Classroom News

This term has been an extremely busy term in the Grade 5 classroom. It was great to see all the students dressed up to celebrate Book Week, we were blessed with beautiful weather for our Athletics Carnival and last week we attended Galen College to participate in the Respectful Relationships forum with Grade 5 students from other local Catholic schools. We have been just as busy in the classroom as we continue to read our second novel for the term, continue to develop our spelling, writing and maths skills, and continue to growth our faith through our two RE units.  

In literacy, we started the term by reading a novel titled ‘Tom Appleby, Convict Boy’. In this text, Tom, a young boy, was transported to Australia as part of the first fleet after being caught stealing. Through this text and other supplementary texts, students learnt about the English colonisation of Australia. Using this learning, students wrote an information report, including writing feature such as sub-headings, adverbials and precise language. Our 2nd text that we are in the process of reading this term is titled ‘The Grandest Bookshop in the World.’ Set in Melbourne at Cole’s Book Arcade in the late 1800, two children, Pearl and Vally, are set 7 different riddles to solve by the sneaky and evil Obsursmith to save the bookshop. Students are currently using their understanding of narrative structure and different language features such as metaphors, similes and sensory language to create their own narrative. Our spelling this term has looked at spelling and analysing different root words and how we can add affixes (prefixes and suffixes) to create different words.  

Our maths this term has had a strong focus on fractions and decimals. Students have continued to develop their understanding that fractions and decimals are related to each other and that they are parts of a whole. Students also use protractors to measure and name different types of angles and currently working through a measurement unit where the focus has been able to correctly convert between different measurements eg: metres to centimetres.    

Our two RE units this term have been ‘Sacred Stories” and ‘Creation and Our Responsibility’. In our first unit, students explore different parts of the bible and the development of the bible over time, whereas in the second unit students focused on different creation stories and discussed ways that they can look after the environment.  

Finally, a big thank you again for all your support throughout this term.  Please continue to feel free to contact me if you have any queries through the remainder of this Term and into Term 4.