English Language Arts
All students will continue to develop effective strategies
for reading and writing through daily instruction and focused practice. Please
encourage your students to read at least 20 minutes a day at home every day.
Any kind of reading is fine – information books, comic books, newspapers,
magazines, novels . . . and will benefit your child more than any other
academic activity. We will be investigating different formats of writing
this year, including personal narratives with proper paragraph organization,
informal letters, and information writing. Students will follow the writing
process for major assignments, including pre-writing, drafting, revising and
editing.
Math
There are three main components to our math program.
The first area is computations. Students in the middle years
are expected to be flexible in working with numbers and have a solid
understanding of mathematical operations. Students will develop a variety of
personal strategies to solve operations. We will be working on computations
throughout the year.
The second area is new concepts. Grade 5 and 6
students will work on the same key learnings within each concept area but with
slightly different targets. Our first unit will focus on patterning and
algebra. Students will learn to recognize and identify patterns in number
relationships, create algebraic expressions to represent these patterns and
predict future outcomes.
The final area is Problem Solving. Problem Solving will be
integrated throughout the math program and is an important format for applying
new concepts and computation strategies.
Social Studies
The grade 5 and 6 Social Studies programs both have
“citizenship” at their core – and involve skill and knowledge components. This
year we will use the inquiry model and project based learning to explore some
of the significant factors, people, and events that have contributed to
Canada’s growth as a nation.
Science
The middle science
curriculum provides opportunities for students to investigate various branches
of science, including Biology, Earth Sciences and Physics. The focus for our
first unit of study will be “Living Things”. The science program includes
knowledge targets as well as scientific process skills.
