It has been an interesting year and semester that has motived our Year 5 students to forge on ahead, meet challenges and achieve their personal milestones. Below are some reflections from our students about their journeys.

I joined Hume Anglican Grammar, Donnybrook at the start of this year. I would like to share my journey especially in Maths this year. You see at the beginning of the year I considered myself to be pretty weak at maths. It was really embarrassing for me especially at the start of the school year to ask for help, as I did not know anyone. Whenever it was maths sessions and Mrs Lazarus would explain the concept, it felt like she was speaking a different language! I felt like the odd one out. The assessments were especially stressful. I would breathe heavily and break out into sweats and usually wrote, ‘I don’t know’ against most of the questions. Things took a turn in Term 3. I started understanding what Mrs Lazarus was explaining and was getting a few correct answers. In the maths groups I even got moved up to a higher group! Can you believe it, the assessments were getting much easier and less stressful. It made me feel proud and confident. I feel really good inside, when I reflect on how much I have improved over the months. Now, I look forward to maths sessions. I respond with the correct answer when the teacher asks me. Thank you for reading my journey! - Ektaveer

This semester has been great! Although there were a few slip-ups, and we were in lockdown, there were still a lot of things I enjoyed. During a maths lesson, when we were put into breakout rooms in Teams, we virtually had a competition of Rock, Paper and Scissors. Despite of my opponent lagging behind, it was fun. Another time was when we had to make booklets after we had read, the novel, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It wasn’t my favourite activity, none the less, I still enjoyed it. Art week was also really fun, when we performed activities of people from different cultures, with props, and learned different dances through those workshops! During the Performing Arts lessons we had to compose our own song with what is called a bridge, where there’s a change in the lyrics and music. we did a floor transition a week ago, which means moving from one place to another in the dance smoothly and yet being connected. I had a rough landing when I did it, but I still loved doing the routine. Out of all the subjects, Visual Arts was my favourite. We had to make an alien, which I really liked, and my favourite one was when we had to make swirls and connect the edges to a vanishing point in the middle of the page. I made a LOT of swirls, and it looked really nice! I enjoyed these activities, and I hope we’ll be able to do these activities more often, in lockdown or not. - Liam

This term in English we have been reading our class novel, “Two Hands Together” by Diana Kidd.  We have been exploring the themes in this book and what they tell us about the characters and the world.  After discussing the main ideas of this book, we made inferences and formed our own opinions on these themes.  We used this to write persuasive texts on these themes, racism, stolen generation, fathers as role models and the perceptions of sporting heroes. We shared our opinions with our peers and then used their counter arguments to change our persuasive texts into a discussion text which presented both sides of the argument. We then explored poetry through song lyrics.  Racism is a major them in this book and we listened to the song “Blackfella” by the Warumpi Band. We analysed the song lyrics and discovered that racism stops when people decide to stop it when they hear and see it. Currently we are using the character Lilly’s love of horror to write our own suspenseful horror stories. We are trying to build the tension by creating fear through the fear of the unknown by using adverbs. If we put adverbs at the start of our sentence our sentences sound more complex but we can also use adverbs to explain how actions are taking place. - Alisha

So, we all know that we have been getting ready to go back to school, and we know that it has been a staggered start. This has been a big thing for many of us. Yet some of us might be worried and unsure of what is going to happen when we are at school as we have been safe and protected at home. Some of us were just unsure. Some of us were actually quite excited and pumped to see our friends again. But in Year 5X we all have different emotions and knew the possibilities of what could happen were endless. That is why we had a little task to do that set us up for our return to school. We needed to answer some questions on how we were feeling and what we were looking forward to. This helped us to understand each other’s thinking, thoughts and insecurities. Whilst some were feeling anxious about their friends, others were feeling happy about seeing their friends. We joined our Breakout rooms on Teams and talked about how we could help and support everyone in the class. We talked about our questions, our worries and wrote them down. After thinking and writing we tagged everyone in our class, and we discovered what people think and how different yet the same we are! It was great fun and very helpful as we felt supported. When we got back to school, we looked after each other as we knew what we were worried about and so we felt safe! - Despina

Jennifer Lazarus - Teacher