Curriculum News, Year 5
Term 3, 2024

We hope you had a rejuvenating break! Get ready for an amazing term ahead!

We are diving deep into our unit of Inquiry on ‘How we express ourselves’ where we investigate the power of influence and gearing up for learning about our parliamentary system in ‘How we organise ourselves’.

We have a lot of other fun activities lined up including the House Athletics Carnival, Book Week, Year 5 Wellbeing incursion, Parliament Process incursion, Student Led Conferences, School Disco and the Sandringham Secondary College school production of ‘Mary Poppins’!

It sure will be a busy and unforgettable term!

Units of Inquiry

How we express ourselves

Factors within our environment can influence our perceptions and actions.

Lines of inquiry

The range of ways we are influenced by communication.
The way social interactions influence how people engage with ideas and respond to others
The differences between the language of opinion and feeling and the language of factual reporting or recording.

How we organise ourselves

Government systems impact the citizens of a country.

Lines of inquiry

Government Systems
The role and responsibilities of governments
The development of laws
The Election Process

Reminders

Year 5/6 Sport Program

This term the focus for Friday sport will be on athletic skills and events in preparation for our House Athletics Carnival as well as teamwork and sportsmanship. Further details will be provided regularly in Compass.

Homework and Student Diaries

Weekly homework tasks will continue to be set this term reinforcing the expectations around independence, time management, organisation skills and presentation of bookwork.

Homework Club will be offered on Fridays during recess or lunch for students who choose not to complete the required tasks. We remind parents to regularly check in with their child’s progress at home and initial their child’s diary on Thursdays.

As a reminder, student homework books and diaries are to be returned to school on Fridays unless a prior arrangement has been made with your child’s classroom teacher.

Literacy

Writing

During our Writers Workshop and Daily 5 Work on Writing sessions, students will be learning more about the different ways they can organise their writing through experimentation with different genres structures. They will be improving their ability to use complex sentences and add more detail in their writing.

Reading

We are making progress with reading strategies using the CAFÉ reading comprehension framework this term.

Students will continue to develop their ability to: identify implied meaning when reading; will use the skill of finding the main idea to summarise texts; determine between fact and opinion and bias and prejudice to deepen their comprehension of texts; and will be asking questions throughout the reading process to clarify their understanding.

In small groups, we will be exploring a range of mentor texts to assist student’s further comprehension, making connections and drawing conclusions from the author’s clues. Students will also be investigating non-fiction books from our school library related to the units of inquiry to locate information.

Spelling

Students will expand their vocabulary through our weekly SMART Spelling focus words as well as unit of inquiry specific vocabulary. Students will be encouraged to access their dictionary, thesaurus and related online word lists to provide more interesting word choice in their writing.

Speaking and Listening

Being an attentive listener is a skill we expect students to demonstrate by listening carefully and respectfully when their teachers or peers are speaking.

Students will continue to build their confidence when speaking in front of an audience as they collaborate with others in small group projects relating to our units of inquiry.

We will be introducing ‘Passion Projects’ this term as an optional activity for students who would like to further explore an area they are interested in. Students will be encouraged to informally present their project to their class to improve their public speaking skills.

Numeracy

Number

This term we will continue to revise concepts in number including identifying and describing factors and multiples, investigating strategies to solve addition and subtraction of fractions with the same denominator, mathematical algorithms involving branching and repetition, multiplication and division to find unknown quantities, and comparing, ordering and representing decimals.

During our problem-solving maths lessons students will be exposed to open-ended questions requiring critical thinking to solve worded questions encompassing place value, fractions, decimals, percentages and applying the four processes.

Algebra

Students will continue to make connections between multiplication and division as inverse operations and find the unknown values in numerical equations also using multiplication and division using knowledge of number properties.

Measurement

Using concrete materials students will engage in hands on experiments and activities exploring units of measurement, including metric unit conversion, and will compare 12- and 24- hour time systems.

Statistics

Students will collect and represent statistical data relating to our unit of inquiry ‘How we organise ourselves’, graphing numerical variables and interpreting information about our system of government. Students will also explore the mean, median, mode and range of a set of data.

Inclusive Approaches

In Term 3, our wellbeing program will be explored within our ‘How we express ourselves’ unit of inquiry.

Students will continue to discover gratitude, empathy and mindfulness through The Resilience Project and Cyber Safety lessons as well as discuss the impact of peer pressure and how this plays a part in influencing our decisions.

Students will also have the opportunity to participate in our Body Education incursion sessions which encourages our students to focus on the importance of respect within relationships and promotes diversity and difference.

Whole-school Focus on the PYP Learner Profiles

July – Risk-takers

We approach uncertainty with consideration and determination; we work independently and cooperatively to explore new ideas and innovative strategies. We are resourceful and resilient in the face of challenges and change.

August – Reflective

We thoughtfully consider the world and our own ideas and experience. We work to understand our strengths and weaknesses in order to support our learning and personal development.

September – Thinkers

We use critical and creative thinking skills to analyse and take responsible action on complex problems. We exercise initiative in making reasoned, ethical decisions.