Melton West Primary School

Year 5/6 News 

 English

In Term 1, for Reading, students in Grade 5/6 will begin the year by learning about our agreed expectations when reading. They will learn how to use their reading journal, choose just right books, establish a neat and orderly classroom library, and use a book borrowing system, among other things. After the ‘First 20 Days of Reading’ concludes, students will dedicate time to learning a range of comprehension strategies to support them in their reading. At the Grade 5/6 level, the focus is on synthesising various comprehension strategies and understanding Tier 2 vocabulary when extracting meaning from complex novels. The comprehension strategies that students will learn to synthesis include the following: making connections, inferring, determining importance, text structure and features, and visualising. Our students will learn to apply these strategies to our class novel. In Writing, students will set up their Writer’s Notebook and understand how writers go through a process when creating texts. The major text-type for this term is persuasive writing, during this unit the students will learn to create arguments with supporting facts and build on their understanding of how to use persuasive techniques.

            

Mathematics

This term grade 5/6’s will begin the year with our maths start-up. We will then move onto our first unit that focuses on measurement (length and perimeter). Students will be able to practise and incorporate their place value skills and knowledge of the base-10 number system throughout this unit of work. Over the weeks following this, students will learn more about decimal numbers and addition and subtraction. They will incorporate their problem-solving skills into maths tasks each week throughout term 1.

 

 

 

Inquiry

In Inquiry, the 5/6 Students are beginning the term by practising core thinking routines, such as ‘Think, Pair, Share’ and ‘See, Think, Wonder’ as part of the Learning to Learn program. We will use these core thinking routines to strengthen and support their ability to learn and form positive relationships, develop a growth mindset and recognise and nurture their character strengths. Students will then begin their ‘Play it safe’ Inquiry, investigating, through research, analysis and questioning, how our decisions impact upon our wellbeing and safety. We will focus on the following key questions

  • How do we keep ourselves safe in different situations (community, online)?
  • How can we prepare ourselves to make positive choices that promote our safety and wellbeing?
  • What resources can we access in the community to seek help about safety and wellbeing?    I look forward to a fun year! - Ms Georgia Cobbledick

 

 

Science

Welcome back for another fun year of STEM to the Grade 5/6s! This term the focus is Biology and investigating animal structural features and adaptions. Students will examine how living things are uniquely adapted to thrive in their environment and how these adaptions developed. Students will conduct experiments and observe, record and interpret the results to help them to understand how certain adaptions assist animals to survive.  Additionally, students will investigate how human activity can change an ecosystems and the repercussions this has on the local animal and plant wildlife. Research and experimentation are the name of the game for the Grade 5/6s this term, which will be a lot of fun.   Mr Aaron Rasmanis

 

 

LOTE - Chinese

Welcome to all our Year 5 & 6 students! I am looking forward to seeing all the Year 5 & 6 students in our weekly Chinese session. This term Year 5 & 6 students will start with the Chinese New Year —- the biggest festival that is celebrated in China. They will make colourful lanterns and receive red packages with good wishes’ word. They will learn the names of festivals and related food, followed by other popular food in their daily life. Students will read character texts with the help of Pinyin. They will continue copying and tracing new characters and gaining an understanding of the correct stroke order. Throughout the term, students will be involved in many interesting activities, along with some hands-on activities, singing, dancing etc. This is an exciting term in Year 5 & 6 Chinese. - Ms Sabrina Zhu

 

 Art

The 5/6 students have started the semester decorating their art folios. They have been free to design and are currently working on an interest-based topic that best reflects themselves. Moving into the term, the students will also be working with collage; an art technique that uses torn pieces of paper and photographs to create a design - this design will be “All About Me”, using words, images, photos, colour and design, to best describe each student. 

The students will revisit colour theory, touching on primary, secondary, tertiary and complementary colours to access prior knowledge, and understanding where these colours sit on the colour wheel, such as ‘analogous colours’; that sit next to each other. The students will then be moving into an activity to create a Monochromatic design; Monochrome meaning one colour. So, in an art sense, the students can choose one colour and create a design using tints and shades of that colour or black and white. The students will then experiment with a range of colours, shades and tones to create a Van Gogh design.

All student’s will have the opportunity to use a range of materials including Posca paint pens, sharpies, coloured pencils, crayon, paste, chalk and hopefully paint, to create their art pieces this term. 

I really look forward to working with the grade 5 and 6 students and creating some fabulous artwork this Term! - Mrs Sally Shoebridge

 

 

P.E.

This term in PE, Year 5/6 students will be focusing on being active in the PE spaces and becoming role models for healthy participation and support for their peers. They will be focusing on Tennis, Cricket and Tee-ball as the sports and learning a variety of skills that are transferable to other sports that are of interest to them. These skills include, forehand and backhand shots, strategically hitting the ball into spaces on the court/field and catching and throwing skills. They will also learn an understanding of the rules of the games, following the rules and being able to umpire the games for others. 

Ms Lesley Condon