Challenge 3 – Grade 6 Term 1 2025 Learning Overview
Dear Parents and Guardians,
Welcome to your child’s final year of primary school. This is a wonderful time for your child – building leadership qualities, extending their understanding of their learning in all areas and preparing for the transition to secondary school. Within the next few weeks, students will have the opportunity to nominate themselves for specific leadership roles, including School Captain, Vice-Captain and Sports Captain. This will involve making a persuasive speech, and voting will take place to identify successful nominees.
Student Wellbeing
As your child begins to mature into a young adult, their well-being is at the forefront of our thoughts. It is very important to build habits of daily check-ins with your child and to engage in open conversation. As children become teenagers, they will naturally begin to withdraw from these conversations, and their friendships will become extremely important to them.
At school, we encourage students to build relationships with trusted adults and friends so that they have a reliable person to discuss concerns with. Students have identified trusted friends and adults with whom they feel comfortable discussing the challenges of their early teens and have also identified personalised coping strategies to assist them when they feel overwhelmed. This term, we will also be reflecting on skills such as personal organisation, compassion, and kindness towards their peers.
Investigations
This term, students will be developing an understanding of themselves as learners. They will be investigating qualities such as gratitude, resilience and motivation. Students will be identifying a Growth Mindset and a range of learning styles to identify how they learn best.
In the second part of the term, students will undertake a deeper investigation into themselves as leaders. As the senior students in the school, all students are leaders, regardless of titles. We will examine the qualities of leadership and how those qualities can be demonstrated at school, at home and in the community.
English
Within the English curriculum, students will be investigating two shared texts: “Rivet Boy” by Barbara Henderson and “The Silver Donkey” by Sonya Hartnett. As part of this exploration, students will build their understanding of persuasive and narrative texts, examine authors’ traits, grammatical structures, and the writing process, as well as build their vocabulary and utilise this to improve their capabilities as authors. Students will engage in supplementary reading and viewing outside of the texts mentioned above to support their writing.
Students will investigate the origin of words and word parts, including (but not limited to) Latin roots and their meanings. They will also build their understanding of phonemes (one letter, one sound) and graphemes (more than one letter, one sound), along with a range of spelling patterns, identifying the role of these in spelling and reading words. Students will also develop their understanding of the meaning of text-specific vocabulary.
Students will engage in paired oral reading, independent reading and reading in small groups, all of which are designed to build their comprehension of the texts we are reading.
Mathematics
In the area of Mathematics, the students will be developing their understanding on the following areas across Term One:
Data Representation
Students will investigate, create and draw conclusions from a range of graphs, including column graphs, side-by-side bar charts and line graphs. They will compare and interpret a range of data displays. Students will interpret data in the media, considering the way that data can be presented in a misleading way in order to sway the viewer to a point of view.
Factors and Multiples
Students will investigate the commutative and distributive properties of multiplication and division, identifying factors and multiples of 3, 4, 6, 8 and 9.
Multiplication and Division
Students will use the knowledge gained through our investigation of factors and multiples to multiply numbers of two digits and beyond. They will develop a deeper understanding of multiplication and division as inverse operations, building a range of strategies to deeply understand how factors and multiples apply to solving multiplication and division operations.
Auslan
Students will continue to communicate signs through Auslan. We will be revising previously learnt signs and building our abilities to communicate using Auslan.
Religion
Students will be revisiting the importance of the Sacraments of Baptism, Reconciliation, Communion and Confirmation, considering the sacramental importance of each within our daily lives. We will also be undertaking a deeper examination of formal prayers, including the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds and the Angelus. We will be considering the meanings of these prayers and how these guide us within our lives.
Reading Diaries:
Diaries will be issued to students in the coming days, with expectations regarding the use of the school diary being at school every day and going home each night being explicitly taught. Students will begin to use their school diaries for reminders, such as completing unfinished work promptly
and recording special dates in preparation for secondary school.
It is an expectation that all students at St. Lawrence read for 20 minutes every school night. Teachers will be checking diaries on a cyclical basis to ensure that students are reading nightly and that diaries are at school daily.
Home Learning:
To promote student accountability towards managing their learning during class time, students are encouraged to take home unfinished school work to complete at home.
Enrolments for Secondary School:
We have received information from St. Francis regarding a number of families who are yet to accept offers to St. Francis for 2026. It is very important that all enrolment details with St. Francis are completed within the next week, as the school has indicated that students whose places have not yet been formally accepted may be offered to other students. Any queries regarding attendance at St. Francis in 2026 are to be directed to the Registrar, Kylie Perry, at kperry@sfcc.vic.edu.au or via phone at (03) 8099 6000.
P.E. & Performing Arts
Sport uniform needs to be worn on Wednesdays & Thursdays.
Contact details:
If you would like to contact us via email, our email addresses* are:
Shannon Harvie (Challenge 3) – shannon.harvie@slweirviews.catholic.edu.au
Thomas Punzalan (Challenge 1) – thomas.punzalan@slweirviews.catholic.edu.au
Natalie Bruzzesse (Challenge 2) –Natalie.bruzzesse@slweirviews.catholic.edu.au
*Please note that we will endeavour to respond to emails within 24-48 hours within the working week.
We are not able to respond to emails after school hours.
Kind regards,
Shannon Harvie, Natalie Bruzzesse and Thomas Punzalan
Challenge Learning Community Teachers