Autumn Term 2020

Week commencing 30th November 

   As Christmas draws nearer, we all get more excited. However, I cannot fault the children's commitment to their learning. Although it has been a tough term academically, the children have worked so hard and shown great resilience.

    In Maths we are continuing with our learning of perimeter. We have completed several recap sessions since we missed measure during the COVID-19 lockdown.

  In English we continue to study THE TEMPEST. We now have found out that Miranda and Ferdinand are falling in love, against the wishes of Miranda's father: Prospero! We have written our very own "missing scene" where Miranda tries to persuade her father to allow her to marry Ferdinand. Some of the scripts were brilliantly hilarious to read.

   We have continued to learn about life cycles in Science. Talking about the similarities and differences between a human life cycle and a plant's. This has led us on to talking about reproduction in both humans, plants and other animals.

Week commencing 23rd November 

      Another solid week from Year 5, this week. We have finished our first section of Multiplication and Division and have moved on to Measure - looking at Perimeter in particular. We have been using and improving our ruler skills to find the perimeter.

   In English, we have begun reading THE TEMPEST by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. I am absolutely buzzing with how the children have understood the difficult language involved in this story. We have spent most of the week trying to find the links between all of the characters - and there are many!! We have worked out that Shakespeare wrote a lot about love and violence.

   We have begun our Science block of work this week - the life cycles and reproduction of living things. Again, the children have worked extremely hard at this and continue to show great topic knowledge throughout all the afternoon sessions.

  Finally, our PE sessions throughout this term have been great but I have to give a huge mention this week to how awesome our Hockey skills were - I have never seen progress like I have witnessed from this class in a PE block before!     

Week commencing 16th November 

   Assessment week this week. The children have been assessed in Reading, Maths, Science and Writing. A huge congratulations to every single member of the class who, despite being off school for several months, have made unbelievable progress since September. 

   I cannot put in to words how proud I am of the class in regards to their work effort, attitude and resilience.

   Elsewhere this week, we have been travelling from county to county using our 8-point compass and have begun a new business venture in River Cruises. The children have research a European River of their choice and are in the process of writing a brochure about all the physical and human geography we will see along the way.

Week commencing 9th November 

   Welcome back to the most exciting term in the school calendar - the build up to CHRISTMAS!

    However, that is 6 weeks away and we will work extremely hard until we can almost feel Santa's sleigh bells.

   This week we have been learning all about Multiplication in Maths - Multiples, Factors, Square and Prime numbers. The children have worked extremely hard and shocked me with their knowledge in this tricky area of Maths.

In English, we have been reading 'Robot Girl' by the 8th Children's laureate: Malorie Blackman. It is an absolutely fantastic novel, that has us on the edge of our seat at the end of every chapter - we all highly recommend it! We have been infering information, predicting and using the novel to help us write narrative around speech. We look forward to finding out what happens next week.

In Geography, we have been learning about counties in England, river in those counties and travelled around a map using an 8-point compasss.

If you would like to know more about a compass and how they work, click on the link below and watch the lesson.

https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/how-does-a-compass-work-6rr30d?from_query=compass

Week commencing 12th October 

    Climate change was the order of the week this week! We wrote to Prime Minister Boris Johnson today to encourage the United Kingdom to stop using all fossil fuels. The children really felt empowered by what they heard about climate change and how they can help change for the better. They heard about what London may look like by the year 2066 if we continue to burn fossil fuels at the rate we are doing and how wars, in the future, may begin over rain falling in one area and not another.

     The learning about climate change and the passion is evoked really supported our writing this week - the children are really beginning to think about their audiences and changing the way they write for different audiences - it's the best they've written since September.

   Maths has been a lot of addition and subtraction problem solving. We have learnt that sometimes you have to answer the last part of the question before returning to the beginning - WHO KNEW?!?

If you've liked learning about Climate Change, why not watch the following video!?

