Class 5/6 S
Kii Class 5/6 Families,
I hope you all enjoyed a restful and enjoyable winter break with your children. It has been wonderful to welcome everyone back to the classroom, and the students have made a fantastic start to the term. They have quickly settled back into our daily rhythm, and I am looking forward to another rewarding term of learning and growth with them.
Main Lesson – Ancient Rome
This term, we have returned to our study of Ancient Rome, beginning with the fascinating story of Julius Caesar. Students have explored his early life, learning how his ambition, determination, and leadership began to shape his future. We discovered how Caesar formed a secret political alliance with two of Rome's most powerful men, Crassus and Pompey, allowing the three leaders to support one another and gain greater influence over the Roman Republic. We then followed Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, where his military skill enabled Rome to conquer a vast territory and greatly expand its empire. Finally, we examined his bold expedition across the English Channel to Britain. Although his time there was brief and he did not establish a permanent Roman presence, the expedition demonstrated Rome's growing power and Caesar's willingness to explore and conquer lands beyond the known Roman world.
This Main Lesson has also included a strong grammar focus. We began by exploring the simple past, present, and future tenses, learning to identify the verb or verb phrase that determines the tense of a sentence. Students have practised transforming short passages from one tense to another, developing an understanding of how changes in verb tense place events in the past, present, or future. This learning is helping students become more conscious of the tense they are using in their own writing so they can make deliberate choices about when events occur and maintain consistent tense throughout a piece of writing.
We then turned our attention to sentence structure, beginning with simple sentences. Students learnt to identify the subject and verb and recognise that a simple sentence contains one independent clause expressing a complete thought. Building on this foundation, we explored how two independent clauses can be joined with a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction (such as and, but, or, so, for, yet, and nor) to form a compound sentence. Understanding sentence structure also supports students in using commas correctly. In particular, students have learnt that two independent clauses cannot be joined by a comma alone - a common error known as a comma splice.
Reading
In Reading, we concluded our study of the novel Black Cockatoo by focusing on the Literature Circle role of Passage Picker. Students learnt how to select meaningful passages from the text and explain, in writing, why they were significant. Rather than simply choosing a favourite section, they practised identifying passages that revealed important themes, developed characters, created atmosphere, or used particularly effective language. They then justified their choices by referring to specific details from the text and explaining how the author's language or ideas enhanced the reader's understanding and engagement with the novel.
Mathematics
In Mathematics, our focus this term has been on fractions. We revised the meaning of the numerator and denominator before using fraction walls to identify equivalent fractions and compare and order fractions. These visual models helped students develop a deeper understanding of fraction size and recognise that different fractions can represent the same quantity.
We then explored mixed numerals and improper fractions, learning how both represent quantities greater than one whole. Students initially used diagrams to convert mixed numerals into improper fractions, helping them build a clear conceptual understanding of the process. Once this understanding was established, they progressed to converting mixed numerals into improper fractions using calculation alone, applying the method with increasing confidence and accuracy.
Ngoongodjin,
Robin