Grade Six Term 2 Curriculum News 2023

This Term Newsletter will provide you with information about your child’s upcoming teaching and learning experiences in the new term. There is also plenty of additional information provided via Compass throughout the school year, so please make a point of touching base regularly.

Welcome back to another exciting term! We hope everyone had a happy and safe Easter break with their families, friends and loved ones. The Grade 6 Teachers are proud of the way students settled in during Term 1 to make a great start to the year, in both a social and academic setting. This was further encouraged by a fantastic camp at Kangaroobie where students had an opportunity to push themselves out of their comfort zones, develop their resilience and organisation skills, and support their peers in a range of activities.
We would like to congratulate the student representatives that were elected as House and Arts Captains, Environmental Leaders and Student Representative Council members. It has also been brilliant to see most of our students wearing their brand new, Year 6 t-shirts and jumpers with excitement and pride!

LITERACY
In Reading, the students will continue to refine their ability to use a range of reading strategies independently. This term, we will continue to explore a range of texts to enhance students’ understanding, whilst maintaining a love for reading by making use of our classroom libraries. We will be working towards students further developing their ability to identify and articulate the skills they are using while they read, including inferring, analysing, critiquing and summarising. At home, you can continue to support your child by engaging in rich discussions around the texts they are reading. At the senior level, we place significant importance on the discussions about texts, and not just listening to your child read aloud.
In Writing, students will continue to develop their passion for writing as part of the Writer’s Workshop. Students will be encouraged to experiment with different text structures including memoirs, narrative and informative texts. They will utilise language features identified in their reading and experiment with them in their own writing. Should you wish to support your child at home, you may like to focus on supporting them to correctly select and use various forms of punctuation, particularly when editing their writing. We would also love to see students focusing on quality over quantity – short, sharp, well written pieces are a great start.

NUMERACY
In Numeracy this term, there will be a focus on problem solving strategies and real-life problems involving the four operations (+-x÷), measurement and time. This will include using a wide variety of strategies which will be discussed and applied in differentiated groups and whole class activities. Students will have the opportunity to learn through project-based tasks and open-ended questions, which will cater for and extend the diverse range of learners in the classroom.
At this level we expect that most students know their times tables (1-12) and can recall these quickly.
We ask that families assist learning at home by encouraging children to play games involving counting, money, time and number facts. Please ensure your child has access to Essential Assessment on a regular basis as this supports the learning in our classroom.

INQUIRY
Throughout Term 2, as part of our Inquiry Unit - ‘Australia- Government, Law and Democracy,’ students will continue to explore what it means to be an Australian Citizen and how laws are made. At the completion of this unit, students will then investigate how energy from a variety of sources can be used to generate electricity.

The iPads will continue to be used daily, therefore it is imperative that these are at school, fully functional and charged every day.

Each year level team has provided their families with a detailed newsletter such as this. If you are interested in reading about all the exciting things happening across the rest of the school, these can be accessed online at our school website from early next week.

We are proud of the students’ attitudes and successes from Term 1 and look forward to the students continuing to push themselves whilst maintaining high behavioural expectations in Term 2.

Kind Regards,
The Grade 6 Team

24th May 2023 Curriculum Day - no students on site