Year 5 News!

In our English lessons this week, we have continued to learn our Queen Victoria biography. The children are now able to recall the entire text! By doing this, we have not only learnt about biographies but also more key facts about Queen Victoria. We have also built on our knowledge of parenthesis. We created our toolkit for a biography which included everything we expect to see in our work and we boxed up the text to understand how the biography was structured. This week, we also gathered research for our own biographies about Charles Dickens. At the end of the week, we started to write our biographies.

Throughout Maths this week, we moved on to our new unit of measurement. So far, we have learnt about what perimeter is and how we measure it. As well as learning about measurement this week, the children have completed two maths quizzes to show us all the skills which they have learnt.

In Art this week, the children recapped the style of William Morris and how he used reflective symmetry in his work. We then use this to create our own repetitive design and reflective symmetry art work. The children used their observational drawings and knowledge of sketching for this task. During mindfulness, we created snowflakes. We talked about how everyone is unique — like a snowflake! Once they had been cut out, the children wrote on them to show what made them unique!

In Music this week, we learnt how to play the chord G7. We played alongside a piece of music called Mango Walk, in which, the children had to play G7 and C chords during the piece. In our PHSE lessons this week, we worked through a lesson based on how and when to ask for help. We discussed who would be the best people to ask for help and the children discussed whether this would always be the same person. The children were given scenarios which they then acted out. The children had to consider who they would go if this happened to them.

Year 5 the bug explorers. In Forest school this week, the children went on nature hunts to audit the pieces of nature they could find in our school grounds. The children then tried to identify the items that they had gathered. After this, they were given boxes, which they filled with grass, leaves and mud, and searched for different insects. These were then carefully placed inside the boxes. The children loved seeing what they could find! After finding their bugs, the children created their own 'bug hotels'! I was absolutely amazed at how creative and interesting these were! Well done Year 5!

In RE this week, we read the verse from John: 1. In which, Jesus is described as the Word. The children considered what the author really meant by calling Jesus 'the Word'. Again, I was amazed with the ideas you came up with! We suggested that Jesus is referred to as 'the Word' because he is the human form of God as is sent to Earth the shares God's message. We then explored how Jesus was called the Light of the World and again, we came up with many reasons as to why Jesus may be seen as the Light. At the end of our lesson, the children thought about how we can ensure that Jesus' light shines on everyone.

In our Geography lessons this week, the children learnt about globalisation. We explored which different multinational countries that we knew of and considered what children in Australia would know of these to. The children agreed that these countries would be popular around the world. The class were surprised to see how many McDonalds there were in El Salvador! We then moved on to learn about the impact of multinational companies on local trade. We considered the positive and negative impacts.

During our Science lesson this week, the children have been learning about soluble and insoluble materials. During the lesson, the children carried out an experiment to categorise different materials based on whether they dissolved or not. Before completing the experiment, the class made predictions on which materials they thought would dissolve and which would not. The children then considered what factors may affect the speed in which a material will dissolve.

In our computing lesson this week, the children were using the iPads to create a presentation on Google Slides. The class went through this together and learnt how to create a flow chart on their presentation using the shape tools. The children also became confident in linking one slide to another by inserting a link. The children also learnt how to add images to their slides, change the background of their slides and how to change the fonts. This was not easy on the iPads but Year 5 did a great job!

We started our PE lesson with an exciting warm up. On the whiteboard, the children were shown a picture for 30 seconds. In that time, they had to remember as much of it and they could. Afterwards, they were asked a question about it. To answer, they had to complete a certain fitness activity. It was great fun! We then became celebrities in PE and took part in the 'I'm a celebrity game'. The children were required to choose a five letter word linked to the famous TV programme. The children then had to run to buckets in the middle of the playground, find one of the letters that they needed and return to their group. On the back of the number card there was a fitness activity that they had to complete for 30 seconds. They could then return to the buckets to collect the next letter. The team who created their work first, won themselves a star. The team with the most stars at the end was the winner.

On Monday, we are celebrating our topic this term with our Victorian theme day! I cannot wait! I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Miss Welch