Prep | Year 5 News
Coming up in Year 5
UOI
Week 1-3 How we Express Ourselves
Mathematics
Week 1-3 Chance
English
Writing/Reading
Weeks 1-3 Imaginative: Poetry
UOI
In week 7, Year 5 began the How We Express Ourselves unit. Through this, the boys will inquire into the idea that movement is a universal language that can be interpreted, appreciated and created in different ways. So far, they have researched different eras of dance throughout history. Moving forward, the boys will learn historical and cultural dances, choreograph their own dance, and explore how movement can be linked to healthy mental and physical wellbeing.
In STEAM, students were challenged to code a dance; they found that coding had many similarities to dancing: repeated blocks of code are like repeated movements, we can label a block just like we label a movement, and we need to run our programme to debug it just like we rehearse a dance. Students could continue this learning in the holidays at https://code.org/dance.
Write a Book in a Day
On Tuesday 15 June, the boys participated in a Write a Book in a Day event, organised by Mrs Nel. All boys successfully collaborated to write engaging narratives with illustrations, which will be printed as books. This was a great opportunity for the boys to apply and develop their approaches to learning, and to particularly work through the challenges involved in negotiating in collaborative groups. We look forward to sharing the finished books with other students in the Library.
Mandarin
How We Express Ourselves has seen lots of collaboration: In Mandarin boys designed their seal signature and then made a stamp in Art. In Mandarin, boys inquired into Kung Fu and Tai Chi, they then practised their physical moves in PE. In Week 7, a Kung Fu master came to deliver a Chinese martial art workshop. The workshop helped students to learn more moves to make them stronger and more flexible. They also experienced the cultural beliefs- meditation for mind and spirit, while doing some Tai Chi moves.
Mathematics
In Year 5, the boys have begun identifying, describing, continuing and creating number patterns. The boys have learnt to create a table of values to help organise their thinking, use this table to find the recursive rule in the pattern (the changes that happen through the value of terms) and the function rule (the rule we can apply to any term in the sequence to find the value of the term. Using these mathematical elements, the boys have been able to identify where certain coordinates would land in a graph involving repeated patterns. The next steps in our learning are to identify patterns involving fractions and fractals.
English
In English, the boys have been writing, editing and publishing a historical narrative. We have been focussing on using grammatical structures for purpose, using character voice to connect person, values and historic setting, including a theme or moral in our story, and using figurative language to describe character actions and feelings. The stories have provided a rich opportunity for our young authors to explore different ways to engage an audience but keeping true aspects of the historical event intact.
The boys have now begun a unit on poetry. We have analysed the poem ‘Stream School’ and identified the purposeful use of personification in this poem. The boys then created their own poems, focussing on purposeful personification. The next step in our learning is to analyse an ode, and then use our understanding of how to write an ode to create our own poem.
Writing samples:
The world I want to be (NAIDOC writing)
By Jaydon Chang
I smell the radiance of the country,
The land of grassy plains.
The smells that bring back memories,
Throughout the sun and rain.
The crisp of fire and fall,
Fresh in life around me.
The wind of Kookaburras,
And the bustlingness of bees.
The succulence around the land,
Food, flood and family.
The aroma of gum trees,
Looks like pure fantasy.
But life is not the same,
The cultures gone and angered.
Our soul is broken through the land,
Since they came and anchored.
The scent is fading, the life is crushed,
With white ghosts crowding like grains of dust.
Their ways of dirt, malicious and cruel,
Is turning our customs into rust.
But In my heart, the dream still lives,
It thrives and grows and drowns the past.
As we are seeing the future creep,
Our culture keeps, unsurpassed.
Historical Narrative
(July 19th, 1848 America, First protest for women in America)
“Deeds, not words!” the fierce women of America screamed with all their might.
“We will break down your brick walls,” Emila Stregthhood shouted. Her words shot like bullets at anyone in their path. Grey clouds, dirty streets and thousands of feet trampled across the disgraceful, rocky, cement ground. The army of women marched like ants, fearless in the face of the brick wall that was the guards.
“We will break windows and burn things, because war is the only thing men will listen to,” Violet Cambridge’s words rang out through the crowd, stoking the flames of courage. The best protection a woman can have is courage, and they knew they needed every ounce of it to break down this wall and earn their rights.
The officers stood side by side, solid as a brick wall ready for a rehearsal, not a war. They waited for the oncoming army of ‘mice’ to draw closer. No way could the rodents penetrate this stable wall of brick. Excitedly waiting with little patience, the officers were amused and laughed bitterly at their opponents. A thought had possessed all of the soldiers and it was that a woman had no place in this brick wall, nor had any place in this world. A Man’s World. Seconds from a winner’s glory, the officers had lost almost all their patience for the mice ahead of them.
The women shot like a gun towards the brick wall with the weapons, knowing that they gain the rights now or never. Shields smashed against jaws crushing teeth and destroying hope. The women didn’t give up, they fought with all their might and strength pushing holes through the filthy brick wall. Finally, the women made a large hole in the wall. Like a hoard of buffalo, they charged through the gap tramping on the men trying to stop this hoard of hope. But then a large number of men surrounded the hoard, stopping them from getting out. The women looked at one man that owed them, James k. Polk the government.
By Dominic Alvaro (5H)
