During our Term 2 Inquiry “Australian History”, students compared the contributions of significant groups in Australian society. We unpacked the word ‘significance’ and what makes a person or group of people significant. We also explored different perspectives and experiences from people of the past by researching information from various sources. Students are currently choosing their own learning paths and researching topics that are of interest to them. At the end of the term, they will share their learning with their peers.
What a busy term the Grade 5s have had! Thank you once again for all of your support and we hope you enjoy a well-deserved holiday!
Renee Imeri, Judy Tanner, Rebecca West, Alecia Mayne and Anita Magliozzi.
