English

Reading 

The narrative text this term is Malamander by Thomas Taylor. "Nobody visits Eerie-on-Sea in the winter. Especially not when darkness falls and the wind howls around Maw Rocks and the wreck of the battleship Leviathan, where even now some swear they have seen the unctuous Malamander creep…"

The weekly reading homework will be a selection of chapters attached in Google Classroom as PDFs and there will be a particular reading strategy each week to observe and record.

We will be reading a variety of narrative, biographic and informative texts and applying focused reading strategies, such as establishing prior knowledge, asking questions, making connections, determining authors' intentions, verifying the validity of sources of information, etc.

Writing

We began the term writing about ourselves and are now focusing on biographies. We will focus on how to research, how to organise our ideas and how to structure biographical writing. 

Speaking & Listening

The public speaking dates are listed in Diary Dates. The public speaking coach for these sessions will be Max Attwood (Year 6 teacher). Max's program will capitalise on the strategies that Judith Field taught to our students in Year 5 and he will extend them to take on the challenge of bringing a strong voice and an element of storytelling to their public speaking. Max has a performing arts background (has worked as an actor, a stand-up comedian and an MC) and is an experienced teacher. 

Homework will be given as preparation for sessions 2 and 3. 

Session 1: Be Yourself – How to connect to an audience through authenticity

Session 2: Words Matter – Looking at modality, brevity and precision

Session 3: Body Talks – The importance of body language