Platypus Classroom

Literacy

This fortnight in literacy, students have continued to learning about argument and authority. They have defined authority as 'how trustworthy the writer is' and determined trustworthy to mean 'expertise in a topic'. Additionally, students are looking at what is needed in a strong persuasive paragraph and have been learning about the importance of a strong topic sentence that states the author's opinion and the topic, supporting evidence that gives facts and reasons that support the author's opinion and a concluding sentence that re-states the opinion and calls the reader to action. We will continue to work on this structure throughout the remainder of the term to ensure students feel confident when structuring their writing. 

Maths

This fortnight, students are focusing on developing and choosing the most efficient addition and subtraction strategies based on the problem. Students in years 3-5 are practising explaining and recording their thinking more efficiently. They are learning to apply the compensation strategy to add 2 and 3-digit numbers. Our year 6 students are working with budgets using 5 and 6-digit numbers. They are practising estimating and rounding to help them approximate the total costs and choosing the most efficient strategy to calculate daily running costs and initial set-up costs. Sounds like they might be planning something big. 😀

All students are working on their individual learning goals to develop their math fact fluency or working mathematical skills. Well done to all students on their hard work!