Grade 5 & 6 – Even Year

Term 1: Australian colonies

Students investigate the founding British colonies of our nation and how a colony is developed. They learn what life was like for the different groups of people in the time period and examine the key events and their impacts. Students gain an understanding of the people who migrated to Australia and appreciate their contributions to our nation. Discovery of the importance of human rights and the effects of removing these are a key aspect of this unit.

Self/personal learning

Through this unit students gain an understanding of the particular characteristics that make them unique and celebrate these differences. They gain an understanding that by acknowledging our differences we are able to utilise other’s strengths and work effectively with others. Students develop the ability to explain how individual, social and cultural differences add to our experiences and allow our lives to be enriched.

Term 2: Survival of the Fittest

In ‘Survival of the Fittest’, students investigate what humans, plants and animals need to survive and what can impact their survival. They explore changes to the environment both natural and man-made, the effect of salinity and global warming, plant and animal adaptions required for acclimatisation and renewable energy and fossils fuels. Students construct a hypothesis relating to how one can adapt to their environment, conduct an experiment and report on its result.

Term 3: Impact of crises on environment on communities

During Term 3 we explore the environmental and human influence on the characteristics of people and places around the world. This includes how people have adapted their diet, lifestyle and housing, according to the geography and resources available to them.  This unit extends the students understanding of the interconnected nature of people and the environment and how this varies depending on location, climate and geography.

Term 4: Light and electrical circuits

Students learn about transfer and transformations of electricity, and continue to develop an understanding of energy flows through systems. They link their experiences of electric circuits as a system, to generation of electricity from a variety of sources at another scale, and begin to see links between these systems. Similarly, they see that the growth and survival of living things are dependent on matter and energy flows within a larger system. Students begin to see the role of independent, dependent and controlled variables in performing experimental investigations and learn how to look for patterns and relationships between variables. They develop explanations for the patterns they observe, drawing on evidence.