Year 5 News 23.04.21

In our English lessons this week, we started by carefully editing our stories from last term based on a warning story. I loved reading each one of these. We then recapped the use of apostrophes for contractions and to show possession of singular and plural words. We completed the activities in our Spag CGP books. Next, we moved on to our cold write. For this task, we wrote a balanced arguments. The children were asked to do this without much input from myself. This allowed me to assess what the children already knew about balanced arguments. Then, on Wednesday, we were asked to consider the question 'Should children wear school uniform?'. As you can imagine, this created an amazing discussion in class. The children considered ideas for and against this question. We discussed how you need to consider both points equally to create a balanced argument. We then looked for examples in a piece of text. At the end of the lesson, the children were introduced to our new unit of talk for writing, 'Should Hermes be crowned king of the Gods?' The children choose whether they initially agreed with this argument or not and chose a side of the classroom to stand on. We then discussed the children's reasons for their decision. By the end of the week, the children had learnt the first two paragraphs of the model text and we had explored the vocabulary within in. We also used a spinning wheel to write sentences using key vocabulary you find in a balanced argument.

In our Maths lessons this week, we have learnt more about adding fractions. We are now able to add fractions by making fractions with a common denominator using our understanding of equivalent fractions and by making the fractions improper before adding them together. We then moved on to subtracting fractions. We found this easy to understand after all of our work on addition.

In our PE lesson with myself this week, the children showed me the skills that had learnt in their cricket lessons last term. In our warm up,
We practised their catching skills by throwing a tennis ball in the air and clapping before catching it again. We also practised our bowling and fielding skills through a game of diamond cricket.

This week, we have also celebrated Earth Day with an amazing theatrical performance from the New Vic of The Lorax. This performance taken from the story by Dr Suess was inspiring and allowed us to think of the impact we have on the earth. We also started our new Science topic for this term. We are learning about Space.

In our Art lessons this week, we have started our new unit of pottery. We have started by exploring the use of pottery. The children were given images of famous Greek pottery and asked to predict what they would have previously been used for. Then, we talked about the real use of the pottery and why we thought they may have been useful to own.

In our History lesson this week, we have learnt about the city states worked together to protect themselves from the Spartans. At first, they had no plan and many citizens of the city states died. Then, they realised that if they worked together instead of against each other, they could defeat the Spartans. This then started a democracy. We acted out the situation of city states working independently and struggling to defeat the Spartans and then they showed how they could work together to protect themselves form the Spartans. Then, in class, the children were asked to vote for who they thought would make a good librarian. The children made speeches to the class and conducted an official vote with a ballot box. We talked about how this made us a democracy. From this, the children were able to explain how the city states started a democracy to defeat the Spartans. Next, we discussed which people, in Ancient Greece, we allowed to take part in democratic votes and how the democracy work in Greece.

In Science this week, we have started to learn about Space. We started our lesson by looking at some statements we could explore as scientists. The children pretended to believe in the statements and also doubt them to get us thinking from both points of view. We then considered how we could prove or disprove the statements. To do this, we initially needed a question we would investigate and then we discussed the type of enquiry we would explore e.g. analysis of data, taking measurements, creating models etc. The children were then asked a big question: is the world flat? We went outside and explored what we could see. The children were then given statements and we had to decide if these suggested the world was flat or spherical. Later on in the lesson, the children started to gather key numerical data about the planets. Four information sheets were distributed around the classroom and the children were asked to go and ask each other scientific questions to find out the information. Finally, at the end of the lesson, we explored the relative size of the planets using fruit. From what the children had found, we were able to order the size of the planets. We were then even able to put them in order of distance from the sun.

In RE, we have presented what we have learnt about Muslims being one community when they attend the Mosque to pray. Using drawings, the children represented what they had learnt and were able to talk about this really well.

This week in our HeartSmart lesson we started our new unit – Fake is a mistake! We listed 5 great things about ourselves. Being ourselves shows we are unique and amazing in our own special ways. On the other hand, being fake can lead to us looking untrustworthy. Friendships are built on trust and trust comes from us telling the truth.

In music, we listened to and started to learn the lyrics of our Ancient Greek song – Have you heard the story? Next week, we will continue to practise singing this song. 

The location of Greece was our focus in Geography this week. We developed our locational knowledge by exploring maps at a range of scales. Using this knowledge we summarised the location of Athens and began to make comparisons between Greece to the U.K. 

Finally, in our Digital Literacy lesson this week, we have learnt how we can act appropriately on online games and groups like SeeSaw. The children looked at the 'norms' of online platforms and considered why these were important. We then all made a pledge for how we would act online.

It has been an amazing week in Year 5 and we have done so much! I can't wait to see what we get up to next week!