Melton West Primary School

Year 5/6

English

Reading

This term our 5/6 students began the year by learning about our agreed expectations when reading. They learnt how to use their reading journal, choose just right books, establish a neat and orderly classroom library and use a book borrowing system, among other things. 

After spending the first 20 days in developing a routine, we gradually progressed towards developing our reading comprehension skills for which all grade 5/6 students voted for the novel - ‘Wonder’.  We learned to cite evidence in the text to support our judgement for the character's feelings/ motivations and how it changes throughout the text. Students applied  their prior knowledge and text clues to make inferences about the events and characters of the novel. During this process, special attention was given to understanding the Tier 2 vocabulary when extracting meaning from a complex text. Students have been successfully applying and practising this knowledge during their independent reading time where they read their own chosen book or just right text. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Writing

This term in writing,  the students began by setting up their writing routines, including their Writer’s Notebook. The students unpacked the writing process and worked on building a bank of ideas. The major focus for this term was around the teaching of persuasive writing. During this unit, the students worked on planning out their persuasive texts, thinking about what they were going to convince their audience about. The students worked on using a range of language features and research to back up their arguments and opinion. Some of the language features the students worked on included rhetorical questions and emotive language. They then moved onto revising their writing by adding, moving, removing and substituting words and editing by checking their use of capital letters, organisation, punctuation and spelling. The students then published their writing in a format of their choosing. 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mathematics

This term in Numeracy, the 5/6 students started off the year by developing the routines that we can follow during maths lessons. We then moved onto our minor unit in time, where students worked on their understanding of conversion of 12 hour time to  24 hour time and calculating elapsed time using bus and train timetables. 

The grade 5 / 6 students were involved in a major number unit around place value and worked on using a range of materials to represent numbers and make connections by expanding them using the values of each digit. The students then worked on placing numbers on a number line using appropriate intervals and renaming numbers using their knowledge of place value. The students also touched on building their knowledge of temperature, understanding that negative numbers can be used to express temperature and exploring the scales on thermometers. The students ended the term with a focus on angles where they practised measuring and constructing angles using protractors. They also investigated angles on a straight line, angles at a point, and vertically opposite angles. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inquiry 

This term in Inquiry and Social and Emotional learning, the Grade 5/6 students started off the year by developing their routines and agreed expectations during these lessons. We then began to hone in our thinking skills, using routines such as ‘think, pair and share’ and ‘see, think, wonder’ to analyse artworks and extracts.

For Inquiry, we then moved on to our Play it Safe inquiry unit. We have looked at describing what it looks like to be safe and explored the importance of being safe in the wider community and in social spaces (Social media). By the end of our Play it Safe inquiry unit, students will create an advertisement that would convince children to be safe in a specific environment in the form of a tv advertisement, poster, website advert. etc. 

 

 Science

During this term, our Grade 5/6 students have been exploring the adaptations of living things and how they use them to survive in their environment, as well as investigating the structural features of animals. Students have engaged in weekly Kahoot quizzes at the beginning of each session to consolidate their learning from the previous session. We investigated the connection between the environment, structure and function of animals. Student participated in Adaptation Stations where they got the opportunity to:

  •  read information about adaptations and respond to questions
  • watch adaptation videos and respond to them
  • design a camel based on information about its adaptations
  • match different types of animals feet to their best suited environment
  • draw representations of the terms structure, function and environment
  • identify how the structures of a Leopard Gecko and Poison Dart Frog help them to survive
  • compare and contrast the characteristics of Black Bears and Polar Bears.

Students are currently working on their summative assessment piece, where they are researching and Australian animal of their choice and identifying the structural and behaviour adaptations, habitat, nutrition, forms of movement and ways in which they communicate with other living things around them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 LOTE

This term, there has been much organisation and preparation for the Auslan program to commence in Term 2, at Melton West Primary School as our new LOTE subject! Classroom teachers will begin facilitating the learning and will be provided with comprehensive resources and a teaching program from Auslan Education Services. Teachers and students will learn lessons by accessing links to videos including visuals in their classroom environment to support their learning of Auslan. Educators will also be provided with professional learning by members of Auslan Education Services to build capacity and provide the knowledge and skills in facilitating the program. We look forward to our students learning this wonderful skill which will provide many opportunities to communicate with the broader and inclusive community. Notifications will be in our newsletters and social media platforms when learning commences.

 

Art

During Art this term the Grade 5/6 began by settling into routines and following expectations in our art room environment, including taking care when using art materials and tools and have demonstrated a positive attitude towards art. The topic for this term was Colour Theory, the students have revised any prior knowledge of both Primary and Secondary Colours. Students have had fun mixing Primary colours to make secondary colours when creating their artworks. Students have worked with warm and cool colours and are using this knowledge to create some fun art pieces.  Grade 5/6 have shown lots of creativity and have produced wonderful artworks in Term 1.   

                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.E.

We have started another busy year with our school represented in the Melton school’s interschool sport competition. During term 1 we participated in cricket, volleyball, and tennis in the summer sport lightning premiership day. Our students did extremely well and demonstrated our whole school values to the highest level. We are all proud of the students who represented the school and are looking forward to what term 2 holds with a focus on the girl’s netball team who are going for a 3-peat of grand final wins. that are available for our 5/6 boys and girls who wish to represent the school.

During this term, the focus for our learning was on football and netball and being able to apply knowledge and skills about these sports in game-based situations. Our students were able to successfully achieve this during term 1. The major focus of the learning was centred around a games-based approach to Physical Education. This means that the students participated in games of netball and football and were given the chance to compete and learn as they play. The students really enjoyed this and showed a great improvement in both sports. They participated in small-sided games and full-sized games, and all did a wonderful job.

Our grade 5/6 students were aiming to apply creative and critical thinking when playing sport and using this to form strategy to assist them in successful outcomes. Once again this was evident during the term as the cohort showed great growth in this area. The students played fair, followed rules, and demonstrated ethical behaviour when it comes to competitive sporting contests. We have had such a great start to the year in sport and Physical Education. I cannot wait for term 2 to continue our learning and sport for the 5/6 students.

 

Music

The students in Grades 5 and 6 have made a great start to the music program. They have participated in creating routines and protocols for cooperative and creative learning in the music room and have learnt to name and play a range of percussion instruments. Most of this term’s work has been around exploring rhythm. They have listened to rhythmic music and identified rhythm patterns. They have learnt to describe and create rhythm patterns by saying ta to represent the beat and te-ti, for double-time rhythm and created and performed ostinatos (repeating rhythm patterns) in small groups to the class. Students have played different rhythm patterns together in small groups and as a class. They have been introduced to the notation of crotchets (1 beat), quavers (half a beat) and minims (two beats) and learnt to read these musical symbols. They have composed simple 4-beat rhythm patterns in groups and written the notes on chart paper to share with the class. The students have learnt new songs, identified harmonies and developed the quality of their singing voices. The students explored pitch (high and low), dynamics (soft and loud) and tempo (fast and slow) through listening, singing and creating musical compositions using tuned percussion instruments. They explored the scale of C major and how some of the notes harmonise. They learnt to play simple melodies, identified the letter-names of notes and used these to compose simple tunes. Students began and ended each lesson by listening to a variety of music to build their repertoire of musical experience and to respond emotionally.