Senior School News

Welcome back to 5/6! We hope you are all well rested and excited for a new term ahead. We have so many exciting things planned for the next 11 weeks, including Gala Day this Thursday, Debating starting next week, School Photos next Tuesday and Madagascar rehearsals starting this week! We also have Senior School Class Masses this term for 5/6.

We finished off Term 1 with a spectacular time at camp, buddy time and fun Easter activities. We can’t wait to get back in the swing of things this term and have an even better time. 

WRITING

We will be focusing on 3 genres this term, poetry, information reports and debating. We are very excited to announce that the students will be participating in a seven week debating program called the Youth Leadership Program. The students will learn about debating techniques, theory and have multiple opportunities to practise. In our final week, we will invite parents to come watch the finals. 

MATHS

This term, we have started exploring the topic of data and graphing. The students will learn how to collect data, interpret and represent it on different types of graphs such as column graphs, bar graphs, line graphs and histograms. The other topics we will cover in Maths during Term 2 will be Fractions and Decimals; Location and Transformation; and revision on Multiplication and Division.

READING

In Reading, we will continue with our 3 separate novel studies running concurrently across all classes once a week. Additionally, we will pick up reading rotations where students will partake in different activities in small groups across the week. In these groups, they will resume working towards their individual CAFE (comprehension, accuracy, fluency and expanding vocabulary) goal through teacher-led focus groups, online literacy (i.e. Epic Books), comprehension worksheet activities/games and independent, stamina reading. 

INQUIRY AND RE

‘Think Global, Act Local’ is our topic for the term, woven throughout all of our classroom subjects. With a focus on sustainability, 5/6 students will investigate a variety of topics under this large umbrella. These include but are not limited to everyday sustainable switches, global warming, ethical sourcing, cost of living, climate change and animal extinction. Students will explore sustainable buildings such as Brickworks in Burwood. They will research and design their own sustainable building such as a home or a school. We will be connecting this to our topic in RE looking at life, different scriptures and what it means to be a Steward of Creation. 

MANDARIN

All about yourself, Classroom expressions, Chinese numbers 1-100 & dates in Chinese Year Five and Six students will interact with the teacher and classmates in regular classroom routines and structured interactions in Mandarin, including ‘Excuse me, can I have a drink? May I go to the toilet?’, and ‘Sorry’ and ‘that’s okay’. They will learn how to read and write Chinese numbers from one to one hundred and the dates. They will be aware that Chinese has different language patterns, Chinese characters are formed by strokes and the use of tone marks in Pinyin. They will match characters to the meanings and sounds of familiar words including numbers, months of the year and days of the week.

STEM

In Term 2, students will learn about and delve into the study of the living world, biology. They will discuss and justify opinions on how living things are classified and then will learn about taxonomy, identifying that living things can be classified depending on their physical attributes. Students will then identify the different biomes and ecosystems and the way different organisms interact to produce a food web. They will then design and create a living organism that can exist within a specific biome, identifying their key characteristics, habitat, place in the food web, and scientific classification.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

In Term 2, 5/6s will be continuing to develop their fundamental motor skills in kicking, catching, throwing, shooting, and striking.

Students will be focusing on soccer, netball, and football. Students will be taught the simple rules of these sports, but more importantly the correct movements that will allow them to develop more complex skills and enjoyment of the sport. This will be in conjunction to their next Gala Day later in June.

In Week 5 students will be completing motor skill testing as well as the beep test.

HOMEWORK

Homework will be given weekly on a Monday and students are expected to complete all tasks and return it by Friday. We have activities based on reading, spelling, maths and multiple intelligences. To get students ready for high school, we aim to have students be responsible for all homework being completed and returned in a timely manner. 

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