Year 5 Update Week 34

Unit of Inquiry

This week the students have been learning about the brain and how it controls emotions and behaviour. Students learned that they need to exercise their mind as well as their bodies and how, with exercise, the brain’s capacity develops, which improves intelligence and confidence. We started to build a bank of strategies to help to us to relax, reduce stress and consider how best to manage our worries. Students learned about the importance of sharing worries and they enjoyed making their own worry dolls.

We also did some relaxation exercises!

English

We have been immersing ourselves in a range of poetry, discussing the vocabulary used, making connections, inferring, visualising and considering our likes and dislikes. We have looked at different forms of poetry and the variety of devices authors can use within their writing. The students enjoyed having the opportunity to write their own poetry, choosing their preferred form and experimenting with the devices.

 

Maths

In maths this week we have been tackling word problems and multi-step word problems. This has given us a chance to go back and revisit some of the strategies we have learned earlier in the year. The children are learning to identify the key vocabulary in word problems to help ascertain which mathematical procedure they should use. They are being encouraged to draw the problem to help them to visualise.

 

In strand maths we have been looking at 24 hour and 12 hour time within word problems. The questions have involved reading information from timetables and calculating time lapses.

We have also been revisiting coordinates. Students enjoyed revising coordinates by playing battleships. 

   

Transdisciplinary Theme – Who We Are

Central Idea –  Choices we make allow individuals to experience well-being in their lives.

An inquiry into..

factors affecting our well-being (form)

strategies informed choices (responsibility)

coping with life changes (change)

Inferring is when we decode messages that are not explicit. 

A common method we use at Beacon Hill is

Inference = Text Clues + Background Knowledge

• Read the Weekly Update
• Mathletics – continue with the set tasks or feel free to try any others that you feel you want to practice.
• Prodigy – please continue on with your Prodigy online games.
• Quizlet – please continue to use Quizlet to help you learn your spelling words and meanings.
• Spelling –  The children are sent home their 10 personal words that they need to learn for the week. The will happen on a Monday for 5F, Wednesday for 5D and Friday for 5C. Please, can a parent (or responsible adult) support the children by...testing them (written or oral), getting them to put their words into interesting sentences (written or oral), discussing the meanings of the words, thinking about synonyms and antonyms of that word, discussing words with a similar meaning etc.
• Reading –  The children will be choosing leveled readers based on their own ability and are expected to read each night for at least 20mins at home with a parent.  The children need to record their reading in their Reading Journals and parents can you please sign your child’s journal each night? Journals need to be returned to school each morning to be checked and will come home each evening (except Friday).  Children may use Big Universe twice a week (only) as their choice of home reading
• Mandarin Home Learning –