Year 5/6 News

It is continually pleasing to see the enthusiasm, effort and persistence of our students during Home Online Learning. It is wonderful to see students independence continue to blossom and grow. As always, we continue to encourage students to practice good organisational skills by regularly checking the daily timetable and clinic rosters to ensure they attend all required clinics and continue to upload work promptly. We thank you for your ongoing support with this.

Literacy

Skill: Critiquing

Over the next two weeks the students will be learning and practicing how to look critically at a variety of different texts. Critiquing a text is an important skill in a reader understanding how to evaluate a text based on personal, world, or textual knowledge. It shares similarities to the previous unit of analysing, where the reader needs to begin detecting inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and prejudice in the material they read. When the students are taught to read there are three strategic actions that they learn; Thinking Within the Text, Thinking Beyond The Text and Thinking About The Text. Analysing and critiquing make up the two key elements of Thinking About The Text and allow students to look at the writer's craft and structure in a critical way.

Writing over the past fortnight

The students have produced some excellent information reports in Writing. Students have worked on identifying what an information report does and analysed how it engages readers to want to learn more in a variety of exciting ways. Students explored culturally significant things like salami and explored abstract nouns such as change. Students engaged in their passions to produce interesting texts and had to research and learn more information as they deepened their knowledge in many cases.

Here are some samples from Fabian, Emilia and Daniel.

Italy Information Report.pdf

Olympic Games .pdf

Maths - Protractor Needed

For some clinics and Maths Practice Skill Tasks (PSTs) over the next fortnight, students will need access to a Protractor. We have sourced a suitable i-Pad compatible app which can be used during Home Online Learning. We understand that most families may not have access to a Protractor around the home. We kindly ask that the free Protractor (Angle Measurement) (Created by Seong Eon Kim) is downloaded via the App Store (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/protractor-angle-measurement/id926663865) on students’ devices.

A printed paper protractor will also be suitable if you would prefer. A useful pdf to print is: https://i.infopls.com/scottforesman/Math_6_TTT_17.pdf

Problem Based Learning (PBL)

Over the past few weeks, students have explored different business types and functions of businesses. In preparation to create our own functioning businesses at school, students have been carefully analysing business pitches.

They have analysed the purpose, problem (what is the problem the business is trying to solve), and the targeted audience. This week, students have enthusiastically begun to design their own business ideas. Students will have the opportunity to collaborate and refine their ideas before 'pitching' them in our very own 'Shark Tank' setting where 3 business ideas will be selected and chosen to develop into fruition.

Remote Learning Changes

In response to the recent Remote Online Parent Survey, as a staff we have analysed the results, feedback and recommendations on how we can improve the remote online learning experience for the children and parents. In each year level we have looked at the specific feedback relating to our level and as a result, we will be implementing some changes to the timetable commencing tomorrow, Thursday 19th August. Some of these changes include:

the inclusion of social Zooms, where students will have the option to meet and chat to peers (under teacher supervision).
A 'Working Support Zoom' each day from 11am to 12pm. Students will have the opportunity to log into the Zoom and work through a task.
Additional Activities - Extra activities will be provided at the bottom of the timetable each day. These are optional and for students who finish other tasks to a quality standard.
A continued focus on Wellbeing activities in our Zooms which promote engagement and collaboration. Over the past week these have included funny jokes, dress ups, games, and fun art activities.