Year 5/6 Term 2 Overview

Year 5/6 Term Two

Welcome back to our second term! After an exciting start to the year with our jam-packed term one, we are very excited about our plans for term two. Everyone has settled in very well and we have a lot to look forward to over the next eleven weeks.

Our classes are as follows:

5/6A - Joyce Qiu and Lipo Li

5/6B - Allison Bayliss, Elina Li (Thursdays), and Ruby Schneider

5/6C - Tracey Farrar, Melissa Sedony (Wednesdays) and Kristin Sardellis.

Communication

Effective communication between family and school is an important factor in your child's learning. Please make contact with us if you have any questions, comments or concerns.

We will endeavour to respond to emails within 24 hours, during weekdays.

jqiu@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au

tfarrar@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au

abayliss@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au

Important Dates for your Calendars

Grade 5/6 Sports Gala Day - 18 April
ANZAC Day public holiday (no school) - 25 April
School Closure Day (TIL Day) - 26 April
School Closure Day (Staff PL Day) - 29 April
Grandparents & Special Friends Day - 1 May - 9-11am
Kaboom Sports incursion - 6 May
National Walk to School Day - 9 May
Mother's day Breakfast - 10 May
Class Masses: 5/6B - 14 May, 5/6C - 21 May, 5/6A - 18 June
Wellbeing Week - 20 May
District Cross Country - 20 May
Public Holiday (no school) - 10 June
School Closure Day (Staff PL Day) - 11 June
Confirmation Family Night - 18 June
Grade 5/6 Sports Gala Day - 21 June
Bush Dance & Family Evening - 21 June
Year 6 Confirmation Commitment Masses - 22 & 23 June
Last day of term - 28 June (12:15 Assembly, 1:00pm finish)

All other school dates will be on the school online calendar.

Religious Education

In Religious Education this term, we are looking at what is the Church, the Resurrection, and Spiritual Wellbeing. We will investigate the Old and New Testaments and what it means to live a life of faith. Keeping in line with our inquiry learning on health, we will also look at ways to nourish our spiritual health.

Inquiry

Our second term unit of Inquiry learning will focus on Health, with our ‘Big Question’ for the term being:

How does taking care of our own health and well being, positively impact our community?

We will research different aspects of health, including the impact of social media on our mental health, the importance of physical activity, and looking after our mental health and well being. We will finish our learning with an exciting event for all our 5/6 families to participate in, a Health Retreat, designed and run by our Year 5/6 students.

English

This term, the senior students will continue to develop and deepen their reading comprehension skills, speaking, listening, editorial and writing skills.

Reading and Viewing: Students will focus on developing their knowledge of etymology and vocabulary, as well as their inferential comprehension skills, using information and persuasive texts. Our focus novel for the term, Fish in a Tree, will give students opportunities to discuss ideas, identify connections, and share their opinions during our teacher focus groups. Students will also have access to Reading Eggs and other online activities, to practise and develop their learning. They will also work on spelling, vocabulary and punctuation.

Writing: This term in Writing, the senior students will be focusing on creating information and persuasive texts. During this time they will focus on developing the text structure of their writing and adding language features for emphasis. Students will write for a range of purposes and audiences. They will also look at the elements of writing, such as using effective vocabulary, building their knowledge of connectives, openers and appropriate punctuation use.

Speaking and Listening: Students will engage in a variety of speaking and listening activities within focus groups, whole class discussions, as well as tasks involving listening and responding to podcasts. Across the curriculum, students will have many opportunities to practise their speaking and listening skills, as they engage in a range of learning opportunities such as presentations, reports and debates.

Mathematics

In Mathematics this term students will continue to consolidate their knowledge of number facts, as well as their multiplication and addition skills.

Our focus this term will be:

Perimeter (length) and area
Data representation
Probability
Chance
Fractions
Decimals

What can you do at home to support your child's maths learning?

Continue practising recall of times tables facts
Encourage your child to help with shopping where they can use money
Encourage your child to help with cooking to practise using weights and measures
Encourage your child to pay attention to the time and begin managing their personal timetable
Catch public transport together and look at the schedules, distances and cost of the trip

STEM

This term in STEM, students will be looking at different systems within the human body. They will be able to identify key organs of the body, and discuss their purpose in supporting life processes. Students will have the opportunity to recreate the skeletal-muscular system, working out how joints work in conjunction with muscles to allow movement. They will also look at how the digestive system works along with the circulatory system. Students will have the opportunity to use programs such as Minecraft Education to look at the circulatory system and its role in transportation of nutrients and oxygen, as well as applying their knowledge to create Fred the Human Body, where they will install systems and organs, explaining their purpose in sustaining life.

Digital Technology

Digital Technology (Digitech) plays an important role in the lives of senior students. We make daily use of our primary learning management system, Google Classroom, and will also be engaging more with Hapara.

This term, while continuing to make use of programs such as Canva, Google Slides and Google Docs, students will be able to engage with the 3D modelling program Tinkercad, where they can design and build 3D objects. This will assist them in using Minecraft Education, where they will design objects in response to a learning task.

We will also be looking at the use of Social Media, as part of our Inquiry unit and will review safe use of the internet, strong passwords and cybersafety.

Students are encouraged to join in our weekly Digitech Club, and can also now engage with Digitech activities at home through the Google Classroom for the club.

The link to join can be found here: https://classroom.google.com/c/NjcwMjYyMTg2OTgw?cjc=ucfjnwc

Social Emotional Learning

This term in SEL our whole school focus continues to be on Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) and we will continue to reinforce our modified matrix. For Year 5/6 students, this will include setting shared expectations to address safety in our learning and shared spaces, as well as building respectful relationships with our peers and teachers, and showing responsibility in our learning. Student leaders from all leadership areas will also have opportunities to engage in activities to develop their leadership skills over the year. We will be looking at the behaviours from our matrix and explicitly learning the skills required to manage these positively. Our SEL curriculum whole school focus is on Self Awareness. For Year 5/6 students this will include exploring the links between their emotions and behaviour. Students will learn to recognise and name different emotions in themselves and others, identifying the body language and facial expressions often displayed when you are feeling a certain way. They will name positive and negative emotions and discuss how these can have different effects on us.