Classroom News

Grade 5 & 6

We have officially made it half through 2025! What an engaging and eventful term it has been!

Our Curriculum This Term:

At the halfway mark of the year, our Reader’s and Writer’s Workshops have focused on building skills in narrative and persuasive writing. Students have been working on writing detailed sticky notes, exploring ideas deeply, and analysing their iPick books through activities, mini-lessons, and reading conferences.

We’ve looked closely at how and why texts are written, helping students understand author choices and text types. While our Year 5/6s are becoming confident readers and writers, we continue to encourage regular reading at home and discussions about a variety of texts to keep developing these important skills.

This semester, our Grade 5/6 students have been deeply engaged in our Inquiry Unit on Democracy, and it’s been a fantastic mix of fun, learning, and real-world experiences!

To bring our learning to life, we went on an exciting excursion to Parliament House, where we were lucky to be given a tour by Nick McGowan, a Member of Parliament. Students explored the spaces where laws are made and gained a better understanding of how government works in Australia.

Following this, we had a hands-on incursion with educators from the Parliamentary Education Office. We were led through a role play enacting the process of how a bill becomes a law. All students had an active role to play, deepening understanding of the democratic process.

To conclude the unit, students are completing an inquiry project designing a process for holding a BPS referendum on an important issue: “Should we move to a 4-day school week?”

In Maths this term, students have had a focus on Statistics, making connections to collecting data and posing unbiased questions as part of the inquiry referendum process. We explored how data and information can be collected, displayed, and interpreted to help us make informed decisions—just like voters do in real elections and referendums! Students learned how to create and interpret different data types of data and pose further questions based on their findings.

As the term comes to an end, we’ve been diving into Algebra, where students are learning how to find unknown values and balance simple equations—a great way to build logical thinking and problem-solving skills. We’re wrapping up the term with some hands-on fun exploring 3D shapes. Students are learning to identify different 3D objects, describe their features, and even build some of their own! It’s been a creative and engaging way to finish off a fantastic term of Maths.

The Family Maths Challenge has been published on Compass and we would love our Year 5 and 6 families to have go at submitting an entry. The challenge is for families to represent your family in some way using exactly 100 items. Entries are due Wednesday 23rd July, so a fun project for the family to get involved in over the holidays! Winners announced on Maths Fun Day, with winners receiving some great prizes.

Reminder:

Lots to look forward to in Term 3, including:

• Year 6 camp
• Maths Fun Day
• Science Day
• Book Fun Day
• School disco

Wishing everyone a safe, and relaxing mid-year break!

The 5/6 Team