Recently we have been completing our final formal assessments for the year on paper and online. We’ve been diving into our iPads answering questions and thinking about which answer to choose. We also discussed about the meaning of questions. The class also learnt to read carefully through the questions and a lot of unique techniques to improve our answering skills.

We also have been doing angles. We’ve studied about different types of angles, Right angle, Acute angle,Obtuse angle,Reflex angle and Straight angle. We also learnt how to use a protractor and how to draw angles. Some students from our class learnt about Supplementary and Complementary angles. Supplementary angle means that sets of angles that add up to a Right angle and a Complementary angle means that sets of angles that add up to a Straight angle.

It’s not the end, we have lots more to tell you. 5D has learnt about Transformation, there are three types of Transformation, Reflection, Translation,Rotation. We also learnt about line symmetry and rotational symmetry, we had a try at using rotational symmetry to the 8th order to create mandalas.

Not only have we been learning about geometry, but also about chance. To start with, we listed words associated with probability and learnt that probability ranges from 0-1. We have been using various games to learn about possible outcomes, how to record probability as a fraction, dependent and independent variables and how to record results.

Some of the games have been ‘Four Corners’, ‘Greedy Pig’, and a version of a game called ‘Kee’an’. ‘Kee’an’ is a traditional Indigenous game from North Queensland where players throw a large bone  (for example, an emu shin bone) with twine attached to it over a net into a pit or hole. Because we had no access to animal bones or pits, we used circles and pencils and played in pairs. We recorded the possible outcomes and then recorded out results. It was lots of fun…but we need some throwing practice!

As well as this, we have been using counters and recording our colour predictions based on fraction probability and learning that unlikely events can sometimes happen often because even if there is a small chance, there is still a chance.

By Amrit, Priya and Mrs Mac.

Numeracy

In Numeracy we started learning about angles. To start with we listened to a song about the different types of angles that was sung to the tune of YMCA by The Village People. This got us ready to go outside and look for different angles types in the environment, take photos of them and annotate the photos to demonstrate we knew what angles we had found.

CBL

In CBL we took some time to look at digital environments and the positive character strengths we can use when  we are online. In particular we looked at empathy by putting ourselves in the shoes of someone who wanted their privacy respected. We did this by playing a game on an app called The Lost Summer where we acted as someone making decisions that would affect another person online.

Buddies

Ever since Week 8 of last term we had been trying to get to the play pod with our Prep Buddies. The weather kept being a pain with it either being really rainy or really windy. Finally, this time around, we had lovely warm weather and were able to get creative with our younger friends. We not only played really well together but managed to get the equipment out and pack it all up again with cooperation and order.

Numeracy

In Numeracy we learnt about 3D shapes. We wrote in our books the 3D nets, the vertices, the edges and the faces for a shape of our choice. After that we made a model with tooth picks and play dough. We soon found out that the pyramids stood stronger than the prisms.

CBL

In C.B.L we learnt about different environments. To start with we listed different environments that we think are important to us. After that we made a Venn diagram about the similarities and differences between secondary and primary schools.

Writing

In Writing we learnt what is in a fable. We made a storyboard and started to draft a fable and everyone did a fable with two characters that were animals and that suited each other.

Written by Kovidh.

Numeracy

Volume

After learning about area we learnt about volume, which is 3 dimensions. At first we used a formula of V=LxWxH to work out how many cubic centimetres could fit inside a rectangular prism, but not all shapes are rectangular prisms so we investigated how using displacement of water can help us work out volume for different items. Again, we started by reading a story called ‘Archimedes’ Bath’ in which Archimedes cannot work out why the water level in his bath goes up when he gets in and goes down when he gets out. The problem Archimedes was experiencing was displacement – when an object is put into water it will move the water out of the way. Because of this, we could work out the volume of objects in the classroom. We measured how much water we started with, measured where the water level went up to when we added the object, and then used subtraction to find out how many millilitres of water were displaced.

Literacy

Text features

In Reading we have looked at text features in terms of the structure they have. We were given different text types and needed to think about what it had, such as a title, subheadings, diagrams, an ingredients list etc. When we found the features we annotated them and then wrote down why those features were included, for example, a star rating is the feature in a review and it’s included because it gives the reader a quick impression of what the author thought of the movie or book.

CBL

Solution Time

For CBL it has been our solution phase and we have been working hard to meet the Challenge of ‘Share the importance of curiosity.’ In order to do this we decided we would create plays that show what life would have been like if particular things weren’t created through curiosity. The creations we chose to create plays about where the AFL, refrigerators and eye treatments. In groups of six or seven we came up with a storyboard and a script and then moved on to rehearsing and creating props for our performances.

