Yr5 Weekly Update – 23/9/16

Unit of Inquiry

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

During our unit of inquiry this week the students have been exploring the third line of inquiry finding out about how the access to rights can look different. They have been using their viewing skills to look at collections of pictures depicting the right that has most interested them choosing from the rights to play, education, sleep and food. They completed a visible thinking routine Claim, Support, Question where they had to make a claim about what they had looked at and then had to provide evidence from what they had seen to support their claim. This prompted some questions related to why the access to the right was different and now the students are pursuing their research to find out more to answer their questions. This will lead into the summative assessment next week when the students will be showing their understanding of the central idea by presenting what they have found out.

In order to support the students in furthering their understanding, Miss Kaye and Miss Leedale gave two very interesting presentations based on their experiences of working in schools in Cambodia and Uganda. Our children were able to see what life is like for many children not as fortunate as them and how important the right to education is considered by other communities. The discussions around the similarities and differences to their experience of education highlighted how lucky they are but also how being able to access education, even without the many resources we have, was seen as the way to enable the children to increase their chances of a better quality of life.

Literacy

This week we have begun to focus on developing reading strategies to improve the students’ comprehension. We have been focusing on using the context to help work out unknown words. This is a very important skill, as being able to combine context clues with students’ prior knowledge is key to developing a better understanding of what has been read. Ask your child to tell you how they can use the context to help them work out a new word. Encourage them to identify words they don’t know when they are reading and to use what they have been learning to try to work them out. The more practise the students have of using this strategy the better their comprehension will be.

We have also been inquiring into persuasive texts, identifying how they are organised and what special language features they have. The students have practiced their own persuasive writing by writing a letter to a character from the story ‘The Can Man’ to suggest what he should do. After creating a checklist to remind them of the key features, the students then peer assessed their first draft to identify ways to improve and are in the process of writing a second draft applying their learning.

Maths

This has been the last week on exploring place value and the students have been applying their knowledge of place value and furthering their understanding of decimals through partitioning, renaming, rounding and ordering. They completed a summative assessment at the end of the week in which they have shown us how much their understanding has developed. Next week we will be moving onto inquiring into shape and space.

This is one way the students have applied their understanding of place value.

Other news

As well as all of the learning engagements described above the students have also completed the INCAS assessments. These assessments cover reading, spelling, general maths and mental arithmetic. We will use the results to inform our next steps for the students and they will be available to you later on this term.

We have also participated in a session with the LEAP van educators, not in the van this time but in our classrooms exploring the very important issue of cyber safety. The students were able to discuss how to keep themselves safe online, identifying some dos and don’ts to ensure their personal details do not end up being revealed. The students were given a booklet with a ‘chatterbox’ to make to help them think about various issues related to cyber safety and what they should do to stay safe. If you have an opportunity, spend some time playing with the chatterbox with your child to reinforce the important messages.

Homework

• 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.
• Discuss how your access to the right you are inquiring into is different to someone else’s access to that right.

5W students using clay to represent one of the rights they have been inquiring into.