Year 5 News 18.03.22

We have had a wonderful week in Year 5.

In English, it was time to write our information texts. At the start of the week, we began writing our 'shared text'. You each chose your favourite planet to write about, and we took it one paragraph at a time. You worked hard to use the skills and techniques we have learnt to craft your writing. It was great to see subordinating and coordinating conjunctions as it meant you were using simple, compound and complex sentences (our writing focus). I could also clearly see the key layout features and parenthesis in your writing too. Well done, team. At the end of the week, it was time to do your independent piece which we call our 'Hot Write'. You weaved our key skills beautifully throughout your work and did an amazing job at showing what you had learnt. I am very impressed.

In maths, we have been tackling fractions. In particular, we have been looking at how to add and subtract fractions with different denominators. We found adding fractions easy as we could follow the simple steps of adding the wholes. Next, we found a common denominator for the parts and then finally added parts together. When it came to subtracting fractions, we found this a little bit trickier. At little more practice will help us master this skill, so we are going to keep working on this next week!

During our afternoons, we have been focusing on Science as this week was science week. First of all, we draw a picture of what we thought a scientist looked like. Many of us drew a crazy, old man in a lab coat next to a desk with lots of bubbling liquids. As the week went on, we realised that our initial ideas of what a scientist was weren't quite accurate. Did you know that anyone who does anything with science can be a scientist? That includes astronauts, engineers, zoo keepers, vets, doctors and even us in school because we do science experiments. During our computing time, we learnt about a scientist called Kusala Rajendran. She is an Earth scientist (she studies earthquakes and their effects), and as the week went on, we began to realise that anyone, anywhere can be a scientist! Isn't that amazing?

As this year's science week focus was growth, we explored the idea of adaptation and how animals grow and change to suit their environment. We applied this knowledge to create a creature that could live on Mars. We considered the intense heat, radiation and sand storms that are present on this planet and designed creatures that would be best suited to survived. The results were fascinating.

We also finished our science unit on space this week. Our last lesson focused on moon phases. We learnt that the moon takes a whole month to rotate! We also learnt that the moon is a satellite that reflects the suns light (it doesn't create its own light). We talked about how the moon changes throughout a month, and learnt about how it waxes and wanes as the reflection of the suns light gets bigger and smaller.

As well as learning about Kusala Rajendran during our computing time, we also did an e-safety lesson. We talked about what cyberbullying was and how we can be 'upstanders' that can stop it from happening. We discussed different scenarios and how we might react to them. It was interesting to hear your ideas. We talked about how sometimes you might be tempted to do the wrong thing and how we need to work hard to do what is right for us and for others online. This led us to creating Digital Superheroes! These looked great and the powers you gave them would definitely help us do the right thing. Remember though, it is really you who is the digital superhero because you can always choose to do what is right.

For R.E this week, we began a new topic all about the Islamic faith. We created a mind-map of what we already knew and it was lovely to hear you remembering so much. We then talked about the 5 pillars which are the cornerstone of this faith.

We also did D.T this week. We learnt how to do a stitch called the blanket stitch. Using binka and wool, we practiced our skills. One of the trickiest parts turned out to be threading the needle! The patience and resilience you showed during this lesson really impressed me. We will practice a few more times before we move onto making our cushions. How exciting!

In your P.E lesson with Mrs Jenkins this week, you focused on jumping. We revisited speed bounce. We counted how many speed bounces we could do in 30 seconds. We did lots! We also had a try of the twist method for speed bounce. We then rotated around three stations. We had long jump, where we had to try to jump into hoops placed at different distances. There was also high jump. We had to recap the scissor jump and worked on adding the curved run up as well. We also practised hurdles around the track, focussing on speed.€

In music this week, we continued learning our other Young Voices songs. This week, our new songs were: Power In Me and the Muppets Medley. We added the dance actions to the Power In Me. We sang it so well! We revisited our previous songs too. There are a lot to learn!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend,

Miss P