Grade 5 – Term 1 Activities

Reading- Narrative Response

During this unit, students will be learning a variety of comprehension strategies and how to respond to a variety of texts. This will involve: 

  • Identifying main ideas and themes within a text 
  • Investigate the features of narratives 
  • Using evidence to support a viewpoint
  • Inferring meaning in texts and understanding different character traits.

Writing- Writing to Entertain

During this unit, students will be working on developing their skills to create a piece with the purpose of entertaining. This will involve: 

  • Using points of inspiration to generate ideas
  • Development of effective descriptive language
  • Understanding the importance of each stage of the writing process (plan, draft, revise, edit, conferencing, publish)
  • How to develop narrative elements such as character, setting, storyline, how complications and solutions can develop characters, considering particular themes and messages that they want to explore in their writing piece. 
  • Revising for meaning, word choice, organisation and sentence fluency. 
  • Editing for punctuation and spelling. 

Numeracy

Place Value

During this unit, students will improve their understanding of place value. This will provide a foundation towards building on their understanding of the 4 operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication & division). This will involve:

  • Recognising, representing and ordering (smallest to largest) numbers from the 100,000’s to the decimal values (hundredths) 
  • Expanding Numbers (eg. 146=100+40+6) 
  • Regrouping numbers (10 Ones= 1 Ten)  
  • Understanding and solving worded problems using a range of strategies

Addition and Subtraction

In this unit, students will use their understanding of place value to build on their skills of addition & subtraction. This will involve:

  • Using a variety of strategies (vertical strategy, expanded form) to solve addition and subtraction problems. 
  • Encouraging flexibility of student’s approach to problem-solving
  • Analysing key language in worded problems
  • Rounding numbers to help estimation
  • Using sound reasoning and clear working out to pose potential answers to complex problem
  • Applying this knowledge to financial mathematic problems 

Inquiry- Teamwork

In this unit, students will have an in-depth look into the key aspects when working as a team. Through a combination of class discussions, games and group tasks, students will build on their understanding of what it means to be an effective team member.

Students will be assessed through regular engagements with their classmates during games and discussions. Their main assessment will be a design and technology task that will be conducted over multiple weeks.


In this task, students will create a vehicle that will move using wind with the aim of getting the vehicle to move the furthest distance. They will:

  • Create a design, considering effective materials.
  • Construct their design, revising and making changes where they feel necessary.
  • They must use recyclable materials in the entirety of their construction. 
  • Students must also document the process of their group by taking pictures that are annotated using their iPads. 
  • Students are members of a group. It will be necessary that they share responsibility, give and receive feedback as well as compromise with conflicting ideas in order to be successful.