Grade 6 Term 1 Curriculum Newsletter

This Term Newsletter will provide you with information about your children’s upcoming teaching and learning experiences in the new term. To find out what other year levels are doing, please refer to the school’s website. There is also plenty of additional information provided via Compass throughout the school year, so please make a point of touching base regularly.

The Grade 6 team would like to welcome all the families back for an exciting 2021. After a complicated and challenging year in 2020, we are setting our eyes forward on the year ahead and believing in great things! We’d like to formally welcome two new members into the Grade 6 team: Kate Miller and Olivia Bell.
We have hit the ground running with students eagerly applying for many of the leadership opportunities. Whilst the successful candidates will be recognised in due course, we would like to congratulate all students who moved themselves out of their comfort zones to write, practise and present their speeches. We have an exceptional group of leaders within our Grade 6 cohort this year and would like to remind all students that you don’t need to be wearing a badge to positively lead and impact the people around you. Every student is a leader in their own right.

Compass is the preferred communication tool across the school. Parents are encouraged to use the program to inform teachers of any non-urgent matters or clarify any questions. If the matter is more urgent, please contact the school administration or make an appointment via Compass to see us.

LITERACY
In Reading, we are striving for a genuine love for reading by sharing favourite books, authors, book series and genres. Please foster your child's engagement in reading by joining the local library, sharing books, talking about ideas, events, new vocabulary, reading together and by offering engaging texts that your child can discuss and will enjoy. We ask that students use their knowledge of what a ‘Just Right’ text is and choose a variety of genres to broaden their textual knowledge (including a balance of fiction, non-fiction, challenging, easy and ‘just right’ texts). Please listen to your child read occasionally and talk about the texts, including community and world events and issues.

In Writing, the students have previously used their Writer’s Notebooks to record and draw upon a range of ideas and experiences. This year the Grade 6 department will continue to place a high emphasis on this as part of a wider school initiative for student growth in writing. We ask that the students bring any souvenirs, artefacts, photos and images to spark their writing thoughts and heighten an interest in writing. Currently, students are preparing their resources for the new Writers Workshop approach which will lay the foundations for our whole writing program. Each week, students will be encouraged to further inquire about, develop and apply spelling strategies and increase their knowledge and accuracy of words and word structure through a holistic spelling approach taught during the Reading and Writing block.

NUMERACY
In Mathematics, the students are learning about a range of concepts, skills and strategies in Number and Place Value including reading, writing and ordering numbers and understanding the value of certain quantities. As we build confidence with Place value through the term, students will be revisiting operations and problem solving using the four operations.

By Grade 6, we expect that most students know their times tables (1-12) and can recall these quickly. In addition to this, the knowledge of basic number facts (addition, subtraction and division) is also expected (e.g. 35-9=, 48÷6=, 43+8 =). The Grade 6 department will place an emphasis on using a variety of strategies to solve challenging problems and as we improve our knowledge and understanding of this, we expect students to identify and use the most efficient strategies to solve problems.

Families can support at home by encouraging your child to play games involving counting and number facts, using money, performing measurement tasks and linking maths to real life situations. We also encourage students to access Mathletics & Essential Assessment on a regular basis.

www.mathletics.com.au www.essentialassessment.com.au. Over the course of the year, we hope that students will be able to access Khan Academy as another resource for numeracy.

INQUIRY
At the beginning of the year, students will engage in a range of tasks to get to know each other. This will form the basis of a collaborative and co-operative working community for the remainder of the year. Throughout Term 1 and 2, as part of our Inquiry Unit, ‘Australia’s Turning Points’, students will be exploring the history of Australia by investigating the following key questions:

1. What are the key events that have shaped Australia as a nation?

2. What does democracy mean?

3. What are the 3 levels of government?

4. How and where are the rules and laws made?

5. What is multiculturalism and what effects have cultural groups had on Australia’s identity?

A reminder that Department of Education policy stipulates that phones, watches or other devices with communicative ability cannot be carried by students while on the school premises during school hours, without Principal approval. For further details please refer to the policy documents on Compass and the Lara Lake PS website.

The Year Six Team