By the end of year 5

The New Zealand Curriculum: Reading at school

If your child is meeting the Reading Standard by the end of year 5 they will be working towards reading at curriculum level 3.

They will be reading and understanding a variety of fiction and non-fiction stories to support their learning in all areas of the curriculum.

To meet the standard your child will be learning to:

• read for longer periods of time
• choose stories that support their learning and choose stories to read for fun
• choose what reading skills they use when they have difficulties and when they are reading harder stories – eg rereading parts they don’t understand
• work out words they don’t know by using other words around the problem, pictures or other clues
• understand and discuss the different levels of meaning a story can have – eg understanding hidden meanings
• read different stories about the same topic, and be able to pull this information together to express an idea, or write on a topic
• ask and answer questions about things they read
• discuss the way authors have made choices when writing – about the words, places, characters and ideas the authors have chosen.

Reading at home

Talk about their reading

• Ask your child what they are reading and talk about their ideas: What is the ‘picture’ they have of particular characters? Are there people like that in your family or whānau? What do they want to find out from the book? What are the important messages? What do they think is going to happen next? What else do they need to know to understand the story or topic?
• Talk about books on similar topics. This helps your child to pull together ideas from different places.
• Talk about different types of stories that are read or spoken. Newspaper articles, internet sites, whakataukī (proverbs), comics, bible stories, songs, waiata or novels will each have different points you can talk about together. Find a newspaper article you’re both interested in and talk about what it means to each of you.
• Help your child to share their thinking. Get them to share opinions and talk about why they think that. Listen, even when you don’t agree with their ideas.

TIP: Give your child space and time to read. Reading longer books they have chosen needs plenty of time.

Read together

• Find out information together from different places. For example, manuals, dictionaries, the Internet, magazines, television guides, atlases, family tree information, whakapapa.
• Play games that involve reading in a fun way.
• Encourage your child to read to others.
• Younger brothers and sisters, whānau or grandparents are great audiences for practising smooth and interesting reading out loud.
• Visit the library regularly. Help your child choose books they’re interested in (about hobbies, interests or who they are and where they come from) or encourage them to get books out that are about what they are studying at school. They may need you to help by reading to them, as well.
• Find books of movies or TV programmes. It can help your child to learn different ways to tell the same story if they read the ‘stories’ they have watched.

TIP: Help your child to link stories to their own life. Remind them about what they have done when a similar thing happens in the story.

Be a reader yourself

• Talk about what you are reading and why you are enjoying it or what is challenging about it. Read a book to your child that they might find difficult but want to read, and talk about it as you read. Use your first language whenever you can – it can help your child’s learning.
• Read the same book or magazine as your child. You can then share your ideas about what you have read. You could talk about why the authors made the choices they did when writing the story.

TIP: Keep the magic of listening to a good story alive by reading either made up, retold or read-aloud stories to your child – with lots of excitement through the use of your voice!

The New Zealand Curriculum: Writing at school

If your child is meeting the Writing Standard by the end of year 5 they will be working towards writing at curriculum level 3.

Your child’s writing will show how they are thinking about, as well as describing, their experiences and the information that they have got from talking, listening and reading about topics in all areas of the curriculum.

To meet the standard your child will be learning to:

• use different ways to think about, plan, organise and communicate experiences, information and ideas
• use words and phrases that are about a topic and chosen for the audience
• choose the best way to express their message or ideas in writing
• organise their writing, use detail to support main ideas and paragraphs to group their ideas
• improve the clarity and impact of their writing, often after feedback from others
• check their own writing for correct spelling, grammar and punctuation
• choose the best way to publish their writing, including computer technology, print, charts and diagrams.

Writing at home

Make writing fun

• Help your child write about their heroes, sports events, tïpuna (ancestors), hobbies and interests. This helps them stay interested in what they are writing about.
• Play word games and do puzzles together to help your child learn more about words and spelling.
• Have interesting paper and pens available or help them make a special book to write in.
• Write to your child, or give them jokes, cartoons or short articles from the newspaper you think they’ll like to read.
• Play with words. Thinking of interesting words and discussing new ones can help increase the words your child uses when they write – look words up in the dictionary or on the Internet, or talk to family and whānau members to learn more about the background and the whakapapa (origins) of the words.

TIP: Be a role model. Show your child that you write for all sorts of reasons. Let them see you enjoy writing. You can use your first language – this helps your child’s learning, too.

