Year 5/6 - Newsletter

I wish Melbourne would make up its mind with the weather! One day is beautiful, bright and sunny and the next it’s blowing a gail and feels like the heavens are overflowing. Spring is great for the garden but our poor students are getting exhausted switching from hats to jumpers to hats again, at the moment. 

We’ve started Term 4 off with a bang; launching into our Literacy Circles novels, our class novel called ‘The Last Bear,’ Area and Fractions, Money Matters Incursion, Wellbeing, Spelling & Daily Reviews, SEPEP, SLIP and Graduation and Buddies…and that’s all in a week and a half! 

Many of the Year 5/6 classes have also been lucky to have their first year RMIT Student Teacher Teachers return. They are completing the second part of their placement and have been a wonderful help in the classrooms; working with individual children, taking small groups and even running full lessons. It’s always nice to get extra help in our bustling beehives.

Saving our Environment and protecting endangered animals, is a fight that goes beyond the walls of our school. This term, we are reading the novel - ‘The Last Bear’ and using it as a basis to write a Persuasive Letter to help save Polar Bears and the Arctic Region. The students have been enjoying the novel so far and we look forward to seeing what type of arguments they create off the back of the text. 

Literacy Circles is back up and running for our final term in 2025. The students have all chosen their novels and are busily reading, summarising and completing their comprehension roles before their first meeting. The Year 6’s are old pros at Literacy Circles now and this is the Year 5’s second shot at it so we are expecting it to run much more smoothly for everyone this time around. Remember, students can complete their reading and tasks at home if they need extra time or just wish to create the best work they can. Please encourage your children to bring their books home. 

Every Wednesday, we are running the Student Leadership Program for the Year 5’s and the Transition/Graduation for the Year 6’s concurrently. SLIP started last week with the Year 5 students discussing why they joined and what they hope to achieve from the program. Some said that they wished to be a school leader next year, others wanted to improve their public speaking, while some just wanted to increase their confidence. Later in the term, some students will be chosen to speak in front of the whole school at Assembly. It’s a wonderful program.

The Graduation Preparation is well under way. We have asked all the Year 6’s to send through a baby photo and a prep photo to use during the night. If you haven’t had a chance to send that through yet, please forward those photos to their classroom teacher as soon as possible. These photos will be part of a personal powerpoint the students will add a voice over to. Over the next few weeks, the Year’s 6’s will also be learning a dance for the night. It should be a wonderful evening. 

Area was our focus in week one this term in Mathematics and now, for most of the rest of term, we will be focusing on Fractions. In Area we looked at the relationship between Area and Perimeter, irregular and compound shapes plus triangles. In Fractional Thinking, we will be looking at how common, decimal and percentage fractions relate and convert. We’ll also be looking at fractional amounts of a whole and groups, mixed numbers, ratios and problem solving using fractions. Fractions are a huge component of Year 5 and 6 Maths and we look forward to diving into this further now that we’ve touched on the area in our other units throughout the year. 

We have had a speaker come in to talk to the students about ‘Money Matters’. During these two sessions, the students have discussed the importance of money and how we use it in everyday life. This term, the students will discover all the expenditures, taxes and everyday costs that eat away our salaries and how to save and spend positively throughout their lives. Later in the term the students will be creating their own stalls to ‘sell’ items to the rest of the class in a practical application of what we have learnt. Stay tuned for more on this.

The SEPEP program allows the students to organise, prepare, umpire and participate in a Kickball tournament, themselves. Last week, the students organised themselves into teams to come up with a name, chant, logo and captain. This week, they will begin the tournament, with one team acting as the umpires, scorers, equipment and photographers. Awards are given out each week by the administering team, scores of the games are announced and added to the ladder. It’s a great way of keeping the kids active when ISS isn’t running and allowing them more responsibility competing against their friends. It’s hard to believe but we have been running SEPEP in the 5/6 Area for well over a decade and a half now, and the students still tell us it’s one of their favourite activities each and every week.

Term 4 Reminders

Moneystart Incursion                       Friday Oct 17th

Teachers PP Day                                Monday Nov 3rd

Melbourne Cup Day                         Tuesday Nov 4th

Earn & Learn Market                        Friday Nov 28th & Dec 5th

Year 6 Transition                               Tuesday Dec 9th

Graduation                                        Wednesday Dec 10th

Xmas Concert                                   Thursday Dec 11th

Survivor Day                                      Wednesday Dec 17th

BDO Excursion                                   Thursday Dec 18th

Last Day                                              Friday Dec 19th                                     

Best Wishes

Year 5/6 Teachers