Grade 5 News
Important Reminders
Homework
The homework week runs from Monday to Monday. During this time, students are required to:
* Read 4 nights and record their reading in their diary.
*Complete activities in Mathletics that equal, at least, 750 points.
Please see your child's teacher if you have any questions regarding homework.
Learning in Action
Literacy:
This week was Application Week, which is how we conclude all our Literacy Units at LPS. In Application Week, students utilise all the literacy skills they have learnt in the unit to complete a piece of writing independently. To conclude our Informative Unit, students read (from a fact sheet) and viewed (from a video) facts about a natural disaster, sorted their facts into relevant categories and then wrote an Information Report using their sorted facts. Students focussed on starting paragraphs with relevant topic sentences, and including appositives to include more information, as they have been our main foci for the unit.
Preview for Learning:
Next, we will be starting our Persuasive Unit. This is always an engaging unit for our students, as they get to think about their own ideas and opinions, and learn about language and structures that support them to be more convincing to their intended audience.
Maths:
Over the last fortnight, we have continued our multiplication unit. The focus has been on the Big Idea: Numbers can be partitioned (broken or split up) to help multiply. Through this big idea, students have explored the distributive property of multiplication and learnt strategies such as the area/box model and traditional algorithm. We concluded our multiplication unit by asking students to apply their multiplicative thinking to worded problems, helping them see the real-life contexts that require multiplication.
Preview for Learning:
Over the next fortnight, we will be connecting our knowledge of multiplication to begin our unit on division. Students will explore how division and multiplication are inverse operations and how they can use their knowledge of multiplication to support their ability to solve division problems.
We will also start exploring the concepts of Volume, Mass and Capacity in our applied maths lessons.
Inquiry
Over the last fortnight, students have been learning about bushfires, tsunamis, earthquakes and droughts in more detail. This finishes up the explicit learning about natural disasters for the term. Students have now been exposed to more than eight natural disasters, exploring how they occur and the geographical locations and formations that make the natural disasters more prominent.
5WH inquiring into how earthquakes occur by creating and exploring earthquake shake tables and building lego structures to experience the quake.
Preview for Learning:
Next week, students will start their own Inquiry Projects on a chosen natural disaster. These projects will include a written and a visual component, and showcase not only the students' knowledge of their chosen natural disaster, but also their ability to research and sort information, present their learnings in interesting ways and work independently.
We look forward to sharing our Inquiry Projects with you all at our Open Morning at the end of the term!
Other Information
At Lysterfield Primary School, we promote high expectations for all our students, and want to encourage our students to challenge themselves and tackle new and interesting opportunities. In light of this, we are encouraging interested students in Grades 3-6 to participate in the Australian Mathematics Competition this year.
The Australian Mathematics Competition, run by the Australian Maths Trust, is Australia’s longest running, largest and most well-known maths competition for school students. It is made up of 30 unique problems designed to challenge and extend students’ problem solving skills.
Students have 60 minutes to complete the competition which will occur at school sometime between Tuesday 6th - 8th August (exact date and time TBC).
Every student who participates will receive recognition and an award at their level of achievement. The levels are:
- Participation
- Proficiency
- Credit
- Distinction
- High Distinction
The competition will cost $8.50 per student.
For more information about the competition, watch this video from AMT, check out their website, or contact Zahra Harvey (zahra.harvey@education.vic.gov.au).
If you are interested in your child participating in the Australian Mathematics Competition this year, please add their names to the form below by Friday 31st May:
Australian Mathematics Competition Expression of Interest
Exciting times ahead in STEM!
We are thrilled to share some exciting updates about our STEM program. As we continue to inspire and empower our students to explore the wonders of these vital fields, we are reaching out to our wonderful community for support.
Your generosity has always been instrumental in helping us provide enriching educational experiences for our students, and we are once again asking for your support to ensure the success and sustainability of our STEM initiatives.
Your support makes a significant difference to our students' learning opportunities and the success of our STEM program. Here are a few ways you can contribute:
Opportunities to help:
- Donations of Timber/Wood, appropriate for construction E.g. Billy Cart bases or other small vehicles.
- If you own or are a part of a company or business who would be willing to sponsor our engineering program.
- If you have connections with hardware stores/companies, helping us to make contact in order to obtain suitable engineering resources.
- If you have any household STEM-related materials such as; plastic bottles, milk bottle lids, masking tape, balloons, wooden skewers, plastic or paper cups, unwanted CD’s or DVD’s, Aluminium Foil please drop them off outside the STEM room.
- Construction Crew: If you're handy with tools and have some basic experience in woodwork or mechanics, we would be delighted to have your help in the upcoming terms to assist with our Grade 6 Science and Engineering program. Please email sophiechamberlain@lysterfieldps.com or melissaadams@lysterfieldps.com
Thank you for your continued support,
Melissa Adams & Sophie Chamberlain
STEM Leaders
Lysterfield Primary School
From the Grade 5 Teachers
Karin Halstead, Ebony Waldron, Chloe McElroy and Zahra Harvey
