Level 5 & 6
Welcome to Week 8!
Reminders:
On Wednesday, 2nd September, Grade 5 and 6 students will be engaging in the RUSTIE incursion. RUSTIE is a solar-powered mobile trailer that visits schools to teach students about recycling, sustainability and the circular economy through hands-on plastic upcycling activities.
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Literacy
Reading
This week in Reading, students continue building their independence in completing their assigned reading and Literature Circle roles before sharing their thinking with their group. We move into Part Four of Wonder, which is told from the perspective of August’s new school friend, Jack Will. This shift in perspective will allow students to explore Jack’s thoughts and experiences and consider how viewing events through another character’s eyes can deepen our understanding of the story.
Writing
As we begin to wrap up our poetry unit, students’ poetry collections continue to take shape with the addition and publication of their odes. This week, we will explore blackout poetry, using pages from Wonder as a stimulus. Students will carefully select words and phrases from an existing text to create an entirely new poem, providing a meaningful link between our learning in Reading and Writing.
Phormes
In Phormes, students will continue exploring the base strue/struct, meaning ‘to build’. Students will investigate how this base appears in a range of familiar and unfamiliar words and use their morphological knowledge to support their understanding of spelling, vocabulary and word meaning.
What you can do at home:
- Encourage your child to discuss their Literature Circle text or share their current role and responsibilities with you.
- Discuss what students have learnt about Jack Will and how his perspective changes or adds to their understanding of previous events.
- Explore your child's poetry that they have published or experiment with creating a blackout poem using an old newspaper, magazine or printed page at home
- Look for words containing strue/structtogether and discuss how the meaning ‘to build’ connects to words such as construct, structure, instruct and destruction.
Maths
Our Grade 5 and 6 students are working through their Location and Transformation unit. We began the unit with an instructional drawing activity in which students used coordinates on the Cartesian plane to create a robot.
Building on this, students will explore different transformations that can occur on a Cartesian plane, including translations (slides), rotations (turns) and reflections (flips). Students will develop their ability to describe and represent how shapes and objects change position while maintaining their size and shape.
What you can do at home:
- Practise reading and plotting coordinates together by drawing a simple Cartesian plane and challenging your child to locate different points.
- Identify examples of slides, turns and flips in everyday life.
CBL
Big Idea: How can we use our power to create positive change globally?
Guiding Questions:
- What is economic power?
- What makes a business successful?
- How can we use resources responsibly?
How can people use their ideas, skills and resources to improve the world around them?
Challenge: Create a small business, social enterprise or circular economy initiative that generates a profit for good.
Wellbeing
This week, students will complete Cyber Safety Project Lesson 11 – ‘Take Control’.
The lesson explores our digital habits and how technology use can sometimes interfere with other areas of everyday life. Students will reflect on their own habits and consider practical strategies for developing a healthy and balanced relationship with technology.
What you can do at home:
- Discuss your family’s digital habits and when technology is helpful versus when it can become distracting.
- Encourage your child to identify times when putting a device away may help them be more present, such as during meals, before bed, while completing homework or when spending time with family and friends.
- Discuss realistic strategies for maintaining a healthy balance between screen time and other activities.
Important Dates
September
31-4th Annual Book Fair
2nd - RUSTIE Sustainability Incursion
10th Hoop Time basketball