Year 5

Literacy 

This month we have started reading our second class novel for Knowledge, Tom Appleby Convict Boy by Jackie French. This novel has opened up great discussions of industrial revolution-era London and the earliest days of the founding of Australia. We have been working towards identifying figurative language, such as metaphors, similes, idioms, hyperboles and other forms of language features. The goal is to then begin to incorporate this into our own writing as well as understanding them when reading other novels. 

Furthermore, this novel has also been perfect to link to our learning of biographies, during writing sessions. Students have been interviewing others in the classroom and gaining key details about their early life, education and past achievements. We have been using this information to write a number of detailed paragraphs, using the Single Paragraph Outline format. The term will be finished off with students incorporating what we have learnt and writing our own autobiographies.

Daily Review has continued to enhance our previously learnt concepts, including practising phonics and spelling, identifying complex and compound sentences, dependent and independent clauses, revising vocabulary, and understanding which are adverbs and verbs and how they are used in sentences. Everyone has been trying their absolute best. 

Numeracy 

These past few weeks in Numeracy, we have been focusing on revising our knowledge of previously taught concepts and engaging with areas we have felt more challenging. Last week, we learnt about factors and prime numbers, including creating prime factor trees. This has also reflected towards our understanding of decimal numbers, including ordering them and reading their place value. We continue to revise important skills in Daily Review, including multiplying and dividing by 10, 100, and 1000, as well as identifying and drawing irregular shapes, using money and converting mixed numbers to improper fractions and doing the reverse.

On the other side of Numeracy, we have begun to introduce protractors. We have been using them to measure a variety of angles, and identify the type of angle that it might be. We have ensured that we are reading the protractor correctly and are working towards drawing our own specific angles. Finally, we have been looking into probability, including vocabulary such as unlikely or certain and then linking them to the correct fraction and decimal. 

SEL 

Gilgai Plains Primary School has become involved in the School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) program. This is an extremely positive program that helps to foster a more inclusive and positive learning environment, while teaching us all to interact with our school community. We are furthering our understanding of this program through the use of a behaviour matrix, rewards system and other programs that will help us all to interact with the GPPS community in an even greater manner. 

Auslan

The past few weeks in Auslan has allowed us to revise what we have learnt this term, as well as watching a signed poem. We have also begun to learn how to sign sea animals, zoo animals and fruit and other interesting things.