In our Year 5 Where We Are In Place and Time unit of inquiry this term, we have inquired about how society has changed over time. Our Central Idea was how our experiences shape culture, value and beliefs. We read the short novel “The Burnt Stick” giving us an insight into how Aboriginals were not recognised as Australians for the greater part of the 20th century, and made connections to our prior learning in Year 4 about the Stolen Generation. We also were able to learn about human rights, the history of women's rights and research a significant Australian to write an informative biography.
At the beginning of the term we learnt about David Unaipon. David Unaipon was an inventor, advocate and author. He is an Aboriginal man who invented the mechanical shearing machine and now, farmers all over the world thank him for his amazing and helpful invention. He also advocated for Aboriginal equality and his legend saw his image placed on the $50 note.
We looked deeper and were internationally minded when learning about Malala Yousefzai through the picture book “Free as a bird”. Malala was a risk taker and an influential person in Pakistan during the early 2000’s. She loves education and strives to learn new things. When she was just 11 years old, she spoke out about the Taliban as they were burning girl’s schools and not letting women have an education. As the Taliban heard about Malala’s rebellion against their unfair dictation, they came onto Malala’s school bus and shot her in an attempt to silence her. A year later, she fully recovered and is now giving speeches around the world, talking about and advocating for women’s rights and girl’s education.
In our Who We Are unit of inquiry,we have talked about being safe online. We have learned what information is safe to share online, how to ensure when we are online we are having fun and being safe, as well as being responsible digital citizens.
This week, we have presented speeches in class and are excitedly looking forward to finding out who our grade finalists will be. We have also begun our next unit of inquiry where we are looking into How We Organise Ourselves, particularly how citizens participate in the decision making process. We are excitedly waiting for Friday when we will participate in a video conference with the Museum of Australian Democracy. In this interactive session, we will learn about the beginnings of government in Australia and the three levels of Government. This will serve as pre learning for our Year 5 Trip to Canberra in Week 7. We are also looking forward to running our own election and student parliament later in term. Many exciting things are on the horizon for Year 5 and we can’t wait to share these with you later in the term.
Emily Scott-Glassock and Rafaela Etuka
Year 5 Students