What a busy, fun and exciting term it has been in Grade 5/6. Students have really enjoyed and taken advantage of all the learning opportunities provided to them. With a busy specialist timetable including the introduction of Music with Mr. Simpson, the students have relished the extra experiences that are taking place.
This term students participated in Polwarth sports. While coming home with the trophy is a bonus, the focus of the day was for students to display their personal best and represent our school well. I was pleased to receive feedback from another school on the respect shown particularly by our 12/13-year-olds throughout the day and their willingness to help. It's wonderful to know that when our students leave the school grounds, they are mindful of our school values. House Sports will be taking place on Wednesday the 27th of March and is a great opportunity for our House Captains to show their leadership.
As students’ progress through their school years, it’s important to check how well they are learning the essential skills of reading, writing and numeracy. NAPLAN assesses the literacy and numeracy skills that students are learning through the school curriculum and allows parents/carers to see how their child is progressing against national standards and over time. NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process. It doesn’t replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance, but it can provide teachers with additional information about students’ educational progress. Congratulations to the Year 5 students for the way that they participated in NAPLAN over the past few weeks.
In Reading, students have continued to practice various strategies to support their understanding of the material they read. These strategies included understanding sequence, recognising cause and effect, finding word meaning in context, and interpreting the author’s purpose. Students have recorded their thinking processes and built their reading stamina over the course of the term.
In Writing, students continued to revise a range of text types and focus on their Writers’ Notebooks. They used the writing process (i.e., planning, composing, revising, editing, and publishing) to create texts of their choice. They delved deeper into the structure and features of narrative texts and worked to create their own stories, supporting preparation for NAPLAN. Top of Form
In Maths, students continued to have a strong focus on consolidating and extending their number skills. They were exposed to problems that required them to challenge their own thinking and to look for more than one solution. This aimed to develop more independent work habits and to challenge each individual student. Topics covered during that term have included, positive and negative integers, fractions and decimals, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division and financial Maths.
In Inquiry, students have begun to explore the Zones of Regulation. From identifying emotions to developing effective coping strategies, our students have looked at the art of self-awareness and emotional control. They have looked at managing how they think about their feelings and internal states.
I’m looking forward to a wonderful end to Term One where the 5/6 class has started off the year with a Bang!
- Mr Burrell
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