Year 5/6

Welcoming Mrs Burton to Grade 5/6

Over the past few weeks, our Grade 5/6 students have had the pleasure of welcoming Mrs Burton, who is currently completing her teaching placement in our classroom. With our guidance and support, Mrs Burton has been planning and teaching lessons across all learning areas, building positive relationships with the students and developing her teaching skills. The students have thoroughly enjoyed working with Mrs Burton and have embraced the opportunity to learn from another enthusiastic educator. We would like to take this opportunity to thank her for the positive contribution she has made to our classroom community.

English

Our Grade 5/6 students have been busy developing their skills across both reading and writing. In writing, students have been focusing on paragraphing and topic sentences, learning how to organise their ideas into clear paragraphs and use strong topic sentences to introduce the main idea. We have also been exploring tense in writing, with students practising how to identify and maintain consistent past, present and future tense. Our grammar work has included a focus on plurals, including the different rules we use when changing singular nouns into plural nouns.

In reading, students have been strengthening their comprehension skills through summarising and paraphrasing. They are learning to identify the most important information in a text and communicate it clearly using their own words. Students have also been practising monitoring and clarifying, encouraging them to notice when something they are reading does not make sense and use strategies such as rereading, looking for context clues and identifying unfamiliar vocabulary to improve their understanding. These strategies are helping our senior students become more thoughtful, independent and confident readers and writers.

Maths

In mathematics we have been working hard to strengthen their mathematical skills across Number and Measurement. In Number, students have been learning and practising a range of strategies for solving long multiplication problems. They have been developing their understanding of place value and learning how to break larger multiplication problems into manageable steps, while also using estimation to check whether their answers are reasonable.

In Measurement, our focus has been on 12-hour and 24-hour time. Students have been practising reading, recording and converting between the two time formats and applying their knowledge to real-life situations. We have also been exploring timetables, with students learning how to read and interpret information, identify starting and finishing times, and calculate the duration of events. These practical skills are helping students develop confidence in using time and timetables in everyday situations. This will also assist them when they transition to secondary school.

The students have also exploredangles through a range of engaging and hands-on activities. They have learnt to identify and classify angles according to their attributes, including acute, right, obtuse, straight and reflex angles, as well as developing their skills in estimating and accurately measuring angles in degrees using a protractor. To bring this learning to life, students created their own angle resources, headed outside for an angle hunt to discover examples of angles in the school environment, and reinforced their knowledge through a fun and interactive angle game. These activities have helped students recognise that angles are all around us while building their confidence in identifying, comparing and measuring them accurately.

Science

We have also been busy exploring the fascinating world of Earth and Space Science. Students have investigated what causes earthquakes and how movements beneath the Earth's surface can change our planet. We have also explored tsunamis and volcanoes, learning how and why these powerful natural events occur and the impact they can have on people and environments. 

Our learning has then taken us beyond Earth as we have been investigating Earth's place within our Solar System and developing an understanding of the enormous distances and differences in size between the Sun, planets and other objects in space. These topics have encouraged plenty of curiosity, questioning and scientific thinking as students discover more about our dynamic Earth and its place in space!

ISAC Challenge

On Thursday 6th August two grade 6 teams with 4 students in each set off to BlueScope to participate in the ISAC challenge. Mrs Herbert and Miss Mac both transported us to the event. 

Team one was called The Arch Rivals, this team consisted of Melissa, Maddy, Marley and Max. Team two was called The Span-tastic Four, this team consisted of Robin, Kaden, Dakota and Maya.

Each team had one and a half hours to construct a bridge out of popsicle stick, playing cards, string, pins, tape and thumb tacks.  Once the bridges were complete they were tested for their strength using a variety of tin cans. There were a lot of judges and officals present who were overseeing this testing process. 

In the end The Arch Rivals bridge managed to hold 5.42kg and The Span-tastic Four's bridge held a total of 7.26kg.

Our teams represented the school with pride, working really well in their teams, demonstrating effective communication and collaboration. We would like to thank Mrs Herbert and Miss Mac for preparing us for this challenge.

By Max

Legally Blonde Jr. Performance

On Tuesday 4th August the grade 5/6 students headed off to Western Port Secondary College on a bus which we shared with Wallaroo Primary School. We were going to a matinee performance of Legally Blonde Jr. 

When we arrived we went into the Gym because it was raining. After that we went into the Kevin Berry Performing Arts Centre to find our seats. We were privileged enough to watch the college's first ever performance to an audience. During intermission we were allowed to eat our lunch in the Gym where we were also allowed to play basketball and volleyball. The Bittern students had a lot of fun playing these games. Max actually beat Miss Bacon in basketball by a long way. 

After lunch we returned to see the second half of the play. We all had a wonderful day because the performers sang beautifully and put on a great show. We were very grateful that Western Port invited us to this performance.

By Spencer 

Author Visit

On Tuesday 18th August we had Sascha Elks- Melki run a writing workshop with our grade 5/6 class. In this class we learnt about finding what we love and writing about it. She inspired us to put human truths into our writing without being scared of it being embarrassing. She taught us about the art of noticing everyday things and to never give up. 

She told us about a short story competition that she hoped to have some of our students enter into next year and she shared with us some very inspirational quotes from Stephen King and Toni Morrison. 

The activity that she had us complete was imagining that we were aliens who were pretending to be human. She encouraged us to imagine trying to fit in, ensuring that no one knew what we were. This was a great way to have us look closely at noticing everyday things that happen.

We would like to thank Sascha for spending her valuable time to show us the art of noticing.

Alien

The wind turns cold, the rush of people frighten me. I see a sight of something cold, something weird, something sharp. The sign, I can't read it. A slobbery hairy fuzzball comes up to me and licks me. 

A loud noise fades into the distance and I walk further, my foot stops. I'm getting pulled, suddenly a dry hand grabs mine. I panic, it feels like everything stops the hand still holding me. I call for my ship but it doesn't know it's me. I freeze, not budging, not moving a muscle. I look up at the person. I scream.

By Alex