Year 5

WELCOME TO YEAR 5

Mr Keohane (Monday to Thursday), Mrs Yau (Fridays) and Miss Janman look forward to working with the class this year.

PE: In Year 5, P.E. will take place on a Wednesday and a Friday this term.  Please make sure the children come to school wearing their PE kits on these days. 

Library:  In Year 5, our library day is Thursday. We will encourage children to select appropriate books to read independently or a book that we can read with them. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, library books will stay in school.

Reading Books:  We are committed to developing your children as enthusiastic and confident readers and have always had a great system of sending and changing reading books and communicating with parents through reading records. With the current situation regarding COVID-19 we need to make some changes to avoid items travelling to and from school and potentially contaminating our bubbles.

With this in mind your child will be issued one, banded, reading book each Friday. They may keep this for the week and we would encourage you to read the book at home with them. On the following Friday, they need to return the book to school where it will be placed in a quarantine box. Your child will then be issued with a new book. They will only be issued with a new reading book when the old one is returned. We will not be sending home reading records. If you have a pressing comment or message for the class teacher, please pop it on a post-it note or piece of paper inside the book. Your child does not have to change their book. If they require more time with the text they may keep it until the following Friday.

Whilst in the past we have changed books more regularly, we are sure you will understand the challenges of quarantining and cleaning each book before it can go back into circulation. We would encourage you to supplement your child's school reading book with books from home, articles, comics, poetry etc. We will continue to read a wide range of books and other texts in school. 

Many Thanks for your continued support as we navigate this challenging time.

Our final theme of Year Five is WHERE IN THE WORLD?.

Please take the time to read the Curriculum Newsletter for the term.

RED NOSE DAY

On Friday 19th March, we celebrated Red Nose Day (Comic Relief) and this year we focused on 'Heroes'. We had a vast selection from comic book heroes, to doctors to even teachers! It was great to spend the day discussing what the word 'hero' means but also what it means to us. With everything that has happened recently, the word hero has been (quite rightly) used more than ever. 

In the afternoon (in a nod to #CoxellsKitchen), we created our own Red Nose Day biscuits!

DRAGON EYES

To link with our work looking at dragon ships, we decided to design and create our own dragon eyes. First the children spent time mastering drawing a variety of eyes (human, animal and finally dragon!). Then they thought carefully about how their drawings could be adapted to sculptures using clay. Next, they moulded the clay using a variety of tools. Once they were fully dried, they painted them. Finally, they drew the entire dragon!

DAY AND NIGHT

Today we looked at why we get day and night. The children carried out an experiment using a globe, torch and a Lego man. The torch acted as the sun and the globe as the Earth. They rotated the globe while one of the children held the torch shining on the Lego person. This helped to explain that as the torch shines on one side of the Earth creating daytime, the other side which is in darkness shows nigh time. The children thoroughly enjoyed the visual experiment which helped to explain a tricky concept.

DIWALI

To celebrate Diwali, the whole school were challenged to design their own Rangoli patterns. A Rangoli is a colourful design made on the floor using coloured rice powder. It is often used by Hindus throughout Diwali. 

After designing, the children across the school then used chalks to decorate the playground.

We also created our own diva lamps out of clay!

OUR REMEMBRANCE WREATH

As a mark of respect and also to expand our learning, we created our own Remembrance Day wreath. Leading up to 11th November, we learnt about the different coloured poppies you could get as well as their different meanings. If you aren't sure what they mean, please watch our video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEgRj4Y_gzA

Then, we decided that we would create our very own wreath and included all of the poppies. We chose to sew felt poppies. For many of us, this was our first experience of sewing! 

ORIGAMI STARS!

As part of our space topic, we have experimented with a variety of different artistic techniques. One of our favourite techniques, even though it is very fiddly, is origami. We had to follow step by step how to create these amazing stars! Although we had to persevere, we were really pleased how they turned out. 

OUR HOME LEARNING PROJECTS FROM AUTUMN 1!

We have all been incredibly impressed with the quality of the home learning projects this half term. The effort and attention to detail has been fantastic. Projects have ranged from artworks, research booklets and stories to an amazing rocket launching experiment. We're all looking forward to the creations in Autumn 2!

Well done Year 5, you all should be proud of yourselves.

MOON LANDING NEWS REPORTS!

This afternoon, we learnt about the 1967 moon landing. As we have been studying newspaper reports in English, we decided to present our learning in the form of 'news in brief' reports. In pairs, we became reporters and presented only the most 'important' information in the form of a brief report. 

In an afternoon, we researched moon landings, wrote scripts and then presented them to the class - so impressive!

THE PHASES OF THE MOON – WITH OREOS!

This afternoon, we learnt about the phases of the moon (or the lunar phases). A Moon Phase is the shape of the directly sunlit portion of the Moon as viewed from Earth. Many of the children were surprised they were so many! Once we learned the names and shapes of the phases, we used Oreo biscuits to represent each phase.

OUR CLASS ORRERIES

After learning the order of the planets and writing our own mnemonics to help remember them, our next task was to create an orrery (a model of the Solar System that illustrates the positions of the planets). In groups, we had a slice of wood and then painted it to represent one of the planets or the sun. Then, once they were put together, we had an orrery! Mrs Coxell joined us for this lesson and painted one of the planets too!

OUR ALIENS

During lockdown, author and illustrator Rob Biddulph created a very popular #DrawWithRob series on YouTube (http://www.robbiddulph.com/draw-with-rob). Some of the children commented that he had drawn an alien as part of this series. We decided that we’ve try and follow the tutorial and draw our own (as we had designed our own planets in our previous art lesson). We then tweeted Rob to ask what he thought!

CREATING OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM

To start our ‘Space’ topic, we decided to create our own solar system within our classroom. Luckily, we already had the planets but we noticed that we were missing stars. Everyone was able create their own star. It was very fiddly threading the beads and sequins onto the wire frames and then even more fiddly attaching the ribbon. However, once complete, we now have a sparkling classroom filled with stars!

Times Tables: 

Each Monday we will be completing a Times Tables Challenge.  All children start at the first stage.  To move onto the next stage children must complete the challenge in 3 minutes with all answers correct. Children need to know all their multiplication and division facts up to the 12 x table. 

Children can now practise their times tables whenever they want to with TIMESTABLES ROCKSTARS.  Log in details stuck in the back of Spelling Homework Books. Please click on the link to practise these vital skills.

Reading: 

The children are expected to read at home 5 times each week. Please make sure you sign their reading record each time you hear them read.  You can also make a comment on their enjoyment and understanding of the book, how fluently they read and any difficulties they experienced, at the end of each book. Don't forget the children can also comment on their own book in the new reading record! The children should bring their book bags to school every morning so that we can monitor their progress. Reading Records will be checked on a Wednesday. 

Children can now practise their reading comprehension whenever they want to with READTHEORY. Log in details stuck in the back of Spelling Homework Books. Please click on the link to practise these vital skills.

Spellings:

All children will get ten spellings to learn every week. The children are given a suggested activity to support them to learn their spellings, these will be stuck in their Spelling Homework Books. Please can their (yellow) Spelling Homework Books be handed back in on a Tuesday. Then the new activities can be stuck in ready for the new spellings to be handed out on Thursday. Children can now practise their spellings whenever they want to with SPELLING SHED. Log in details stuck in the back of Spelling Homework Books. Please click on the link to practise these vital skills.