Talk about your child's writing

• Talk about ideas and information they are going to write about. Talk about experiences, diagrams, graphs, pictures, photos and material that your child is planning to use for school work. Discussing the information and main ideas can help their planning for writing and their understanding, too.
• Share enjoyment of their writing. Read and talk about the writing that your child does. Give praise for things they have done well to support their learning.
• Play with words. Thinking of interesting words and discussing new ones can help increase the words your child uses when they write.
• Share your own writing with your child – lists, planning for family events or an email. You can help them to see that you too use writing for different purposes.

TIP: Keep writing fun and use any excuse you can think of to encourage your child to write about anything, anytime.

Write for a reason

• Encourage your child to write emails, invitations, thank you letters, poems, stories or postcards to friends, family and whänau – make it fun.
• Ask your child who they would like to write to. It is helpful if what they write is given or sent to others.
• Help them to write about their experiences, family and friends or holidays.
• A diary or journal – on paper or on a computer – can help your child to write about their experiences and their own feelings about things that have happened at school, at home, in the world, on the marae, at sports events and on TV.

TIP: Talk about what your child writes. Be interested. If you don’t understand something they are writing about, ask them to explain.

The New Zealand Curriculum: Mathematics at school

If your child is meeting the Mathematics Standard by the end of year 5 they will be working at early curriculum level 3, solving realistic problems using their growing understanding of number, algebra, geometry, measurement and statistics.

They will be solving problems involving several steps, for which they need to choose the most appropriate method to help them solve the problem. They will be learning a range of approaches to solving problems.

To meet the standard your child will be learning to:

• choose an appropriate method to solve problems (using +, – , x , ÷) and clearly explain their methods to other people
• use their known basic facts to work out unknown facts and to find fractions of sets, shapes and quantities
• sort 2D and 3D shapes and justify how they have been grouped
• use grid references on maps and points of the compass to describe the location of objects
• measure the size and capacity of objects
• explore the concept of chance by listing all of the possible outcomes
• investigate questions, show the information and discuss the data.

This is a small part of the skills and knowledge your child is learning in order to meet this standard. Talk to the teacher for more information about your child’s learning.

Focus on number

During year 5, 50–70 per cent of mathematics teaching time will focus on number learning.

Mathematics at home

Talk together and have fun with numbers and patterns

Help your child to:

• count forwards and backwards (starting with numbers like 10,098, 10,099, 10,100, 10,101, 10,102 then back again)
• find and read large numbers in your environment eg nineteen thousand, three hundred and twenty-three
• learn number pairs to 100 eg 81 and what equals 100?
• read car number plates, look at the car’s odometer to see how far you’ve gone
• work out patterns – make codes from numbers.

TIP: Being positive about mathematics is really important for your child’s learning – even if you didn’t enjoy it or do well at it yourself at school.

Use easy, everyday activities

Involve your child in:

• making and organising lunch or a meal for a party or a hui, including equal sharing of fruit/biscuits/sandwiches/drinks
• helping at the supermarket – choose items to weigh. Look for the best buy between different makes of the same items (breakfast cereal, spreads like jam or honey), including looking at the ingredients per serve
• practising times tables – check with your child or their teacher which times tables you could help your child with
• telling the time e.g., 5 past, 10 past, 20 past, ¼ to, 25 to...
• noticing shapes and numbers when you are reading together.

TIP: Mathematics is an important part of everyday life and there are lots of ways you can make it fun for your child.

For wet afternoon/school holidays/weekends

Get together with your child and:

• play card and board games that use guessing and checking
• do complicated jigsaw puzzles
• look through junk mail – find the most expensive and cheapest item advertised or make into strips to make a woven mat
• make a roster for jobs around the house
• plan for a special event on a budget; eg afternoon tea for a grandparent, teacher or family friend
• play outside games – cricket, basketball, mini-golf, soccer and milk bottle bowling
• bake – follow a simple recipe (scones, pikelets)
• use blocks that fit together to make a model. Draw what it looks like from each side and above. Then draw what they think it looks like from underneath. Once finished, check the underneath of the real object against the drawing
• make water balloons and see how far you could throw them (outside!!) and how far the water splatters
• collect the family and whānau birthdays and put in order – make a reminder calendar for the year.

TIP: The way your child is learning to solve mathematics problems may be different to when you were at school. Get them to show you how they do it and support them in their learning.

Support your child

As parents and whānau you play a big part in your child’s learning every day, and you can support and build on what they learn at school too.

Work together

Help support your child’s learning by building a good relationship with your child’s teacher, finding out how your child is doing and working together to support their learning.