Year 5 Term Overview

Welcome to Year 5 in Wadjil in 2022!

This year, we have 4 classes - 5A with Bernadette, 5B with Sarah, 5C with Anne and 5D with Steve.

5A - Bernadette

I have been teaching for many years and joined DCC in 2020. I have a daughter and a son, as well as my Bernese Mountain Dog, Willow. She is my fluff ball and loves to go everywhere with us. I love drawing, watching Friends the TV Series and heading out into nature for bushwalks, but not seeing spiders.

5B - Sarah

I am a new teacher to DCC, in the past I taught ESL both in Australia and overseas. I have a very cute released Seeing Eye Dog, Yarny, who is a labrador/golden retriever. I love being creative with art or writing, taking Yarny to training sessions and going for walks.

5C- Anne

I have been teaching for many years and am a proud founding member of DCC, teaching here when the school opened in 2019. I have 2 teenage sons, a gorgeous ginger cat called Basil and a cute Norwegian dwarf rabbit called Apollo. I love swimming at the beach and going to cardio and strength classes at my local gym.

5D - Steve

I too am new to DCC, though have several years teaching experience both in Australia and Japan. I am excited about the values and learning opportunities for both teachers and students that DCC offers. While my sports playing days are now behind me, I enjoy watching a range of sports. My passion is American football - Go Pats!

First Two Weeks:

We are so proud of how well your children have settled into Year 5. For the first two weeks, we unpacked our DCC values (Respect, Learning, Integrity, Teamwork, Kindness) and our DCC expectations (Respect, Safe, Striving for Excellence). This has been part of establishing our routines and expectations for Year 5 this year, and our students have shown us that they are ready for the learning challenges ahead of them. Ask your child what the Learning Pit is and how they aim to have a growth mindset this year.

Curriculum:

Literacy

Reading will be a major focus in Year 5 classes. We are developing our students to become balanced readers, where there is an equal emphasis on fluency, decoding and comprehension. Our data shows us that on the whole our students read fluently and are able to decode difficult words and phrases. The area of comprehension is the one where our students need the most support and this is where we have begun our reading program this term. We will be exploring persuasive and informative texts, by summarising main ideas and inferring the tone of the text from the writers’ use of language. We will also be comparing and contrasting the features of different texts.

This term in writing, we are creating persuasive texts for different audiences and purposes. We will write through the writing process with the 6+1 Traits of writing, with a particular focus on word choice - selecting striking words and phrases in our persuasive texts. SMART Spelling will take a slightly different approach this year, with classes exploring different spelling patterns to spell different sounds. More information will follow.

We have now started our Home Reading program. The expectation is for your child to read their take home book 5 nights a week and record the title, date and a comment in the orange reading journal. Take home books are for enjoyment and for your child to practise their reading strategies, and are not meant to be a challenging task for your child.

Numeracy

This term Year 5 students will be investigating place value through fractions and decimals. They will compare, order and represent decimals, as well as describing, continuing and creating patterns with fractions, decimals and whole numbers. Students will pose questions and collect data, then create graphs, dot plots and tables using this data. They will also list outcomes of chance experiments using fractions. Finally, we will compare 12- and 24-hour time systems.

Inquiry

Our focus this term is Geography, where we will be comparing and contrasting Australia with major countries in the Asian region. The focus will be on the cultural, economic, social and demographic similarities and differences, exploring land mass, population, imports and exports etc. We will begin by using India as a mentor country, before students select their own major country in the Asian region to investigate, before students decide how they would like to take action to address issues they have uncovered in their chosen country.

SEL

Throughout this term, students will have the opportunity to continue to develop their skills in the DCC values and expectations (see above). They will be listening to each other in Yarning Circles and Campfires and working in Billabongs and Caves (ask your child what these mean) on a variety of tasks. As new young leaders of our growing school, they will be mentors and role models to our younger students, and they have already shown us that they are up for these new roles.

We look forward to working with you and your child this year. Please come and see your child’s teacher if you have any questions or concerns. After school is best for a quick chat, otherwise send your child’s teacher an email to set up an appointment time for a longer chat.

Bernadette, Sarah, Anne and Steve