Y5 News and Theme Day

Have you ever imagined what school was like in the Victorian Era? If you have, you should have joined Y5 for their theme day on Thursday! In the morning, by the magic of make-believe (and a lot of fun role-play), we were transported into a Victorian school room.

To start off with, you lined up outside of the classroom, and the boys were invited to enter first; the teacher was very kind and let you in even though you didn't have a penny to pay for your education! As you entered, you stood behind your seats and the school teacher (Ma'am) instructed you to say the Lord's prayer and sing the national anthem to Queen Victoria's portrait which hung on the wall. The next step was to learn the rules! Did you know, you couldn't be left handed? Also, you couldn't ask questions, and you weren't allowed to speak unless you were spoken to. Handwriting was next on the list. Unfortunately, some of us were not neat enough and Ma'am made some children to wear the dunce's hat. After that, we moved onto our 'object lesson' about the seasons. The teacher shared some facts, and you were expected to remember them and write them down. By break time, we were quite happy to say goodbye to Victorian schooling as it was definitely not for us. Luckily, the rest of the day was not so strict! After break, made some Victorian toys; we made a thaurmatrope and a peg doll. It was a great day! Thank you for dressing up, and thank you to those of you who brought in goodies for us to share.

This week has also been Interfaith Week. On Monday, we learnt all about the religion of the indigenous people of Australia through the medium of virtual reality – it was seriously cool! For our Interfaith Week project, we learnt about India. Did you know that 1311 million people live in India? Also, there are 5 main religions: Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. Only 2% of India's population is Christian, and although that doesn't sound like a lot it's still 2,622,000 people! After we'd found out all about India, we then went on to create artwork inspired by an India artist. We used our hands and the symbols of the top five religions to recreate the India flag.

Interfaith Week has kept us busy during the afternoons this week. However, on Wednesday you took a break from Interfaith Week because it was time for your PE and music lesson. In music, you used the glockenspiels and learnt how to play notes in time with a beat. Also we did something slightly different on Friday afternoon as we looked at how to be a good 'Digital Citizen', and we all took the pledge to be good Digital Citizens which means being the best we can be online.

Finally, in English this week we ended our topic on biographies with each of you writing your own biography of a king or queen of your choice. I have to say, I am rather impressed. In maths, we learn about division. We recapped how to use the short division method and learnt some cheat codes (rules of divisibility) for dividing.

Hope you have a great weekend,

Miss Pennance