Religion
This term we are studying a very important topic in Religion - “Justice Starts With Me”. This is a pivotal unit in Religious Education for our year fives as it has a strong focus on civics and citizenship and the idea of students taking positive leadership roles within our school and community. It is a unit that teaches students the importance of positive action and working towards making our community stronger and safer through what we do, not what we say. This unit is designed to help our Year 5 students prepare as they take on the very important role as senior leaders at St Mary’s and in the community.

English
In English, Year 5 have been studying Tom Appleby, Convict Boy by renowned Australian author Jackie French. We have focused on expanding our vocabulary by taking interesting words from the novel, researching their meaning and constructing sentences using the who,when,what,where,why technique. Year 5 also focused on creating engaging topic sentences in order to introduce factual information in an interesting way to hook the reader when writing an information report.

All students in Year 5 have continued on with Reading Mastery which has been very successful in improving oral reading fluency and giving students the opportunity to read with peers who are at or around the same level. Spelling Mastery has continued to be very successful with a number of students fast approaching one hundred lessons for the year.

Maths
Connecting Maths Concepts (CMC) is proving to be a great success here at St Mary’s, with students getting one full hour of maths content each day, aimed directly at their level. Our Year 5 class is spread across three groups for the first hour of the day for Maths which has seen some very pleasing results.

Each week, we look to consolidate learning in specific mathematical concepts with ninety minutes of OCHRE mathematics lessons targeted at specific areas in line with the curriculum. Last term we completed in-depth units in angles and geometry as well as data. This term we will begin by learning about chance, probability and odds.

Art
In Visual Arts, Year 5 students have been studying Sandra Silberzweig, an intriguing artist who suffers from a rare condition called synesthesia. They then came up with their own version inspired by her work. Students paid special attention to the way they drew the eyes, nose and mouth, emulating Sandra’s style. Students could change the shape, placement and size of the eyes, nose and mouth and were encouraged to use their imagination to come up with their own details and patterns within the neck and above the eyes.

Year 5 has been working incredibly hard over terms three and four to master a very complex dance routine for our school musical - Mary Poppins Jr. We have spent half an hour every week with the wonderful Hayley VW, learning, practising and refining our part which is the longest and most complex dance class routine in the show.

Science
Last term we completed a fantastic unit on Earth and Space Sciences, studying our solar system and the Earth’s place in it. Over the course of the unit we explored planets, moons, dwarf planets and various other characteristics of our solar system. We built our own telescopes by experimenting with and measuring multiple different sized lenses. Our major project was a huge success, with students creating replicas of existing satellites such as Voyager, New Horizon and Himawari and adding features they thought would enhance the satellites capabilities. This term we will be studying the properties of light in our physics unit including the speed of light and the way we observe light. Year 5 will be conducting interesting experiments to determine whether light is moving as a wave or as particles.

PDHPE
This term in PDHPE Year 5 has been learning about tactics and the value of improving specific skills and implementing them during game time. The first two weeks have seen Year 5 take to the court in Netball which has pushed a number of students out of their comfort zone. It has been great to see students use transferable skills from their chosen sports, polish them with fun drills and then implement them on the court. Games proved to be very competitive with some fantastic sportsmanship.

Geography
Our second semester this year has allowed us to study a range of geographical topics from North America, to Europe, to our very own backyard here in Australia. We followed up an in depth study of the Murray/Darling river system with a look at our local area and how zoning affects the development of our region. This term we will be studying bushfires and floods. After the devastating bushfires of 2020, it has been a really valuable experience for us to look back at that time and reflect and to also study how we can mitigate the effects of a bushfire moving forward.

Mr James Campbell
Teacher 5 Blue