Grade 5 Curriculum Newsletter Unit 1
Please read about what your children will be learning and how you can support them at home...
Transdisciplinary Theme: Sharing the Planet
Central Idea: Biodiversity relies on maintaining the interdependent balance of
organisms within systems.
Key Concepts:
• Responsibility
• Causation
• Connection
Lines of Inquiry:
• Ways in which ecosystems, biomes and environments are interdependent
• How human interaction with the environment can affect the balance of
systems
• The consequences of imbalance within systems
Focus for Learner Profile and Attitudes:
• Caring, Respect and Thinker
• Creativity and Respect
PSE – (Personal and Social Education) - students will:
• Begin to take responsibility for completing assigned tasks and bringing in
work and materials on time
• Begin to understand the roles they can adopt to contribute to the school
community
• Create and respect class essential agreements
• Begin to recognise their personal strengths
• Set personal goals and standards
• Reflect on the perspectives and ideas of others
• Independently use different strategies to resolve conflict
Language - students will:
• Revise accuracy in written English including verb tenses, spelling and
punctuation
• Explore vocabulary related to the unit
• Develop independence in structuring sentences and paragraphs
• Read unit related non-fiction texts individually and in small groups
• Develop individual reading with growing independence
• Identify the features of and begin to write playscripts
Mathematics – students will:
• Revise place value and the ordering of big numbers
• Know and recall multiplication facts up to 12 x 12
• Develop both their mental calculation strategies and written procedures
• Multiply and divide by multiples of 10 (10, 100, 1000)
• Carry out surveys and create high frequency tables
Social Studies and Science– students will:
• Define ecosystems, biomes and their components
• Research and discuss problems affecting different biomes
and their systems
• Use atlases to find differing biomes around the world
• Explore the ways that human action can help protect the
balance within ecosystems
• Inquire into how the balance within an ecosystem can be
upset
• Investigate food chains and food webs
2015 – 2016
• Investigate how plants and animals are adapted to survive in different
ecosystems
Italian
• Ripassi ortografici e dettati per verificare il livello di correttezza raggiunto.
• Ripasso di analisi grammaticale (i gradi dell’aggettivo qualificativo e il modo
indicativo).
• Ripasso di analisi logica (i complementi e il predicato verbale e nominale)
• Letture e comprensioni del testo.
• La natura va difesa anche da noi bambini: partendo dal concetto di
ecosistema si passa alla necessità di difendere l’ambiente in cui viviamo.
• Il testo persuasivo: pubblicità progresso con iPad (imovie)
• Lettura di testi informativi scientifici ed argomentativi.
Italian as an additional language - students will:
• Create a poster about the food chain to link with the unit of inquiry
• Review basic grammar studied last year
Visual Art – students will:
• Develop painting skills to capture an ecosystem and landscape
• Use the language of art to comment on images of the environment
Music – students will:
• Learn a selection of new songs
• Music ensembles: Explore the various formal (symphony
orchestra, chamber orchestra, quintet, trio etc.) and
informal (jazz, salsa etc.) types of musical ensembles by
responding to different arrangements of the same piece of music
• Create a new arrangement of a known piece of music
PE – Students will:
• Participate in Basketball, Volleyball, Football and Hockey small sided games
that will increase their understanding of the rules
• Improve tactical and spatial awareness and decision making
• Develop coordination, manipulation and balance
• Understand that a team is a system that is balanced by the decisions,
behaviour and attitudes of its members
• Expand social skills within team sports
Library – students will:
• Consolidate knowledge of library organization and rules
• Explore how the library can be classified as an ecosystem and how each
element plays an essential role
• Develop proficiency in identifying and locating relevant information related
to their research
• Practise note-taking, as well as skimming and scanning texts
ICT – students will:
• Create and respect iPad essential agreements
• Become familiar with the Nearpod App
• Use the internet to research and find out about different ecosystems
• Learn to use Edmodo as a class discussion and resource sharing platform
Helping at Home
• Practice mental and written methods for calculations.
• Revise and practise times tables up to 12 x 12.
• Read daily at home as part of their allocated homework time.
• Help with researching connected to the central idea.
• Discuss news stories related to our unit.
• Watch related documentaries on TV and at cinema.
Recommended Websites and Apps
We suggest the following free apps:
Nearpod, Arcademics, Google Chrome
http://www.mad4math.com/parents/ - Super Parental Help Section!
http://www.thinkingblocks.com – An excellent thinking routine for solving math
problems
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround - Kids news site, updated daily
http://www.firstnews.co.uk – Online Kids newspaper
http://www.geography.learnontheinternet.co.uk/
topics/ecosystem.htmhttp://kids.nationalgeographic.com/l
http://www.exploringnature.org/
2015 – 2016