Term 4 Grade 6 Curriculum News 2020

This Term Newsletter will provide you with information about your children’s upcoming teaching and learning experiences in the new term.

These Newsletters are provided to all parents across the school, so that everyone is aware of the great things happening at our school, even if you don’t have a child in this level. Of course, you may choose to read only those Newsletters affecting your children.

There is also plenty of additional information provided via Compass throughout the school year, so please make a point of touching base regularly.

General

Welcome to Term 4 2020 and onsite learning again! The year 2020 has thrown considerable curveballs at us but we have coped well and it’s really exciting to get back to some sort of normality in Term 4. We are excited to have students back onsite and we look forward to making the most of the remainder of 2020 for our Grade 6 cohort this year. We hope all of the students end the year on a high by demonstrating great leadership and maturity as they spend their remaining weeks as a Grade 6 student before moving onto Secondary School.

Literacy

Nurturing our students’ love of reading is a passion for all of the Grade 6 teachers at LLPS. It has been pleasing to see the students’ independence as readers develop even at home during Remote Learning. This term, we will be continuing to challenge the students with texts that will enhance their vocabulary, knowledge and make them think deeply about world issues, preparing them for high school. We look forward to seeing the students further utilise our extensive classroom library to engage in a wider range of authors and text types. Students have also been given access to the online reading resources ’Epic’ and ’Sunshine Online’, in order to increase the range of fiction and non-fiction texts available to students. Throughout the term, we will focus on using the comprehension strategies to support our understanding during reading, particularly summarising, retelling, inferencing and questioning.

We want to continue to foster the love of writing in Term 4, so we will be refining the students’ skills of the writing process through ‘free-choice’ in their Writer’s Notebook. Students will engage in the planning, drafting and publishing of texts and explore the key structures and language features of text types. Our Writer’s Workshop program will offer opportunities for students to pursue what interests them, to develop their writing style and find their ‘voice’ when writing to persuade, inform and entertain the reader.

In Spelling, students will continue to develop their spelling skills by understanding that a combination of the sound, the history and the meaning of the word influences its spelling. Students will build their meta-awareness of words by continuing to develop their knowledge of four interrelated threads: phonology, orthography, etymology and morphology.

Numeracy

In Mathematics, students will continue to develop their knowledge of ‘Number’ by completing a unit of work throughout the term using written and mental strategies to solve problems using all four processes (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). Students will be encouraged to use estimation to ensure they understand the question. They will be supported to select and apply appropriate problem solving strategies and explain their reasoning behind this. There will be an emphasis placed on the problem solving process so that students follow the following structure - Understand, Plan, Solve and Check. They will also have a ‘Measurement and Geometry’ focus by categorising and comparing various angles, investigating shape transformations and converting units of measurement while investigating volume and capacity.

Inquiry

During our Inquiry unit this term, we will be exploring how to manage the transitions and changes that occur during puberty. Students will continue to plan and practise strategies that promote health, safety and wellbeing.