Welcome to Level 5!

We have had a wonderful start to the year, Level 5 have enjoyed getting to know each other during the ‘Positive Start’ Program. Through the activities we have focused on our HEPS values – Respect, Resilience, Teamwork and Growth. Each class has established their own expectations and created a positive learning environment for the year.

Reading

In Level 5 we utilise Reader’s Workshop. This workshop allows students to engage in authentic reading experiences. Workshops may vary in length and include time for teaching, selecting and reading books, writing about books, and sharing ideas about books with partners or in group discussions.

In Term One we motivate students to understand that reading is thinking and support them

to choose good fit books when reading independently. Summarising is the reading skill we begin to explore and students are supported to understand that summarising is putting together important information. We use the ‘somebody wanted, but, so then’ model when getting students to summarise texts. The skill of predicting when reading is also an area we focus on.

Weekly Focus

Week 1 - 2: Reading engagement

Week 3 - 4: Reading is thinking

Week 5 - 6: Summarising

Week 7 - 8: Making connections

Week 9: Questioning

Week 10: Revision of term reading strategies

Writing

During Writer’s Workshop this term, the students will be looking at historical and realistic fiction that is based on the inquiry topic - Making A Democracy. They will be revising and adopting the 6+1 traits to help them create a historical narrative. We will focus on the structure of narratives using plot mountain and developing our descriptive language to further enhance our writing.

Spelling & Grammar

In Level 5 we continue to build on the skills we have learnt in Level 4 using the Jolly Phonics program. We incorporate 3 spelling focused lessons and 1 grammar lesson into our weekly learning. This term we will focus on revision of nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. We will begin looking at complex and simple sentences and identify their differences.

Week	Spelling Focus	Grammar Focus
1	Start Up Program
2	‘age’ ‘ege’	Parts of Speech Revision of nouns, adjective, adverbs, verbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions
3	nge	One word, different parts of speech
4	Suffix ‘ance’	Sentence Walls
5	Suffix ‘ancy’	Simple and continuous tenses
6	Suffix ‘ence’	‘To have’ as past, present and future
7	Suffix ‘ency’	Past participles; regular
8	Prefix ‘multi-’	Perfect Tense: Past, Present, Future
9	Prefix ‘auto-’	Contractions and the verb ‘To Have’
10	Prefix ‘micro-’ Prefix ‘mega-’	Past Participles: Irregular

Numeracy

In Term 1, Level 5 students extend decimal fractions to thousandths, and explore the ideas of factors, multiples, and divisibility. They use estimation and rounding for all four operations, with and without the use of technology for calculation.

Students choose and use suitable metric and other units for measurement of length.

They pose questions to collect categorical and numerical data by observation and survey and represent the data in a variety of ways with and without the use of technology. They also describe and interpret data sets in context.

Weekly Focus

Weeks 1-6: Place Value

Weeks 7- 8: Length

Weeks 9-10: Graphing

Students will learn about the values of Australian democracy and the key features of the electoral process. They will learn about the responsibilities of the three levels of government. Students will learn about the Stolen Generations and the fight for equal rights in Australia. They will set personal and social goals and work as a class towards a common goal. Students will understand the values of our community, the rules that are designed to protect our rights, and the responsibilities we have to others.