Year 5/6

KEY DATES

June 25th

Last Day of Term 2 - Dismissal 2:10pm

July 

12th

 Term 3 Begins

READING

During Term 2 students have been learning to identify literal and implied meaning to connect ideas in a text. This is the reading skill known as inferring whereby prior knowledge and evidence from the text is joined to draw a conclusion about the text or a character. Students have been using sentence stems to help them justify their thinking. They have been exposed to a variety of quality mentor texts to help them learn to infer characters' traits, feelings and motivations by focussing on the character’s actions, descriptions, what they do or say (dialogue) and what others think about them. Students have been taught how to infer the big idea or message in a text. They have also focused on vocabulary using the Frayer Model, phonological awareness, fluency and other comprehension skills that we use on a daily basis such as making connections, predicting and summarising.

 

WRITING

In Writing, students in Grade 5/6 have been continuing to use their Writer’s Notebooks to explore their personal writing interests. Students have learnt how to plan and write engaging, well-structured narrative texts that utilise a variety of sentence types including simple, complex and compound sentences.

 Grade 5/6 students have also researched, planned and constructed information reports as the second major text type focus for Term 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 MATHEMATICS

In Term 2 in Mathematics, 5/6 students

 covered multiplication and division, area, and length and perimeter. 

The multiplication unit followed on from our Base 10 Numeration unit; students needed to use their knowledge of Base 10 Numeration to manipulate numbers and solve challenging equations and worded problems. Students learned and then applied the area and slipt strategy. Students also learned how to multiply 

decimals. In division, students connected their prior knowledge of multiplication to division, including arrays and fact families. Students learned that there are not always equal groups when we divide, and therefore, there are sometimes remainders. 

In our area unit, students learned that their prior knowledge of multiplication can also be connected to area. The unit started the by looking into the similarities of arrays and the area of squares and rectangles. We learned that one strategy for calculating area is counting the squared units inside the 2D object. Later, we used our multiplication skills to find the area of rectangles by using the length and width measurements.

The length and perimeter unit saw students at

 home for remote learning. Students looked into metric units of measurements and conversions between them. They then started applying their knowledge of measurement by measuring rectangles and polygons around their home and calculating the perimeter of these. 

 

RESPECTFUL RELATIONSHIPS

Term 2, saw the Grade 5/6 students participate in regular lessons that looked at resilience, rights and respectful relationships. These lessons followed the department’s Resilience, Rights & Respectful Relationships document. Students were engaged in activities that helped them to identify positive and negative emotions within themselves and others in role play, independent and supportive social situations. They learned to identify coping strategies that worked for them when they found themselves in stressful situations. Students identified ways they could use certain strategies to help themselves and to help those around them. Students also began learning about gender identity and issues that often affect students as they progress through early adolescence.

 

 INQUIRY

 For this term we have been looking at different forms of government, the benefits of a democracy and voting and culminating with a role paly of the House of Representatives debating a bill. Students were allocated roles within the House, including Speaker, Sergeant at Arms, Clerk, Prime Minister, Opposition Leader and all others were ministers of an electorate. The students really enjoyed a task where they had to build the tallest tower according to the rules of their government. This included anarchy, dictatorship, monarchy and democracy.

 ART

Term 2 for the grade 5/ 6 students has been about colour theory! The students did some fantastic designs and completed their complementary colour activity based on artist ‘Keith Haring’ and his subway art! The grade 5/6 students needed to show emphasis in their art, using ‘complementary colours’ to ‘enhance’ and ‘visually improve’ their designs, by using these opposite colours together. The students also created fabulous designs using the PicCollage app on the iPads. The students used this technology to create Andy Warhol - ‘POP Art’, and designed some fabulous Andy inspired POP Art! The 5/6 students then created colour swatches using ‘tertiary’ tints and shades with acrylic paint, and from this experimented with warm, and cool colours to create a night time/sunset -'CityScape’ and abstract designs. To follow on from this task, the 5/6 students are experimenting with shades and lines to create an Edvard Munch ‘Scream’ inspired design in Term 3. This activity and the ‘Line’ unit will now occur in Term 3 due to the lockdown. I have enjoyed a fun and creative term with the grades 5/6 students and really enjoyed introducing technology to the art program. 

LOTE-CHINESE

Congratulations on completing another successful term! In term two, the grade fives and sixes extended their language skills in Chinese Mandarin, including listening and speaking, recognising words in Pinyin and Chinese characters, and writing Chinese characters. They learnt about some Chinese festivals such as the Tomb Sweeping Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival. The topics that were explored this term were clothing and verbs. The students were also engaged in action games, songs, books, arts and crafts to deepen their learning of the new topics. The grade five to six students integrated technology in their lessons by using their iPads to complete tasks and research given topics. Some students also participated in some optional remote learning tasks.

 

PE

Another fantastic term from our grade 5&6 cohort. Students were able to participate in many different interschool sports this term such as AFL, Netball, Teeball and Cross Country. Unfortunately due to remote learning we were not able to compete in the lightning premiership this term but it has been postponed to next term so don’t worry we won’t be missing out! At school we were able to learn about badminton and able to keep a rally going with our partner in a doubles game. We also got to break down the game of volleyball and understand the rules and rotations associated with this. Finally we started to begin our athletics component where we participated in relays outside, which was great fun – we will be finishing this term off with some high jump and continuing on with athletics next term. Great work grade 5&6, Keep it up!

 

SCIENCE

The Grade 5/6s have put in a fantastic effort in term 2, exploring all different types of volcanoes! They have learnt about how volcanoes can affect the weather and the physical landscape of our planet, as well as where they are located, why they form and investigated the positive and negative effects volcanic events have on the environment. Unfortunately, due to the lockdown, the Design & Engineering unit has had to be postponed to the start of term 3- I hope you are all looking forward to it, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Congratulations on a fun and productive term 2, enjoy the mid-year holiday break and I look forward to seeing you all in term 3.