Year 5

Year 5 Newsletter: Term 3 2024

It is hard to believe how quickly the year is progressing, but we are all well rested and ready to give it our best efforts for Semester 2! It was so encouraging to see how excited the students were to return to school. 

Literacy 

In Knowledge, we are kicking off the first 4 weeks of this term with an Olympics unit. Before the games in France commence, we are focusing on the history of the games which date back to ancient Greece around 2,700 years ago! Further into the unit, we will move to current times and complete activities in line with the games in France. How many gold medals do you think Australia will get?

Using the information that gained from our knowledge unit, students will be planning, researching and composing an information report about a chosen Olympic event. Some may choose to write about a current event, others may prefer to focus on an event from ancient times.

Mathematics

New Waves continues to be the introduction to each of our math lessons. We have been using this program since the beginning of the year and the students are enjoying the success they are experiencing with it. A new addition to our maths program is twice weekly ‘times tables fluency’ practice. It is a 5 minute speed task which requires students to fill in as many of the 1 – 12 tables sets into a grid as possible. We are already noticing an increase in the number completed each time! 

Now we have completed our units on the four operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, we are applying those skills to problem solving activities including word and multi-stop problems.

Students have started engaging with maps. So far, this term, we have completed activities involving the recording of coordinates and calculating distance using simple scale. 

Social and Emotional Learning

The Resilience Project is continuing this term, with an initial focus on Gratitude. Students are learning to see the bright side in challenging situations, even if that silver lining is very small. It’s also important to acknowledge ourselves, those close to us, those who love and support us. Students have been asked to reflect on the people they are grateful for and why. 

Auslan

We have only been back for two weeks and students have already learned how to sign ‘things around the house’ and ‘sea creatures.’ A favourite activity, for students and teachers, was 'Voice Off Pictionary,' where students had to draw a picture and their team had to correctly sign what they had drawn.