Year 5 – 6

Our senior unit is comprised of three classes and like all Units across the school, supports our school-wide team teaching and learning approach.

The English curriculum aims to ensure that students:

• learn to listen to, read, view, speak, write, create and reflect on increasingly complex and sophisticated spoken, written and multimodal texts across a growing range of contexts with accuracy, fluency and purpose
• appreciate, enjoy and use the English language in all its variations and develop a sense of its richness and power to evoke feelings, convey information, form ideas, facilitate interaction with others, entertain, persuade and argue
• understand how Standard Australian English works in its spoken and written forms and in combination with non-linguistic forms of communication to create meaning
• develop interest and skills in inquiring into aesthetic aspects of texts, and develop an informed appreciation of literature.

Students are involved in a daily structured 2 hour Literacy block which includes a wide variety of engaging experiences to ensure achievement in Reading, Writing, Spelling and Speaking and Listening.  At Rutherglen PS we focus on the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing which allows teachers to pinpoint students’ strengths and goals for their writing in the elements of ideas, organisation, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation, and from this enable targeted teaching at students’ point of need.  Our approach enables teachers to support and encourage students to be confident and creative with their writing.

The focus within reading is to develop skills which support students’ development of effective reading and comprehension strategies. In gaining meaning from texts, readers at Rutherglen Primary School are taught that effective readers combine what they know about the world (their background knowledge) with the information and details from the text, the grammatical structure in which the text is written, and the way spoken language relates to the letters, words, visual elements, and symbols on page.  Through our reading approaches, students’ ability to comprehend, interpret, analyse, respond and interact with the growing variety of complex sources of multi-literacies is developed.  Students are supported to increase their reading stamina during daily independent reading time of ‘just right’ texts.  This time enables teachers to conference with students to identify goals to support their reading progress.

Our Mathematics programs are engaging, fun and based in real life contexts. All students work across the three strands of Mathematics – Number, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability. Our Maths programs are planned and taught at point of need, through ongoing data collection by the classroom and support teachers. This enables students to be supported to work mathematically, to build their understanding, fluency and reasoning, whilst being moved through these capabilities at their own pace.  Students are provided with a range of open ended tasks and rich problems supported by the explicit teaching of problem solving strategies. There is a strong focus on the link between numeracy concepts and many learning experiences involve games and problem-solving opportunities that help make maths meaningful and connected to real-life learning.

Our Year 5-6 classes attend a one hour Art, STEM, P.E and French lesson on a weekly basis with our specialist teachers, as well as one hour sport session run by the PE teacher and supported by the 5-6 teachers.

At the senior level, all students are strongly encouraged to take one of the many leadership opportunities available to them and in doing so, develop their personal strengths and life-long skills in leadership, public speaking, organisation and commitment among other things.  Through a range of leadership opportunities students also become positive role models within and beyond our school community.

At the Year 5-6 level students have the opportunity to take up a range of roles such as School, Sports or Student Leadership Team Captains, Buddies for the Foundation students and Indigo Shire Youth Ambassadors.

Our 5-6 Unit also engages in the following programs and learning opportunities:

• An extensive Primary to Secondary School Transition Program which begins in Year 5 with days such as CSI day at Rutherglen High School to help familiarise students with a secondary school environment.
• A transition program to secondary school, with students attending Rutherglen High School participating in a program of 3 consecutive days giving students a clearer understanding of what it will be like for them as Year 7 students.
• A bank of iPads, 1-1 laptops for timetabled ICT lessons and core classroom work  and a number of classroom computers.
• An artist in residence program and other incursions linked to the integrated learning unit.
• Yearly camp experience of 3 days to Canberra and the alternate year 5 days to 15 Mile Creek Camp, with both camps linked to the integrated learning unit or the development of personal and inter-personal skills, team work and resilience.
• A bi-annual whole school production with senior students taking the lead roles.