This week, Year 5 have mastered calculating the area of compound and irregular shapes in maths with some excellent diagrams to help them. They have shown great determination when faced with a challenging problem and worked extremely hard! 

In our poetry unit, the children have written all sorts of poems this week including a haiku, free verse, list poem with similes and a recount poem. They have enjoyed listening to and creating their own poems, often working well with their peers to generate ideas and count the syllables for the traditional haiku structure. Our favourite part of Cloud Busting so far is when Davey jumps up in assembly and shouts that he’s got ‘Fizzy Feet’.. Can you guess what he means? A great website for reading and listening to poetry is https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/

Some of Year 5 have made an Islamic clay tile from our previous topic, ready to paint next week and everyone has already shown a good understanding of the largest slums around the world and why slums develop. We have had our first taste of Handball and not surprisingly the children have been very competitive! As well as Bollywood dancing, experimenting with levers and pulleys in science, creating codes in computing and constructing sentences in French, the children have considered the importance of other cultures in PSHE.

Miss Woolner was our guest speaker for the week and shared with us lots of photos taken on her trip to Uganda when she volunteered out there. The children were fascinated and a little shocked by the stories she told, how one school had only two teachers  and there was little food or clean water available. 

Finally, a big well done on the reading and Home Learning we are seeing each week!

Year 5 has had a fantastic first week back after the holidays! They have all settled into the school routine very quickly once again and picked up where they left off.
On Wednesday morning the children were lucky enough to watch the Beauty and the Beast production which was very entertaining!
In maths they have been calculating the perimeter and area of shapes and solving problems.
Our text for this half term is Cloud Busting by Malorie Blackman and the children are really looking forward to studying poetry and writing their own poems.
In topic, we are learning about slums and exploring what life is like in a slum. This week we have used atlases to locate the five largest slums in the world and considered how fortunate we are to have clean water, sanitation and durable housing. This topic also links to our weekly PSHE lessons where we recently watched a video of children working on a cocoa plantation in Africa. The children in the video looked happy despite it being dangerous work and being at risk of poisonous snake bites on a daily basis. Year 5 completed an activity which helped them reflect on items such as phones, iPads and even pets being a luxury when compared to our basic needs.
Our forces unit in science is continuing this term and involves the children working in groups to carry out a range of interesting investigations into how forces work in real life contexts.
In our first computing lesson, we have discussed online safety and in particular watching vlogs. We learnt that vlogs which advertise products are often endorsed by companies and we have to be discerning about whether we should buy certain products or not. The children were excellent at suggesting various strategies you could use such as reading customer reviews, asking friends who have the product and finding out more information about what is available on the market first.
Music has centered around Indian music and the success of Bollywood. The children loved listening to this style of music and couldn’t resist having a go at the different hand movements – the peacock, scissors, flag etc.

Now we’re back into term time we would like to remind children to have the correct PE kit in school (including warmer layers for outdoor PE) and to read on a daily basis, filling in their reading journals for raffle tickets.

Year 5 have been incredibly busy creating a range of art pieces linked to our topic surrounding the Middle East. Watercolour silhouettes and geometric patterns have been lovingly crafted throughout all the classes. The children have been so engaged and can’t wait to design more next week.  

Well done for all the children’s efforts with their reading this term. We are really impressed with the variety of books the children are encountering, and it’s been wonderful to see the development of book talk throughout the year group. We wonder what marvellous reads will be completed over the Christmas holidays….

Next week, we will be celebrating the children’s work by treating them to some special activities. Our red badge treat will happen on Monday , Carols in the Concert after school on Tuesday and board games on our final day (Thursday.) Don’t forget to bring in your board games of choice!

One more week to go! Have a fantastic weekend. 

Another week, yet more wonderful achievements and experiences for our Year 5 children! Science continues to intrigue and engage the children with a range of fascinating experiments exploring forces. Over the next week, we will be further investigating the effects of water resistance. 5RW’s exploits looked especially delightful! 

Thank you to all the children who have engaged so well in our Leg it to Lapland challenge! It’s been great to see so many more children actively travelling to school and supporting our school and wider environment! 

Next week, we will be practicing our songs for the carols concert. The lyrics are available on our blog- have a practice at them!

Finally, we thought it would be lovely to share some of the outstanding writing produced recently in Year 5. The children have been working especially hard to develop their written flair and use of gold-level vocabulary and have been incredibly successful! Have a read of some extracts below:

“Battered and bruised, I attempted to sit up in my bed. Falling back to the pillow in agony, my eyes darted around the room seeking Tom. Where was he? At that moment, I heard footsteps inching slowly towards me (I presume so as not to startle me.) It was James, who turned the door handle and came in with a tray of food and placed a gentle kiss on my forehead. Yet the presence of Tom was what I continued to seek.” Rosie

“I have a remorseful feeling in my tightly-knotted stomach because of the terrible incident earlier. It all started when I entered the grandeur of the garden, bought to life by the old, tatty grandfather clock’s thirteenth strike. The gravelled path crunched under the soles of my battered shoes as I spied Abel meandering past the solitary arrows lying on the greenish grass.” Sam

“My chest broke with fear as I leapt down. Silence tore through the garden. It was almost like the garden felt Hatty’s pain. I tried to shake her aware but it was no use; my hand simply went through her. Suddenly, the crows squawked and flew away almost like they were being chased in despair. At last, Abel came crashing though the bushes at lightning speed, panicking shooting through his veins.” Isaac

“I saw Tom approach my room- I was so glad to see him after months of isolation. I tried to lift my head up delicately to avoid the pain but I was too weak. The shock of touching the bandage strapped to my head was enormous. I needed to rest once more.” Haged

“Today I heard the clock strike thirteen so I dashed down the stairs and entered the Secret Garden. Hatty and I followed the path with stray bows and arrows dotted around its surroundings. As usual, we were just having a little chat in the treehouse. Hatty asked if it was safe to walk across the bough that stuck out from the tree’s trunk, yet when I replied no, she didn’t listen and disappeared into the darkness below…” Layla L

Have an amazing weekend!