Grade 5 Community News

And just like that, it’s the end of week 6! We really cannot believe just how quickly this term is flying by and we’re so happy to see the students thriving and progressing in their learning goals. The Grade 5 teaching team would also like to say a big congratulations to all of our students who have been nominated to join Junior School Council! There was a lot of interest in JSC this year and we would also like to acknowledge all of the students who wrote, practiced and delivered a speech to the class – we heard so many amazing presentations. Our students have also been busy practicing and presenting their dances/performances for our upcoming Harmony Day celebration, which is now only a couple short weeks away. Let’s take a look at what’s been happening in our classrooms. 

Literature Circles 

Students in Grade 5 have been continuing their work in literature circles. Throughout the week, comprehension tasks are completed such as; clarifying (identifying new/unknown/interesting words), illustrating (identifying a significant part of the text and drawing this with detail), questioning (literal, inferential and evaluative), identifying connections (text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world) and summarising. We are then starting to meet in our groups at the end of the week to share our findings using our roles. 

Reading Reconsidered 

We have come to the end of our unit reading The Wild Robot where we focused on skills and knowledge such as; literary devices, character descriptions, themes and narrative structure. Our next unit will be The Age of Exploration where we will be looking back to the 14-1600s when the Europeans ventured out to explore the unknown world in search of trade and colonisation. This then led to national policies for governments in Spain, Portugal, England, France and the Netherlands. We are so excited to get into this new unit of learning and exploration! 

Writing

In writing, we have been practising our narrative writing skills. We have used our ‘Knowledge Organiser’ to aide in our sentences, descriptions and writing techniques. This has helped us be more creative in our narratives! During week 6 we will begin looking at what makes a successful persuasive narrative.

Vocabulary

Our vocabulary words for week 5 were; engulfed, roamed, remedied, roused and blustery. Our vocabulary words for week 6 have been; dreary, meandering, spiralled, tranquil and jostled. These words have been taken from our serial text to help better understand the words in context. This subject enables student to add to their vocabulary to improve reading, writing and oral language. 

Maths 

In Maths, understanding multiples and factors is currently our focus. Students are learning to understand, read and find multiples and factors within a whole number. We have been creating our own numbers by rolling dice and challenging ourselves to find the multiples and factors. Students are applying their knowledge of numbers to solve worded problems. We are loving the challenge!

Reminders 

• Hats are required for all students to play outside during recess and lunch in both Term 1 and 4
• Please continue to monitor your child’s reading journals to ensure that reading is being done each night. We are just starting to celebrate our first milestone of reading for 25 nights!
• Monday the 11th of March is the Labour Day Public Holiday (students are not required at school on this day) – we wish you a safe and relaxing long weekend

Warm regards, The Grade 5 Team