17 Mar 2017

Yr5 Weekly Update – 03/17/17

Central Idea: Humans continue to migrate for many reasons

 

UOI

This week found us tuning into our new Unit of Inquiry. The big idea we will be exploring over the next five weeks is ‘Humans continue to migrate for many reasons.’ This falls under the transdisciplinary theme, Where We are in Place and Time.  As part of this tuning in phase, we rotated through different Year 5 classrooms to find out about the many reasons people choose or are forced to migrate. There were some interesting conversations to be heard, opinions to be shared, and questions to be asked.  This would be a great time to share with your child your own (or a family member’s) migration story.  If you do have an interesting migration story to tell and are feeling really brave, we would warmly welcome you to come in and share your narrative with your child’s class.  Just send a message to the class teacher and a convenient time can be arranged.

 

Literacy

Luckily, poetry will continue to be a focus for us over the next few weeks. We’ve carried on reading and enjoying a range of poems and have begun analysing common language features and structures of different forms. We are also beginning to explore specific poetic devices such as alliteration, similes/metaphors, imagery, and personification and discussed how authors might use these to affect the reader.  From these investigations, we were able to create checklists to help guide our future efforts at writing specific types of poems. Please try encouraging your child to find examples of poetic devices in books they are reading at home.  Here is a link with definitions and examples of these devices:

http://storytrail.com/poetry/poeticdevices_elementary.htm

 

Maths

What a fun Maths Week we’ve had!  On Tuesday afternoon, KGV students were kind enough to host a maths challenge for our Year Five students.  Everyone enthusiastically tackled the various challenges and tried their best to earn lots of points. On the same day, we saw students wearing some very interesting outfits! It was fantastic to see the effort so many had made to dress up in a mathematical theme! On Wednesday, the Year 6 students visited and played many of the impressive maths games the Year Fives worked so hard on planning and preparing.  The next day, the Year Sixes reciprocated by presenting their own games for us to play. This was a great opportunity for students to collaborate and share their mathematical expertise!

In addition, we have spent a session exploring different strategies for dividing numbers. A couple of examples include using repeated subtraction or fact families to solve division problems. Please see the links below to see how these strategies work.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/factsheet/ma12pape-l1-f-division-using-repeated-subtraction

http://www.sneakyteaching.com/math-tips-tricks/using-fact-families-to-solve-math-problems/

 

Homelearning:

  • 20 minutes of daily reading
  • Continue to use MyMaths to review multiplication facts.

 

Poet of the day:

As part of this poetry unit we would like each student to have an opportunity to read and recite a poem in front of their peers. Each child can sign up to be the “Poet of the Day”. They will be responsible to either write an original poem or find a poem that they enjoy to read aloud to the class. The students should also be prepared to share with the class why they have selected or written that poem. Please help support your child by allowing them opportunities to recite their poem at home in front of an audience.