Contributions by Berkay and Mrs Mac.

Numeracy

How big is a foot?

In Numeracy we have been learning about measurement. We started off by learning about 1 dimension, which is length, and the importance of having standard units. We listened to a story called ‘How Big is a Foot?’ which is all about how using the length of a foot is a bad measurement of length because everyone’s foot size is different. After listening to the story we traced and cut out a picture of our foot, estimated how long we thought we were in our feet and a partner’s feet and used multiplication to calculate how tall we were.

Literacy

Roald Dahl

Did you know that on Friday 13th September it was International Roald Dahl Day? Well, it was! To celebrate this we have been learning about Roald Dahl’s life. We learnt about his books, his home life and his inspiration. We also read a book called ‘The Magic Finger’, a very interesting book about a girl who has a magic finger and can curse people.

Spelling with ‘ie’ or ‘ei’

Both in class and for Home Learning we have been looking at when to use ‘ie’ and when to use ‘ei’. To start with, we got into groups and looked through the books in our book boxes for as many works with ‘ie’ and ‘ei’ in them as possible. We recorded these down and had to think about what we noticed – when did we need to use ‘ie’ and when did we have to use ‘ei’? It was very difficult and we came up with some rules, but we also saw that English is a strange language with so many exceptions to rules!

Contributions by Josh, Raidyn, Abaan and Mrs Mac.

Quite a lot has been happening lately. There has been Book Week, where we dressed up and did a fun activity of creating weird superheroes by rolling a dice and using them in a comic book story, and  catch-ups with our buddies where we made paper aeroplanes together.

On Friday of Week 7 it was time for our student teacher, Ms Cook, to leave from our school. We had a party for our student teacher leaving and for Mohammed’s little sister, who turned two years old. There was pizza, cupcakes and ‘Fizzers’. Ms Cook did a really good job of observing and teaching small things to us.

Over the last few weeks we were learning about fractions and decimals so we can learn and improve our fractions and decimals skills. We also went to a website which had tasks of fractions called ‘Building a Bakery’. People at the start thought it was hard but now people feel confident with fractions and decimals thanks to the best student teacher, Ms Cook.

Other things that happened is that we did a science experiment of how mould grows onto bread with different substances of liquids. In Reading we have been learning about perspectives of different people in stories. We did perspectives from the books ‘Memoirs of a Goldfish’, ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and ‘Meet Ned Kelly’.

Lucas- “Miss Cook helped a lot on learning stuff about fractions.”

Berkay- “I thought I didn’t learn anything about fractions but now I learnt lots about fractions.”

By Alfie, Solomon and Mrs Mac.

Hello again everyone and welcome to our blog about what has been happening in weeks 3 and 4 in 5D.

Spelling tricks

We have learnt about ways to help us remember how to spell tricky words through the use of mnemonic. A mnemonic is where you take something that you have trouble remembering and attach it to something you can easily remember. For example, if you cannot remember the order of the planets in our Solar System, you simply make up a sentence where the first letter of every word stands for the first letter of each planet. You end up with My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos.

We used this sort of trick to help use remember parts of words we were getting wrong, like saying ‘I would like a piece of pie’ to remember that ‘piece’ begins with ‘pie’ or ‘the principal is my pal’ to remember the spelling of the person and not the homophone of principle.

Numeracy

We have continued to learn by fractions. This fortnight we have been learning about how to place them on number lines, how to write equivalent fractions, improper and improper fractions and how to add fractions which have the same denominator. There has been a lot of hard work! But we have also played some games to help us get quicker with our fractions such as ‘Beat the Teacher’ and ‘I Have, Who Has’.

Reading and Writing

In reading and writing we have been looking at non-rhyming poetry. We used our knowledge of poetry to teach our prep buddies how to write a poem of their own and have been thinking about how to make our work appealing when publishing by considering which colours and fonts suit the mood and theme of our writing.

CBL

As part of or ‘investigate’ phase of CBL we are beginning to look at the creations and contributions people in Australian history have made to science. To start with, we are considering what life is like because of the inventions and actions of others and what it would be like without them. This will help us reach our goal of being able to understand how curiosity has shaped Australia.

Welcome Back and to Term 3!

