Year 5 & 6

Year 5/6 October Newsletter

Hello Year 5/6 Families, 

Welcome to Term 4! This is an extremely busy and exciting term for the 5/6  students as the Year 5 students prepare for Year 6 and the Year 6 students prepare to transition to Year 7. We are really looking forward to sharing this last term with our grades.

Literacy

In Writing this month, we are studying memoirs which focus on a moment in time. The students are learning to use their writer’s voice which allows the reader to get to know them as they read. They write in the first person using ‘I’, ‘my’ and ‘myself’. They explore the notion of show don’t tell which involves using descriptive language to describe how a person feels rather than stating how they feel. They are using their writer’s notebooks and language they have recorded from class novels in their writing which has helped them expand their written vocabulary. 

This term we have introduced Fluency into our Literacy sessions. This is a ten minute exercise where students take turns reading a familiar text aloud with a partner. The purpose of this is to enable students to practise reading smoothly and with expression, or read as they speak.

In Knowledge, we have been learning about how the human body grows and matures. We are focusing on the endocrine system which is responsible for the body’s different hormones and how they regulate the biological processes in the body.  This includes the development of the brain and nervous system. 

                            Some of the vocabulary we have learnt this term:

Numeracy 

In Numeracy we have been learning about decimals to the hundredths place. We are exploring what they represent, how to order them on a number line and how to compare them. Students will learn to convert decimals to fractions and convert decimals to percentages.

Later in the term students will explore the order of operations and apply these to complex equations and detailed worded problems.

Health

Students take note of the observable characteristics of the stages of the human maturation cycle. They learn about the endocrine system and how it works in the human body. They learn about the pituitary gland and the adrenal glands and their functions and well and the functions of the thyroid gland and pancreas.

The students also learn to define adolescence and characterise changes that occur during puberty.