Year Five News

What’s Happening in the Grade 5 Department for Term 2?

Welcome to Term 2! The Grade 5 team are excited to be back for a somewhat shorter but still busy term. We have some fun and exciting things happening, including the opportunity to visit your child’s classroom in our Kids Sharing Open Afternoon on Wednesday, 10th May. 

Throughout the term, we will continue to provide opportunities to build on your child’s collaborative learning skills and work on incorporating our Agreements, along with focusing on effort, having a growth mindset and building positive relationships with our peers.

Literacy

In writing, students will continue to review and further their development of the ‘6 + 1 Traits of Writing’ and use a range of comprehension strategies to sharpen their reading skills through fiction and non fiction texts related to our Immigration and Science units. During term 2, students will:

• focus on the traits of sentence fluency and writing conventions by researching and writing an information report about a migrant journey to Australia
• develop their ability to interpret information and make connections across a range of written and visual texts 
• work in targeted small reading groups for an opportunity to work collaboratively to develop their comprehension skills, analyse and discuss texts

Numeracy

The areas of mathematics that will be covered this term are:

• addition and subtraction - applying a range of written strategies to solve problems
• geometry - exploring the properties of 2D shapes and 3D shapes and their nets
• measurement - calculating area, perimeter and volume of 2D and 3D shapes
• place value- revision of place value concepts and the introduction of decimal concepts 
• data - interpreting a range of data, gathering and recording data and creating data displays

Students will also begin to work in Scaffolding groups this term for the chance to extend and apply their multiplicative thinking skills and apply this to real-life problem-solving situations. 

Units of Work

This term, our units of work will focus on the History of Immigration to Australia and adaptations of plants and animals in Biological Science. Students have the chance to develop an understanding of the following concepts:

• the timeline for migrant arrival in Australia and their impact on our culture and the land
• the migration of the First Peoples to Australia and their impact on the land
• investigate how plant and animals are perfectly adapted to survive in certain environments 

Wellbeing

In our Respectful Relationships and Body Safety lessons, students will be looking at:

• Coping Strategies including Positive Self Talk 
• Problem Solving 
• Stress Management
• Safe and Unsafe touch 
• Body warning Signs

Homework

Homework commenced in week one. We will continue to encourage student voice in choosing a country to read about and complete a reading task on each week. Please allocate some quiet time at home for your child to complete the homework. For students who find it challenging to get work completed at home, some time in the library at lunchtime is designated for homework completion. 

Students are expected to:

• Read for 30 minutes, 5 times per week and record this in their weekly reading log 
• Complete 1x reading activity per week (about Geography this term!)
• Complete 1x maths task (or more!) in Essential Assessment - My Numeracy and record the name of the maths task 

Intra-school Sport 

In order to accommodate for space in our school grounds, the Grade Five students will be participating separately from the Grade Six students in a weekly intra-school sports program developing skills for netball, tee-ball, football and soccer during the first two sessions each Friday.  

For the next two weeks, we managed to secure a spot with an AFL clinic for our students on our school oval during our sport lessons!  

Key Events

We had our first incursion for the year this week. The students were excited to meet and had wonderful questions to ask the honourable Cuc Lam about her journey to Australia as a refugee from Vietnam and the incredible impact she’s had on the community since arriving to Australia and becoming the current Deputy Mayor of Maribyrnong Council.

Please refer to Compass and the newsletter for information about any other upcoming events.

Parent/Carers Helpers

We would like to offer you the opportunity to help out in our classrooms. In order to offer your support in the classroom, you will have to complete the online modules for our FWPS Volunteer's induction. This can be accessed via your Compass Newsfeed. This is also a requirement for any parents wanting to attend excursions or camps. Completing these modules allows you to volunteer for a range of activities. 

If you would like to help out in your child's classroom, please contact your child's class teacher via Compass. To avoid disruptions to the learning process, we kindly ask that younger siblings do not attend when you assist in the classroom. 

​​Additional

We would greatly appreciate donations of tissue boxes for your child’s classroom.

If you have any questions or would like to contact your child’s teacher, you can do this via Compass.

Kind regards, 

The Grade 5 team,

Shannon, Towela, Helena, Mikala and Lee