In 5D we are viewing Term 3 as a new start – one semester is over and a new one is beginning: a chance to reset and be more efficient now that we know how things work in Grade 5. To help with this,  we reviewed our classroom expectations and guidelines. Each group was assigned a different item to check over, make any adjustments to, re-publish, and share with the class. The expectations up for review were:

• morning and afternoon routines
• behaviours when there is a CRT
• bathroom breaks and water breaks
• iPad use
• Classroom Agreement
• logical consequences

We also held a Community Meeting to establish what our classroom goal will be. This term we are starting off with ‘Work with people who you do not usually work with’. Often we try to just work with the same friends but we need to learn how to collaborate and negotiate with a wide range of people because that is a skill we will need in life. We are also a classroom community and know each other now so it is not as scary as it was at the start of the year.

We have wasted no time getting back into things and have started looking at our new topics for the term. In Numeracy our focus is fractions (for Number and Algebra) and length, perimeter and area (for Measurement and Geometry). We have also been learning some new number fluency games, including ‘Get out of my House’ and ‘Grab the Ruler’, to help us practice automatic recall and efficiency.

In Literacy our beginning focus is on poetry. For Reading, we are examining the different structures and techniques writers have used when creating poetry texts and in Writing we are putting those structures and language features into our own pieces.

For CBL, our journey into the Big Idea of Curiosity has begun. We have been tuning into our specific focus of how curiosity has shaped Australia by viewing various provocations. To do this, we have using the Learning Assets of being able to show our thinking in various ways and of encouraging others to participate. Some of the ways we have shown are thinking are through cut and paste sorts, sketch-noting and circle webs.

This is a just a sample of what we have been up to.

Stay tuned for more adventures from 5D.

Hello everyone,

As you would all know, doing the roll call in the morning and afternoon is very important to make sure everyone who is meant to be in the classroom is actually in the classroom. But did you know that doing the roll call can also be really fun and use our poetry skills? Well it can and this is what we found out when we did the Shabooya Roll call last week!

We watched a short video from a  TV show of the characters doing this special type of roll call and heard one of them sing:

“My name is Pam,

I like to paint.

You think you’re better?

Oh no you aint!”

When we had a look at this little rhyme we saw that the pattern of rhyming words followed a pattern of ABCB. With this knowledge in mind, we went off and wrote our own ABCB poem about ourselves and came back to the group to sing our own Shabooya Roll Call.

We hope you like it!

Hello everyone! It’s time to have a look at some of the things we have been doing in 5D.

SVAT

Our Student Voice Action Team members (Priya and Fatima) shared with the class what they had been doing at their meetings. We learnt about the data they had examined about the attitudes of students in Grade 5/6. They explained to us how a lot of students have been feeling and told us about a way to get feedback from people, called a Parking Lot feedback form. It has four parts.

1. What is going well?
2. What can we improve?
3. What are the issues and ideas?
4. What are the questions?

We wrote our feedback onto sticky notes and put them onto the Parking Lot sheet. Priya and Fatima then summarised everyone’s contributions to share at their next meeting.

Types of Words

To help us remember what nouns, verbs and adjectives are we played two games with a partner. In one of them, we needed to roll a special dice which had the words ‘noun’, ‘verb’ and ‘adjective’ written on the different sides. Depending on what we rolled, moved our counter to an image on the game board that represented the word type. The winner was the person who got to the final adjective first.

Our second game was where we had a list items and a stack of cards with different adjectives written on them. In turns, we turned over an adjective card and had to decide which item on the list it could match. If we couldn’t find a match, we had to decide on a list item we wouldn’t bother trying use. The winner was the person who was able to put an adjectives next to the most number of items on the list.

Apostrophes of Contractions

A common mistake we have been making in our writing has been putting our apostrophes in the wrong position when contracting (or shortening) words.

To show how there is a wide variety of ways people in the class are writing the word ‘doesn’t’, Mrs Mac said she would randomly pick four people and have them come to the whiteboard and have-a-go at spelling the word. So she used Class Dojo to make sure those four people were indeed picked at random and guess what??? There were four different ways to write ‘doesn’t’ written on the board!

So off we went and did some investigating to work out what the right spelling was. In groups we wrote down contracted and non-contracted forms of words. We then studied our lists to see what was in common. Here is what we found:

• the apostrophe replaces a letter/s that has/have been removed
• the letters that are taken out belong to the second word
• there is always a vowel that is removed

To prove that we could use these rules to correctly write ‘doesn’t’ we each wrote it onto a sticky note and our correct answer was used as a ticket out of the room for lunch break. We’re happy to say we all got out on time because we all learnt how to use the rules to help us.

Bookwork Goals 

This week our class has been focusing on showing pride in our work by making sure our bookwork is neat and orderly. Each time we begin a new task we must rule a line to separate it from the previous activity and make sure we include a title and date in red pen.

Our work has been looking fantastic, don’t you agree?

We are really proud of how our work has improved and are hoping this is the beginning of some really good habits.