Why does the UK have wild weather?

https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/why-does-the-uk-have-wild-weather-60u6cr 

Additional work: 

This afternoon, we spoke about why rivers around the world are drying up. This led us on to talk a lot about Climate change. If you have further interests in this area of Geography, click on the link below and watch the lesson.

https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/why-is-the-worlds-weather-changing-c9k34t

Week commencing 5th October 

     AAAAAAAAND breatheeee....What a whirlwind of a week this week. It seems to be still running at 100mph so we decided to take a couple of days away from the tough, challenging core work and instead complete some of our design curriculum targets. We spent two days designing a Viking longship or longhouse; measuring wood, sawing the wood; using a hot glue gun to glue the piece together and then paint and decorate our models. I must say, it is probably the best piece of design technology work I have ever been part of! BRILLIANT!!!

    We also completed some addition and subtraction work during the week as well as improving some of our grammar in SPaG lessons.

    We had an incredible morning using the NowPressPlay headphones, where we listened to a Viking story and acted it out at the same time - it was so cool!

  Finally, we have begun at the 'source' of our river work - learning about all of the parts of a river before looking at why some rivers have begun to dry up.

If you would like to learn a little bit more about river ready for next week, then follow the link and watch the lesson.

https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/where-are-the-worlds-rivers-6dh32d

Don't forget to log on to your GoogleClassroom, where you will find lots of work that you can complete at home. Most of this work is consolidation work that has been completed in class, so it is nothing scary!!

Week commencing 28th September 

    We began our addition and subtraction journey this week. Initially we have revisited some of the Year 4 milestones to ensure we have a solid understanding of adding and subtracting since we spent such a long time in lockdown. So far, the children have shown great knowledge and understanding of Addition and Subtraction and i'm confident we'll continue to progress throughout this next step.

    We transferred our biography skills from last week to write an autobiography this week (obviously about ourself - yes, somebody really did ask that!). It was interesting to read about the children's lives before I met them in Year 5 and how they perceived their time in other year groups. Some literally made me Laugh Out Loud...

    We continued to study the Vikings this week, and learnt why the Great British Soil ensured the Vikings were here to stay. We also spoke about propaganda - where do we learn history from? Who tells us the stories of times past? The Vikings couldn't write so how do we know they are being portrayed in the way that they actually were..?

If you would like to study more on the column method for addition (or get ahead of the game with subtraction), why not click on the following link and watch the lesson? 

https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/year-5/week-4/ 

Week commencing 21st September 

     We are really beginning to thrive in Year 5 now. Most of the children in class are now achieving highly in Maths - regularly completing the problem solving questions! The most positive thing is that the children are challenging themselves and pushing their learning as far as they possibly can! I am one very proud teachers.

    In English we have delved in to the life of Philippe Petit, the star of our The Man Who Walked Between the Towers story, to write a biography of the daredevil. I can genuinely say, the standard of writing across the whole class is some of the best i've experienced as a teacher.

    We continue to learn more about the Vikings in History. We have learnt where they came from and why they visited (invaded) British soil. Next week we'll be learning about why they decided to settle and stay.

Want to take your leaning further? Why not click on the following link to learn all about Alfred the 'Great'.

https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/the-viking-invasion-74r3ae?from_query=vikings

Week commencing 14th September 

     Another fantastically positive week for year 5! We have further discovered Place Value: rounding numbers within 100,000; comparing and ordering numbers and looking at numbers on a number line.

   In English we have continued reading The Man Who Walked Between The Towers. We have written another newspaper articles, this time including an interview from an observer. We also became editors to improve our articles before publishing them.

   In PSHE this week we have been learning a bit about our bodies - in detail... It has been our Sexual Relationship Education week for the previous year we missed during COVID lockdown.

Week commencing 7th September

Firstly, I'd like to congratulate each and every children, not just in Year 5 but in Church Lane for the excellent maturity shown and adaptability to how the school now looks due to new COVID19 guidelines.
The children have started really well, showing great work ethic. 

We have begun learning about Place Value in Maths and we are reading 'The Man Who Walked Between The Towers' in English and have so far written a newspaper article, a letter of advice and a interview script.

We have been completing lots of PSHE work; understanding the NEW world around us and how we can manage our feelings and emotions during this current pandemic.