Year 5 news – what lies ahead!

This newsletter outlines the term’s learning for your child’s year group. We hope that this provides you with a picture of what is ahead.

This newsletter provides an overview for your child’s learning this term, which fits within our approach to:

Welcome to the Wingrove St campus!

Welcome to 2026 and to Year 5 at the Wingrove Street Campus. We are excited to begin the year and to build positive, supportive relationships with our students and families.

This newsletter has been put together to answer common questions and help you understand what to expect in term one. Our main focus this term is helping students settle in by establishing clear routines and expectations. These are based on our school wide work on:

By embedding these approaches early, we aim to create classrooms that are safe, inclusive, and supportive learning environments for all students.

Year 5 teachers

Special events & activities

This year the Year 5 students will have the opportunity to participate in some special events and activities, these include:

Excursion to Sovereign Hill to link to our inquiry unit (term two)
Year 5 Camp to Anglesea (term three)
Buddies program with our junior students
Alternative sports program (terms 2 – 4) where students participate in more unfamiliar sports such as taekwondo, wheelchair basketball and table tennis (these are possible examples).
The 5/6 production (term four)

Students will continue to participate in the Specialist program, the timetable has been communicated to families.

Literacy

In our Literacy work this term, students will explore the mentor text ‘Boy at the Back of the Class’. Students will use this and other independent texts to develop their comprehension skills, including some of the following:

Extending vocabulary knowledge, including synonyms and antonyms.
Identifying both literal and inferential meaning.
Formulating questions before, during, and after reading.
Summarising chapters and short articles.
Making connections between texts and their own experiences, texts read, and real-world knowledge.
Visualising and drawing images that they imagine when reading or listening to texts read aloud.

In Writing, students will be building on their understanding of persuasive and narrative writing. They will analyse examples and develop their understanding of the structure of these text types and the devices authors use to convince or entertain their readers. Students will plan, draft, revise and publish several pieces both in handwritten form and on computer.

In persuasive writing they will learn to:

State their position on a given topic.
Provide three clearly stated reasons, providing evidence and examples to support this.
Develop an interesting introduction and clear conclusion.
Utilise the structure of Topic, Explanation, Evidence, Link (TEEL) in each paragraph.
Implement effective persuasive techniques, including emotive language, hyperbole and rhetorical questions.

In narrative writing they will learn to:

Apply the corrective narrative structure, by including an introduction, problem and resolution.
Describe characters and settings.
Utilise figurative language and well developed descriptive phrases.
Adapt their writing for particular audiences.

Students will continue to participate in the Sound Waves spelling program, as well as grammar and punctuation lessons to support clear and accurate writing.

At home you can:

Encourage your child to read each day.
Support them to read aloud with expression and fluency.
Explore new and interesting vocabulary.
Support writing at home; letters, notes, stories or persuasive pieces.
Encourage correct punctuation and neat handwriting.
Model a love of reading and writing and share some conversations about this with your child.
Take your child to the library or a bookshop and assist them in making good selections for their reading level and interests.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, students will be revising and extending their understanding of concepts covered in previous years. Students will also be introduced to new concepts and topics found in the curriculum.

Students will investigate place value to thousandths, focusing on how to round numbers to either two or three decimal places. Students will further build on their place value knowledge by comparing decimal numbers using the language of less than and more than, and using the correct symbols (> greater than and < less than).

Students will also continue to build their understanding of 2D shape properties and the transformation of shapes, including flips, slides and turns. We will refresh and extend our mental and written addition and subtraction strategies.

Students will explore statistics, by reading and interpreting line graphs that represent change over time, discussing relationships and conclusions that can be drawn. Students will use their understanding to match unlabelled line graphs to matching data.

At home you can:

Play number games and create multi-digit numbers to compare, add, or subtract.
Practise reading and writing large numbers in words.
Count forwards and backwards by 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s starting from different numbers( i.e.: start at 7, 23, 58, etc.)
Investigate the value of each digit in a number and what the decimal numbers around us mean or signify (i.e.: dollars and cents, kilograms and grams).
Play Mastermind up to thousands and down to thousandths.

Further ideas to support students at home can be found here: Literacy & Numeracy Tips to Help Your Child.

Inquiry – Economics and Business

Students will be exploring products that are linked to the needs and wants of people, animals and environments. They will develop their understanding of the types of resources (natural, human and capital) and investigate how they are produced or used to produce goods and services. Students will work in groups to design a product that meets the needs or wants of people, animals or certain environments. They will present their finished products to the class.

Resilience, Rights, and Respectful Relationships (RRRR)

RRRR learning supports our school values of Community, Respect, Excellence and Creativity. Our first unit in Year 5 focuses on Emotional Literacy, Personal and Cultural Strengths, and Problem Solving.

Students will learn to identify, understand and manage their emotions, as well as recognise the feelings of others. Students will develop emotional literacy, build positive and respectful relationships, recognise personal strengths, and practise skills for cooperation, problem-solving and help-seeking. Through stories, discussions and collaborative activities, students will continue to learn how to contribute positively to our school community.

In the Personal Cultural Strengths unit, students will investigate cultures from abroad and at home, including local indigenous cultures. Students will also create and share their vision for a just and respectful school where human rights are respected. Students will explore the traits that they value in both themselves and in others.

As a part of our Problem Solving unit, students will devise strategies and plans to assist in completing challenging tasks, making decisions or resolving problems. They will also identify factors that influence decision making, while also identifying the causes and effects of conflict. Students will investigate and devise different strategies to resolve problems.

NAPLAN

In Year 5, students will be participating in NAPLAN (The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy). Families will be informed of the dates of testing for Fairfield students via Compass and the newsletter. In the lead up, students will be made familiar with the testing format and sample questions linked to Reading, Conventions of Language, Writing and Numeracy.

Specialist subjects

French

Students will be practising classroom routines. They will revise personal information by asking and answering questions about their name, age, address, favourite colour, and birthdays. Students will also revise numbers up to 50.

Performing Arts

This term our students will be embedding their music making skills. They will build on their knowledge of playing ukulele, guitars, keyboards and drums. To do this, they will use conventional and graphic notation, working in small groups and as a whole class.

Physical Education

Students will be revisiting the expectations and the procedures used in PE. They will also participate in target games focussing on applying rules and score of games independently and fairly. Students will be given a chance to practise the school cross country course and complete laps of the course as part of the school's cross country trials.

Science

Students will be focusing on biological science. They will explore how habitats can be described by their physical conditions and how changing the physical conditions of a habitat, including by human activity, may affect the growth and survival of organisms.

Visual Arts

Indigenous landscape artist Albert Namatjira and his great grandson Vincent Namatjira, a contemporary portrait artist will be the spotlight for study this year.

Initially, students will be decorating their art folios and Visual Art journal. They will then be focussing on the art element colour, expressing it through paint. They will continue to study, examine and reflect on their prior knowledge, refining their colour mixing skills to create tones, blends, tints, and shades for colour charts.

Looking forward

We look forward to establishing positive relationships with your children, and also to work in collaborative partnerships with yourselves.

Kind regards,

Naomi, Blake, Olivia, Anne, Tom & the Specialist teachers

Year 5 News

Respect • Creativity • Excellence • Community • Since 1885

Issue 1 · 10 Feb 2026

In this issue