Year5

Happy New Year from the Year 5 team! What an incredible start all of the children have made this week in their return to school. Their enthusiasm for learning has blown us away over the last few days – all of the teachers commented in our celebration worship today how hard it was to choose a Star Learner as all of the children have shone so brightly. 

Attached below are two documents to share with you. Our Knowledge Organiser gives you lots of facts about our new topic that we would love the children to read and learn with you at home. Our Topic Web describes all the learning that we have planned for each core and foundation subject over the next six weeks. We hope it gives you a detailed insight into what your children are learning. 

So what is our new topic? We hope you have already heard about it from the children but, just incase you haven’t, it’s the Glorious Greeks! This history topic always proves to be a favourite amongst the Year 5 children year on year and we have no doubt that this year won’t be any different. One very important date to note please is Friday 11th February. On this day, we would like the children to come into school dressed as an Ancient Greek for an exciting project outcome day. For costumes, an old white bed sheet always works well wrapped into a toga. 

Thank you for your on-going support as always. We look forward to sharing some of the children’s work with you soon. 

The Year 5 team

Year 5 Spr 1 – Knowledge Organiser Year 5 Spr 1 – Topic Web

What an amazing half term the children have had! It has been jampacked with our North America learning and some children have completely blown us away by learning the 50 states of the USA off by heart too! The children have fully immersed themselves in all aspects of their learning, from Maths to English, to PE, Science and DT. We are really proud of everything that they have achieved in the last seven weeks. 

Maths

We have covered multiple topics this half term in Maths but we have been especially proud of the children’s work on area and perimeter. Knowing the difference between the two is tricky enough but the children have mastered this! Then, from working with rectangles, to compound shapes and then from working with labelled shapes, to shapes with unlabelled sides, the children’s mathematical knowledge has improved tenfold and they have succeeded in cracking many challenges. Here are some examples of excellent Maths work on area and perimeter which is beautifully presented too. 

English 

The children have been absolutely exceptional in English too. We begun the half term with a poetry unit (unconnected to North America). We spent lots of time exploring The Highwayman poem in English and Book Club before reading the Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson. The children then used this book to inspire their own poem, applying all their lense work from the previous sentence stacking lessons. Here are two examples of superb poems!

After this poetry unit, the children then spent time looking at the structure and language in a travel brochure. We looked at how to persuade someone to visit England (with no mention of the rain, of course!) before writing our own travel brochure for Mexico! Here are some beautiful examples – we word processed the neat copies today!

Design Technology

The children have absolutely loved design technology this half term! They have spent time researching the different tribes of North America before designing a weaving pattern that could be used by a particular tribe. The tieing of knots and the tricky weaving was very fiddly at times but have a look at the stunning designs created! We are so impressed with the children’s creativity!

Art

The last piece of learning we would like to share with you is art! Although we haven’t quite finished the final independent piece (a map of their own country), we had to celebrate the children’s creativity in their naive artwork. The children have studied various artists this half term and then replicated these styles – using coloured pencils and fine liner – before drawing their own maps independently. Here a few sketchbook examples for you to see. 

All that leaves us to say is Merry Christmas from the Year 5 team! We have had a wonderful half term with your children and were particularly proud of their performance at our Carols Around the Tree service. Thank you also for all your donations to our Christmas secret mission – hopefully you will enjoy seeing our video very soon. See you in January 2022!

Globe Trotting Around North America!

This half term, our learning takes a geographical turn as we begin learning about North America. It is such a diverse continent and the children will be learning about all of the differences within it. Attached below are our Knowledge Organiser and our Topic Web. The Knowledge Organiser gives you an overview into the new topic and some of the keys facts related to our Geography and Science learning. We would love the children to try and learn some of these facts off by heart. Our Topic Web gives you an insight into what we are learning about in each curriculum subject this half term. Read all about our exciting English learning (and the Highwayman came riding… riding…), our next Mathematical concepts, the awesome experiments we have coming up in Science and all of our other upcoming learning too. 

Year 5 Aut 2 – Knowledge Organiser

Year 5 Aut 2 – Topic Web

Year 5 Autumn 1 – Connections Topic Overview

What an amazing first week! The children have absolutely blown us away with their enthusiasm and hard work this week and we are so very excited to spend this academic year working with them all. 

Tomorrow, the children will be bringing home a paper copy of our Knowledge Organiser and Topic Web for this half term but we have attached a copy on the above link for you too. We are learning all about… SPACE! You can read about this half term’s learning for each subject and also practise some of the Space facts with your child using this document. Can the children already remember the order of the planets in our solar system? Why not have a competition to see whether you or your child can learn them the quickest?

We also have an exciting trip coming up – to the Winchester Science Centre! Please let your child’s class teacher know if you may be able to help on the day of the trip – Thursday 21st October. We will need a small handful of DBS cleared adults and so will select names at random should lots of adults put their name forward. 

Here’s to a fantastic half term and a brilliant year! 

Mrs Poole, Mrs Stone, Miss Fowler & Miss Pettitt