Yr5 Weekly Update – 09/9/16

Unit of Inquiry

Central Idea: Children have rights and responsibilities that can look different

This week we have explored the second line of inquiry into what are the responsibilities that come with rights? Students have considered what their responsibilities are for the rights they identified as most important to them. They also discussed who else has responsibility for ensuring these rights, thinking about what those responsibilities are. Some have also looked into what the impact would be if people did not follow through with their responsibilities.

We have also spent some time unpacking the key approaches to learning, Learner Profile and attitude that we are focusing on during this unit. The students were able to suggest definitions for accepting responsibility and dialectical thought and considered what it means to be open-minded by sorting scenarios into ones that were examples of being open-minded and ones that were examples of not being open-minded. This prompted some lively discussion and was a great example of dialectical thought too! The attitude were are developing is empathy and we began looking at this through reading a story ‘The Can Man’ to identify how the key character might feel at different points in the story.

Literacy

In Literacy we have used our reading skills to determine the purpose and audience of a range of texts. Identifying why the author wrote the text, using evidence to support our ideas and explaining how features of the text help us to identify who the text was written for. We have made posters to remind the students of the many different purposes for writing and who their possible audience could be to support their own writing. We have also answered the question ‘What do good writers do?’ and related this to the six traits of writing that we should consider as we are writing. We have also continued to work on our writers’ notebooks with many students enthusiastically choosing to add ideas independently. These will be a great source of inspiration for the students when they are deciding what they would like to write about.

 

Maths

In Maths we have continued to explore place value moving onto decimals. The students have used the base ten materials to represent decimals to two decimal places. Whilst many students were confident in representing the numbers they found ordering them much more challenging and we will continue to work on that. Some students have looked at renaming numbers with decimals using number expanders.

 

Home Learning

• Twenty minutes daily reading;
• Try some of the online maths activities to reinforce learning in place value – students have been given their login and passwords for MyMaths.
• Share and discuss with your parents what you have learnt about the responsibilities that come with children’s rights. Ask them what their responsibilities were when they were your age. How might these responsibilities have affected their rights?

 

Reminder

No school for students next Wednesday and Thursday due to our professional development days and we all have Friday off after celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival. We hope you all have a lovely extended weekend!

Kind regards,

The Year Five Team