Year5

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

What a fantastic final project for Year 5! We have most certainly gone out with an explosion of colour and music this week. It’s really challenging to summarise all the incredible work that the children have done this half term but here is a little snippet of the work completed. 

Science was particularly exciting this half term as the children learned all about life cycles. To support this learning, each class has caterpillars in their classrooms and it was so wonderful to watch their journeys to becoming butterflies. It was such a treat to release them all too!

The children began by learning about the Windrush Ship and used a range of sources to learn about this defining moment in history before exploring how the Caribbean has heavily influenced our culture today. The children began by looking at how our music has been influenced by the Caribbean and wrote these amazing raps to represent their learning. 

The children also then spent time learning about many of our sporting heroes of past and present who have heritage linked to the Windrush generation and also learned about carnival, particularly the Notting Hill Carnival. The children designed a variety of new sporting equipment pieces with their new knowledge and also wrote some amazing newspaper reports about the celebrations. 

Within their DT lessons, the children were really inspired by some of the underwater sculptures found in the Caribbean – representing unity. They then made their own clay models which we put together in a circle to show our unity as class. 

In English, the children have wrote the most spectacular biographies about an inspirational woman from the Windrush generation – Mary Seacole. This was the children’s first non-fiction unit using ‘The Write Stuff’ approach to lessons and we were so proud of what they achieved. 

We then finished off this week with the most amazing carnival! The children paraded around the school with the beautiful flags and masks they had made to draw all their learning together. What an amazing end to Year 5! We are so proud of everything the children have achieved this year!

Culture is our new topic for this half term as we learn all about how the Caribbean culture has been embedded into British culture, whilst learning about the Geography and History of the Caribbean too! We also have some brilliant learning in Science coming up (with some new classroom residents to look after) and we can’t wait to learn about some inspirational women from History through our English. What a colourful, musical and exciting final half term in Year 5!

For more information about what we are learning, please see our Knowledge Organiser (facts about our topic) and our Topic Web (subject overviews of what we are learning) attached below. 

We hope you all had a fabulous half term and we can’t wait to see the children tomorrow, 

The Year 5 Team 

Y5 Sum 2 – KO

Y5 Sum 2 – Topic web

What a super busy, but super brilliant, half term! We have been so proud of how the children have immersed themselves in their learning about Identities and Europe. 

English

This has been Year 5’s first half term teaching English using ‘The Write Stuff’ and the children have done such a fantastic job with their experience days, sentence stacking lessons and their independent write. The first unit we completed was about a video clip called ‘The Present’ and the children then wrote their own stories about a child with a disability, being gifted a pet as a companion. There are some beautiful examples of writing below. The children are now planning their next independent write based on the picture book, Zoo, by Anthony Browne. We are looking forward to reading their writing from this too!

Maths

The children have been super busy over the last few weeks working with shape! From classifying angles, measuring and drawing angles and finding missing angles (on a straight line and a full circle), the children have secured some amazing new learning. We’ve also been really proud of the way the children have learned about different triangles types and quadrilateral types too. How many can they still remember at home?

Design Technology

Firstly, we want to thank you for your support at home with cooking this term! We were so impressed with the children’s home learning as they have researched and cooked a range of European dishes. There was such a range of starters, main courses and desserts created and the children have loved sharing this learning at school. Combining all of this together, the children then created gorgeous menus for their class’ dishes! 

					How amazing is this learning?

Art

As our concept has been identity for this half term, the children have not only researched how cuisine has contributed to the identity of different European countries, but also how building silhouettes and cityscape skylines can represent a country’s identity too. The children practised and rehearsed their art skills before creating some stunning European cityscapes, using both watercolour and block painting. Can you recognise any particular buildings or cities from Europe?

Following on with the theme of silhouettes and identities, the children then drew their own side profiles and considered what made them unique. Most children are still working on these in class but here are a few finished pieces to celebrate! 

Science

We have done lots of fabulous hands on Science this half term to explore flowers. The children have dissected plants and studied them using microscopes and also applied this to their knowledge of fertilisation and pollination. Then, using bubbles and helicopters, the children have also learned about different types of seed dispersal!

It has been a wonderful half term and we, as always, are super proud of the progress the children are making! There won’t be any homework over the half term week – hopefully the children can enjoy a little more freedom as restrictions have been slightly lifted. We look forward to another jam-packed half term of learning – the last half term of Year 5! We will be going out with a bang (and maybe even a mini carnival) as we learn about the Caribbean. 

The Year 5 Team