Grade 5 News

Important Reminders

Camp

Please return your child's medical and dietary forms to school so planning for camp can be finalised.

Upcoming Dates

Monday, October 7th - First day of Term 3

Wednesday 16th- Friday 18th of October - Grade 5 Camp to Anglesea Discovery Camp

Tuesday 5th November - Melbourne Cup Public Holiday

Monday 11th November - Curriculum (Student-free) Day

Learning in Action

Literacy: 

Over the last fortnight, students have focussed on reading and writing news reports with a focus on the transitional words used by authors to emphasise or change direction. Students have read news reports analysing the author's perspective and opinion about the event represented, as well as looked at the difference between reported and quoted speech. Students applied what they learnt from reading news reports to writing their own news reports - of an important event in their notable's lives, and also their own. Students used Canva when publishing their news reports to add authenticity to the presentation of their work.

Over the last fortnight, in grammar lessons, students have focussed on adding parentheses in sentences and combining short sentences using appropriate pronouns and conjunctions.

Preview for Learning: 

Next term in Reading, students will engage in an Author Study of Shaun Tan, looking closely at the picture books written and illustrated by this famous and well renowned Australian. The study will focus on how Shaun Tan uses symbolism, develops character traits, and explores themes and real world issues through his sophistically illustrated picture story books.

Grammar lessons will focus on the accurate use of quotation marks for direct speech which will support students in their writing, as they enter their second Narrative Writing Unit for the year. In the first unit in term 1, students focussed on the narrative structure. This unit in term 4 builds on that idea, but focusses more closely on writing narratives where the character changes or learns something because of the events in the story.

Maths:  

Over the last fortnight, students concluded their learning about decimals, looking at operations with decimals. Students then completed post-tests on Fractions and Decimals to see the progress they have made in their learning over the whole term. 

Students also concluded their learning about angles with an engaging and rich task "Angles Footy" where students tried to "win" the game and kick a goal by estimating, measuring and classifying angles more accurately than their partner

Preview for Learning: 

Next term, students will begin a unit on Financial Maths (money) and Chance. Although these look like very different concepts, students will be applying their learning about decimals and connecting these to money, and also connecting their learning about decimals and fractions from Term 3 when looking at how to record chance outcomes. 

Inquiry: 

The last fortnight saw the students working extremely hard to complete their Notable Projects ready to be proudly presented to families and visitors at Celebration Open Morning. Students created timelines of the important events in their notable's lives, maps identifying where these important events occured, and also wrote a news paper report specifically about one of these events. Learning about these notable people in Australian History has been a rich and challenging task for our students, as they have had to navigate reading and understanding complex information, and communicating their learning through their projects. It was wonderful to see this unit culminate in Open Morning where students could share their learning with their families. A lovely addition to the open morning this time was a Buddies session where the Preps shared what they had learnt about history with the grade 5s and vice versa. 

Preview for Learning: 

Connecting to the maths unit on Financial Maths, students will be exploring the concepts of Business and Economics in Inquiry next term culminating in Market Day towards the end of the term. The first fortnight will focus on what an economy is, what the difference between needs and wants are, and how communities meet their own needs and wants.

Student Led Conferences

We are extremely proud of how well all the grade 5 students communicated and shared their learning with their parents over the two nights of Student Led Conferences. Students shared their Poetry Anthologies, reading their favourite poetry and discussing what they learnt over the unit. Students also shared their current maths goal with their parents, how they practise their goal, and how they know they have achieved it. We hope you appreciated the opportunity to hear your children discuss their own learning in their own words - a real insight into their experience at school.

5M Retirement Village Visit 

On Monday this week, 5M had their first (of 3) visits to Waterford Valley Retirement Village. Students had the opportunity to engage in activities with the elderly people living there and we are proud to be giving our students this opportunity to spread their joy and energy to others in simple acts of kindness. We believe it's a mutually positive experience for the kids and the elderly people and hope that the regular visits help build strong connections. 

I Sea I Care Excursion

This Term our I Sea I Care Ambassadors completed their Term 3 Workshop. Here is what went on, written by Paige A and Indi D, two of our ambassadors. 

On Tuesday the 3rd of September The I sea I care Leaders went on their second excursion to Kananook Creek and Frankston Yacht Club. To start off our amazing journey, we headed to Frankston Yacht Club but realised we were at the wrong place!! We ended up being 20 minutes late but we didn't miss much. We started looking at the temperatures of the water and found that some were really poor and some were okay. Next we learnt how to identify frogs sounds and calls. After that we scooped out some water into a container and tried to look for bugs and insects. One of the groups next to us found a tadpole! Then we went to Frankston Yacht Club for the 2nd part of the day. We went down to the beach where people talked about what we were going to do. We got to do a special job of finding nerdles along the beach. Nerdles are plastic that have gone into a small ball, it is very bad for animals. After all this we looked at all the rubbish that other groups collected. It was a very fun day and we all learnt a lot. Thank you Elinor for taking us!

We look forward to sharing more information about this with the whole school at assembly next term! 

Other

Calm Kids

The Calm Kids program is well underway with Kim. The Calm Kids program will cover a number of key concepts such as:

• What is anxiety and why do some people have it?
• Everyone worries but it doesn’t need to stop us from doing things
• Our thoughts create feelings and our feelings impact our actions
• Identifying when you are overthinking
• Thinking Traps and how to manage them
• How to be more positive and why it is important
• Worry bullies
• Grounding technique (for when things start to spiral)
• The importance of relaxation, breathing, and mindfulness
• Sleep and disconnecting 

We wish all the Grade 5 students, parents and families the most wonderful holidays. We hope you find opportunities to relax, have fun, and build and sustain strong social relationships with friends and family. The holidays are a perfect time for this!

From the Grade 5 Teachers

Karin Halstead, Ebony Waldron, Chloe McElroy and Zahra Harvey