Year Five/ Six 

Communicating with the Year Five/Six Team

We look forward to partnering with you in 2020, and welcome your input:

Llewela Humphries (Class 56A) Llewela.Humphries@education.vic.gov.au 

Gary Monopoli (Class 56B) Gary.Monopoli@education.vic.gov.au

Jessica Cameron (Class 56C) Jessica.Cameron@education.vic.gov.au 

Judith Liddell (Class 56C) Judith.Liddell@education.vic.gov.au

Writing in Year Five and Six

What a busy time we have had in the classroom during Term Four. With our pre-service teachers Mr Masson and Mr Gale, planning and teaching both writing sequential lessons, we saw our students deliver some very impressive and top quality pieces of text. As we do for all our writing, the students are directed to complete each step of the Writing Process. These are:

Researching / Tuning In

Planning

Drafting

Editing 

Publishing

With a strong focus and dedicated time given to each step, students are given the opportunity to produce work that they are proud of. 

Researching / Tuning In

Through careful planning and the use of the 'I do' and 'We do' instructional teaching method (Gradual Release of Responsibility), students were given opportunities to tune in and grasp the concepts and ideas being taught. We viewed a short historical video from the series 'My Place', which focused on life in Australia in the early 1800's. In the following week, students were given a range of stereotypical comments in which they needed to think about and stand in areas that supported their ideas - from Strongly Agreed through to Strongly Disagreed. 

Planning & Drafting

During these two stages, students are directed to work independently to form their own written text. The use of iPads was very beneficial during the Research stages. It allowed the students to make clear connections with the historical narratives by using factual events as well as giving the students a platform to gather data / facts / evidence to use in their persuasive texts. All students completed a handwritten draft in their writing books, allowing them to conference with the teacher, add extra paragraphs and detail and to move into the editing stages with their peers.

Editing

In the senior years of Primary school, we teach the students the ARMS & CUPS method of Editing. This is an acronym (see below) and through constant usage and class anchor charts, the students are becoming confident in these editing areas.

 With both of these pieces of written texts, we focused on peer and self editing. Peers gave feed forward comments about the written text that could make the writing flow smoothly and identified obvious errors or mistakes. 

Publishing

The final products that were handed in were brilliant. Time, thought and effort has been put in and it is obvious that all students connected with one or both topics. A published copy has been placed in the students Gift books / Reflections projects. Please view and read some examples of these written texts below.

Historical Narratives:

Stereotype Persuasive:

Inquiry Update - It's ELECTRIC

Here are a few pictures of students in 5/6A investigating simple electricity circuits.

BYOiD 2020 - User Agreement

As our senior students have returned to on-site learning, we bring to your attention the expectations of the BYOiD Program. 

This is particularly important, as over the period of Remote Learning a number of students installed social messaging apps onto their devices. Many of these apps are not age-appropriate. Therefore, we encourage you to speak with your child about the appropriate use of their device. 

Remember the rule: If you wouldn't say the comment in front of your teachers, then don't say it on the screen!