Year 5 News 30.04.21

This week, we have started many new units of learning which have been really exciting. Yet again, I am really proud of everyone in Year 5 for their hard work and determination!

In our English lessons this week, we have continued to learn our new talk for writing unit based on a balanced argument. The children have written their own short burst after learning the first few paragraphs. We used an activity called conscious alley to get the children to think about the for and against points for children being allowed to eat chocolate for breakfast. We then explored formal and informal language. The use of formal language is a focus on ours. The children were given words to sort and asked to match them with their synonym. Throughout the week, we have also created a toolkit for a balanced argument and included skills we have noticed in the model. We have also 'boxed up' the text and considered what skills are used in each paragraph. We have also continued to practice our handwriting through mini activity in class.

In our Maths lessons, we have learnt how to subtract fractions. We have used fraction strips and fraction circles to take away one fraction from another. We have also been learning about subtracting from mixed number fractions. The children learnt to do this by changing mixed numbers to improper fractions before subtracting. Later in the week, we also moved on to using our problem-solving skills to answer questions involving adding and subtracting fractions. At the end of the week, the children completed an arithmetic quiz which we marked as a class to show the children the methods we should be using.

In Music, we began to experiment with composition using standard notation on a five line musical stave. Our aim was to compose as many rhythms as we could; using a variety of notes. We had to remember; we could only have 4 beats in each time measure. Working in partners, we practised our compositions and some of us shared ours with the class. The only notes we could use were: C (middle C), D, E and F. Next week, we will decide which compositions fit with our topic song – Have you heard the story?

In Geography this week, we explored key facts related to the human and physical features of the UK and Greece. Comparing the key information enhanced our knowledge of Greece. To prepare ourselves for our next lesson we also designed a symbol to depict what weather and climate are. This prompted lots of good discussion.

This week, we started our new unit of DT. In our lesson, we explored cushions! We considered the aesthetics and functionality of different cushions and the impact of this on the person purchasing the products. The children were shown some examples of cushions and asked to consider the aesthetics and functionality of these products. In their books, the children chose to write about two cushions and compare their uses.

In our PE lesson with Miss Welch this week, we continued to develop our PE skills. This week, we started our lesson off by developing the strength in both of our hands and developing our hand-eye coordination by picking up a ball off the cone on the left and placing in on the cone on the right. We repeated this action a couple of times. We then learnt how to improve our bowling technique through aiming to knock down a cone and we practiced our batting and fielding techniques by playing small group games.

In our RE lessons this week, we completed our assessment piece of work representing how the Mosque shows the idea of one community. We then moved on to our new unit of 'Resurrection'. In this lesson, the children were asked to think back to the Easter story and retell the main parts. The children were each given a part of the story to represent through a picture. We then looked at a picture of the 'Supper at Emmaus'. I asked the children to think about important meals they have been to – what they talked about, the reason for the meal, who attended etc. We then read the story 'The Road to Emmaus'. The children were then asked to think about what the people in the image may have been thinking and saying to one another. We then looked at examples from the text of what the text tells Christians about Jesus. The children represented their ideas through an image of Jesus.

In our History lessons, we have recapped our learning of Greek politics. We learnt more about the systems they had in place for the different groups of politicians. We then went on to consider the similarities and differences between the Ancient Greek political system and the system we have in place today. The children wrote about these differences in our books.

We started our new Computing unit this term. This term, we will be exploring how to use spreadsheets. In our introductory lesson, the children learnt about cells. We used the column and row labels to identify items in different cells through a game. The children were then shown how we can format cells, add colours, text and change the size. Later on in the lesson, the children were shown how to input formulas. The children opened their own spreadsheets on our class google drive and input formulas for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They were then able to save these as their own documents.

In our Wellbeing session this week, we listened to a audio clip by Annaka Harris called Mindful Hearing. This clip allowed the children to relax and take in sounds from the world around us. It encouraged us to take moments in our life to sit quietly, listen and be mindful. I hope this is a skill the children can continue to use. If you would like to share this at home, please follow the link https://annakaharris.com/mindfulness-forchildren/ We then ended my listening to a piece of music and considering how listening to music can make us feel. I have asked the children to think about their favourite 'feel good' songs and we hope to share some of these next week.

I hope you have all enjoyed the long weekend!
Miss Welch