Year 5 News 2.06.21

In our first Maths lesson this week, we learnt about fractions as decimals. The children explored how fractions could be written as decimals through the use of number lines and place value counters. We explored the values of counters and how we could use this information to identify the tenths and hundredths in a decimal point. We also learnt about how we could convert quarters into decimal places. This concept was something that was trying to catch us out. In our second Maths lesson, we continued with the focus on decimals as fractions and in this lesson, but spent longer calculating between fractions and decimals. We also involved more hundredths in this lesson and continued to use counters and number lines to help our understanding. With Mrs Pointon, the children learnt about hundredths. Using hundred grids and counters, the children showed how decimals could be represented on a hundredths grid and as a fraction and as a decimal. The children also used place value counters to represent decimals with hundredths and how we can convert between hundredths and tenths.

In our English lessons this week, we have finished learning our model text of a diary. We then annotated the features and skills used within our model text. The children labelled this within their English books to refer back to when writing their own text. In our next lesson, we boxed up the text and considered the information and skills used is each aspect of the diary. Following this, the children completed their own plans of their diaries. We based our diaries on our book 'Who Let the Gods Out'. At the end of the week, we then wrote our own diaries using the skills we have learnt. Our focus was on using informal vocabulary/phrases, past tense, use of expanded noun phrases and using each of the year 5 skills we have focused on so far – fronted adverbials, parenthesis, smilies, metaphors, personification and suspense.

Our first PE lesson was rained off today. But, we didn't let that stop us. We tried again on Tuesday and this time we were able to have our final cricket lesson. The children had a fun afternoon putting their skills into practise. They practised their bowling, fielding and batting skills through cricket matches and games.

For our wellbeing activities this week, we designed and decorated our 'happiness rocks'. We wrote positive phrases and happy pictures on to a rock to put smiles on to people's faces. Take a look at our rocks to see what we made!

This week in music, we continued to compose our notes to accompany our song -'Have You Heard The Story?' As a class, we used the syllables as a guide for the beat of the music; leading us to create rhythms to fit with the song. We then transferred one chosen rhythm per verse on to our presentation page for our study work book. 

In our first History lesson this week, the children completed their Olympic athlete play-scripts. Once the children had written their scripts, they performed their interviews to the class.

In ur second History lesson, we ventured back in time to research the similarities and differences between two rival city states in Ancient Greece; Athens and Sparta. We were detectives to look at various written sources to note down the key facts. We noted that they both had a form of government and an army. However they differed in many ways, in what they valued and how they lived their lives. Once we had a good understanding, we explained which was our preferred city state.

In our computing lesson this week, we accessed the second lesson of our new unit of code studio. In this lesson, we were using loops to code. We started the lesson by talking about what loops were used for and how they worked. We then went on to work either in pairs or independently to access the levels on code studio. At the end of the lesson, we started to reflect on what we had learnt.

We have also started our study work for our Greek unit this week. We have written up our Greek Myth pieces that the children are really proud of and started to gather our work for Science and History pages.

In our double Science lesson this week, we learnt about the Heliocentric and Geocentric models of the universe. At the start of the lesson, the children showed, what rotate and spin meant and how these were different. We then used this knowledge to talk about how the planets move and what evidence we had for this – as scientists we are always looking for evidence! We then moved on to learn about how Scientists from the past (hundreds and thousands of years ago until present day) had considered there to be the geocentric model and now the heliocentric model. The children took part in a story and were asked to be Scientists with different words to say. The children wore masks and read their words when it came to them in the story. By doing this, we learnt about how people's views had changed and how people had used the ideas from the scientists before them to develop their ideas. When we had finished our story, the children wrote down what they had learnt in the lesson.

I hope that you are all enjoying your half term and I look forward to seeing you all again next week!
Miss Welch