Grade 5 News
Important Reminders
Upcoming Dates
Friday 1st November - Knox Rugby Gala (selected students)
Tuesday 5th November - Melbourne Cup Public Holiday
Friday 8th November - Colour Run (no assembly)
Monday 11th November - Curriculum (Student-free) Day
Tuesday 3rd December - Year 5 Market Day
Learning in Action
Literacy:
The beginning of term 4 has seen the students engaging with an author study on Shaun Tan during our reading lessons. Each class has explored a different picture storybook by Shaun and discussed the underlying themes including character traits, symbolism and real-world issues. This has led to a number of deep discussions about issues such as racism, war, isolation and pollution.
Students have been further exploring character traits during writing sessions. They are planning and drafting narratives where a character changes throughout the story due to an event or experience. We have been using the 'show don't tell' strategy to vividly describe characters and their traits to the reader. In our grammar lessons, we have been practising how to correctly use and punctuate direct speech in our writing.
During Word Work we have been looking at the Latin base word 'rupt' meaning 'break or burst' and exploring the different words that contain 'rupt' and the way different morphemes come together to make a word from this base.
E.g. e = out and rupt = burst so erupt = burst out.
Preview for Learning:
Over the next fortnight in Reading, we will be continuing our work on our Shaun Tan author study, rotating texts and exploring the themes and symbolism within the new picture storybook. In goal groups, many students will be completing literacy circle roles, sharing their understanding and ideas on a shared novel with the rest of their group.
In Writing, we will continue working on our character trait narratives, with students being given the opportunity to publish and share their stories. A focus will be on editing and revising our writing to ensure that we have correctly used direct speech and effectively demonstrated a change within a character as a result of the events in the story. After revising the conventions for dialogue in grammar, we will move on to using fronted adverbial phrases where an adverb that describes when, where or how begins a sentence to describe the action that follows. Finally, in Word Work, we will move on from the Latin base 'rupt' to explore the Greek base 'zoo'.
Maths:
In our number lessons so far this term we have been exploring money and linking our knowledge to our understanding of decimals from the term 3 unit. Students have explored the similarities and differences between decimal and money values and how to convert between them, both in how they are written and how they are pronounced. We have also looked at how rounding money is different to decimals because we often round to 5 instead of 10. Finally, we have looked at adding money values and calculating change.
Our applied unit to begin the term is chance and probability. So far we have looked at the chance of an event happening on a number line with 0 meaning impossible, 1 meaning certain and other events in the middle represented by a fraction or percentage. We practised our skills by looking at the likelihood of different results on chance spinners and when selecting a particular coloured counter of a bag.
Preview for Learning:
We will be continuing our work on money over the next fortnight, with students progressing through their individual goals and demonstrating their understanding on their 'prove it' sheets. In whole class lessons, we will look more closely at financial plans and budgets in preparation for our market day projects in our inquiry lessons later in the term.
In our applied lessons we will conclude our chance unit by exploring possible number combinations in lotteries and completing a post-test. In week 4 we will begin our learning on 'transformations', starting with shape and pattern symmetry.
Inquiry:
The Inquiry focus across the whole school for term 4 is economics. In grade 5 we have begun looking at our needs and wants and determining what things are actually essential in our lives (needs) and what things are nice to have (wants). We also classified these as either 'goods' or 'services'. We have discussed consumers and producers and how they work together to create an economy with a producer's goal being to make a profit and a consumer looking to have their needs and wants met.
Preview for Learning:
During weeks 3 and 4 we will be exploring scarcity and the impact that it has on the cost of goods and services. We will also look at discounts and the reasons for why a business might offer a discount on a certain good or service.
Market Day
As part of our economics unit, the year 5 students will be participating in 'Market Day'. Held on Tuesday, December 3rd, the students will be in groups of 2 or 3 to create a good or service to meet the needs and wants of our student population. Proceeds from the day will be donated to a charity of the cohort's choosing. Students will be required to choose a good or service that they would like to sell and create a business plan including a budget, marketing and advertising. They'll need to consider their pricing to maximise their profit and the time and money they have available to create their product. Each team will be given a $20 budget by the school to fund their business. Please chat with your child about potential money-making ideas in preparation for our first planning session in week 3!
Anglesea Discovery Camp
Please enjoy these photos from our time at camp!
We were really impressed with the resilience, teamwork and positive attitudes the students exhibited. Many pushed themselves out of their comfort zones to try something new. A big thanks to Mrs Roose, Mr Thomas, Mrs Findlay, Mrs Sekuloski and Miss Simms for joining the grade 5 team and students to make our camp one to remember.
From the Grade 5 Teachers
Karin Halstead, Ebony Waldron, Chloe McElroy and Zahra Harvey