A Great Start

Firstly, we would like to acknowledge the successful start to Year 5 that the students have made. They have all adapted well to the routines and expectations of being on the senior school campus.

This newsletter has been put together to answer common questions and help you understand what to expect in term two. This term, we will continue to help students with establishing and maintaining clear routines and expectations. These are based on our school wide work on:

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

Upcoming Special Events

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

Day excursion to Sovereign Hill to link to our inquiry unit (Wednesday 6th May 2026).
Buddies program with our junior students.
Alternative Sports program (Terms 2, 3 & 4). Students get to trial more unfamiliar sports (e.g., Taekwondo, wheelchair basketball and table tennis (these are possible examples).
House Athletics Carnival on Tuesday 19 May.
Talking the Talk – sexuality education (from Monday 11 May onwards). More information to come via Compass.

Students will continue to participate in the Specialist program, the timetable will be communicated to families via Compass.

Literacy

In our Literacy work this term, students will explore the mentor text ‘War Horse’ and other historical fiction texts, focussing on the Australian gold rush. Students will use this and other independent texts to develop their comprehension, vocabulary and grammar 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.
Understanding vocabulary and grammar used over different time periods.
Identifying the features of historical fiction texts, including factual and imaginative components.

Writing

Students will be building on their understanding of narrative writing through historical fiction. They will analyse examples and develop their understanding of the structure of this text type and the devices authors use to engage and entertain their readers. Students will plan, draft, revise and publish pieces both in handwritten form and on computer.

In historical fiction writing they will learn to:

Research the Australian gold rush era and identify factual information, locations and relevant people that can be woven into their text.
Apply the correct narrative structure, by including an introduction, problem and resolution.
Describe characters and settings linked to real life events, locations or people.
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, grammar and punctuation lessons to support clear and accurate writing.

At home you can:

Encourage your child to read each day.
Read and discuss forms of historical fiction with your child.
Support them to read aloud with expression and fluency.
Explore new and interesting vocabulary.
Support writing at home (handwritten and typed); 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

Students will be revising and extending their understanding of concepts covered in previous years. Students will also be introduced to new concepts and topics from the Year 5 curriculum.

Students will investigate multiplication and division. They will explore these operations through a range of tasks requiring them to choose the best mental or written strategy to solve the problem. Students will apply their understanding of these operations to solve worded problems and will be encouraged to use estimation to find reasonable answers by rounding to the nearest ten, hundred or tenth.

Students will explore aspects linked to algebra. They will begin to recognise and explain the connection between multiplication and division as inverse operations and use this to develop families of number facts. Students will find unknown values in numerical equations involving multiplication and division using the properties of numbers and operations.

Students will also continue to build their understanding of length, area and perimeter. They will be working on calculating area and perimeter and representing these with the correct unit of measurement.

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 (e.g., 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 (e.g., dollars and cents, kilograms and grams).
Play Mastermind up to thousands and down to thousandths.
Practise measuring the length, area and perimeter of items in your home.

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

Inquiry: Australian History (Australian Gold Rush)

In Inquiry, students will explore the history of the Australian gold rush and how it influenced Australia.

The gold rush was a major factor that contributed to change within Australia including migration, environment and laws. We will investigate the impact that gold had on the environment, migration and Indigenous communities. We will explore the lifestyle of the diggers and other inhabitants of the Goldfields in the 1850s, including their journeys to the goldfields, claiming property and mining areas, and daily life on the goldfields.

We look forward to exploring Sovereign Hill in Ballarat on Wednesday 6th May to see what life was like in the 1850s.

Resilience, Rights, and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) & Talking the Talk

RRRR learning supports our school values of Community, Respect, Excellence and Creativity. This term, students will focus on positive coping when faced with difficult situations.

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, develop a positive growth mindset, 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.

During Term 2, families will receive more information about the Talking the Talk sequence of lessons. Students will be guided through the topics of human sexuality, consent and respectful relationships developed and virtually presented by sexuality educator Vanessa Hamilton and implemented by trained Fairfield Primary School teachers.

Specialist Subjects

Performing Arts

Students will be reviewing how to play basic chords on the keyboard. They will then move on to performing music in a small group on an instrument of their choice before exploring layering and textures using GarageBand. Towards the end of the term, students will review their drama skills and prepare an audition piece for this years’ 5 & 6 musical.

Physical Education

Students will further practise movement skills that are used in track and field. They will continue to improve their technique to gain power in their shot put and discus throws, as well as develop their techniques for hurdles and high jump to improve their performances.

Science

Students are continuing with their work on living things, exploring the survival of organisms when the physical conditions of their environment are changed.

Visual Arts

Students will examine Vincent Namatjira’s Self Portrait (2022) as an inspiration to create an artwork in which the background is of Albert Namatjira's landscape with ghost gums, overlaid with an outlined self-portrait in pastel.

Here's to fantastic term of special events and lots of learning!

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

Year 5 News

Respect • Creativity • Excellence • Community • Since 1885

Issue 2 · 23 Apr 2026

In this issue