Weekly Learning Recap – Year 5/6

This week, we began our Library sessions, where students explored different book genres and read for fun and enjoyment. It was wonderful to see them engaging with a variety of texts and sharing their reading interests with one another.

In Mathematics, students expanded their understanding of Place Value, focusing on unitising and renaming decimals and the multiplicative structure of ×10 and ÷10. Through hands-on activities, they explored how numbers shift in value based on their place in the number system, reinforcing connections between whole numbers and decimals.

To help reinforce this learning at home, we encourage parents to use everyday experiences to highlight the use of decimals in real life. One great way is to explore money when shopping or collecting change. Ask your child to look at a receipt and identify the whole dollar amount and the cents, reinforcing that the decimal point separates whole dollars from parts of a dollar (cents).

For example, if a total comes to $7.85, encourage them to:

• Identify the whole dollars ($7) and the cents (85¢).
• Rename and regroup the amount in different ways, such as:

• 7 dollars and 85 cents.
• 785 cents (since there are 100 cents in a dollar).
• 7 ones and 85 hundredths (applying decimal place value thinking).
• 7 ones, 8 tenths, and 5 hundredths (showing place value understanding).

During English, we have continued with our novel The Silver Donkey, analysing key events, character motivations, and new vocabulary. In our Literacy block, we have begun our Word Origins study, which explores the history, structure, and meaning of words. This study helps students understand where words come from, how they have evolved over time, and how different parts of a word (prefixes, root/base words, and suffixes) contribute to its meaning. We have really been enjoying investigating the origins of different words, discovering where they originated on the world map, and exploring how they have (or haven’t) evolved over time. It has been fascinating to see connections between languages and history through words, and we are incredibly proud of how quickly the students have picked up and embraced this new program.

We are also so impressed of how our Year 5/6 students conducted themselves during the Athletics Carnival. They demonstrated leadership by cheering on and supporting the younger students, showing kindness, encouragement, and respect throughout the day. It was fantastic to see them leading by example and fostering a positive school spirit.