Grade 5: Week 5

This week has been short but busy. The children finished their biographies and spent a lot of time editing and improving to make sure that they are engaging for the reader and text appropriate. Grade 5 created a checklist and assessed their own and their peers work against the criteria. They're excited to share these with you at the Celebration of Learning in a couple of weeks. In guided reading, the children have continued to develop their reading skills by reading texts narrated from the perspective of two children during World War Two, one who lived in Japan and the other in the USA. The children made some interesting connections between the texts and our unit of inquiry. 

In maths, we began to apply our place value knowledge to the four operations. Using base 10 counters and bar models, the children worked to create visual models of written addition and subtraction equations and calculations in order to support their understanding. Grade 5 worked together to look for patterns and make predictions before they completed their equations so that they could be more efficient mathematicians. 

'No matter how small we are, we can still make a difference.'

Grade 5 have been following the news over the last few weeks and making connections to the work we have been doing in class. We've been very intrigued by the work of Greta Thunberg and were amazed by the number of children who took part in the environmental protests that took place around the world last Friday. In inquiry, we looked at campaign and protest posters. Together the children analysed the colours and symbols, discussed what they meant and thought about what impact the posters had on them.