Happy Half Term Y5 25.10.24

Happy Friday, Year 5. Can you believe we've got to the end of our first half term together? The time together has gone so quickly, and you have worked so hard. I am extremely proud of you each and everyone of you.

On the topic of working hard, this week has been no exception. So let's find out what we've been up to this week.

First of all, it has we have been practising our class worship which we enjoyed sharing with you all today. Our class worship was all about our school's vision and CDAT's vision. We talked about how we can be leading lights in our community, and we shared some moments of when we let our light shine. At the end, we sang a wonderful song. You all spoke clearly and sang beautifully. Great work, team!

In maths, we continued with our multiplication and division unit. So far, we have learnt about multiples, common multiples and factors. Finding factors was a little tricky as it was hard to find all of them. To overcome this challenge, we used a systematic approach to make sure we didn't miss any. You became experts at this which was fantastic. Well done.

In English, we started and finished writing our formal reports. For this report, we pretended we were astronauts and wrote a report about our mission to the moon. In your writing, it was fantastic to see you using our writer's tools such as brackets, formal language and technical vocabulary. You did an amazing job, and I hope you are all very proud of what you have achieved.

For our Book Club sessions this week, we have continued looking at the poem by Thomas Hood called ''Song of the Shirt' by Thomas Hood. This week, we looked at the second half of the poem and used our evidence from the text to help us explain how the lady being talked about must have been feeling.

In R.E, our journey into the significance of holy texts in various faiths continued. This week, we looked at the holy texts of the Hindu, Sikh and Islamic faith. As part of the lesson, you were assigned one of the three faiths, and it was then your job to find out as much as you could about its holy book. You did a fantastic research job and gathered some very interesting information. When we return from half term, we will be sharing what we have found with the rest of the class.

Our PSHE lesson this week was linked to our Y5 Drugs and Alcohol unit. We started off the session with a class discussion to try and answer the question: 'What are drugs?' It was very interesting to hear your views. During the discussion, we talked about the difference between illegal and legal drugs, and we talked about the way some drugs – like medicine – can be helpful. After the discussion, we looked at photographs of 8 people. You were asked to sort these into who you think would take illegal drunks and who you think wouldn't. As it turns out, there is no way to know if a person does or doesn't take illegal drugs just by looking at them. This was important to understand because we cannot judge someone just on how they look. Also, it is also important to understand that even if someone is wearing nice clothes and looks friendly, we must still be cautious and remember to protect ourselves and not accept anything from them unless a trusted adult is with us. In our last session, we discussed different scenarios and how we might act if we find ourselves in one.

On Wednesday, it was time for our last Forest School session. In this last session, we enjoyed a range of activities. First off, we picked up our bows and arrows to practice our archery skills. Next, we moved onto shelter building whilst some of us took turns to carve our pumpkin. We have been carving a pumpkin as we have learnt about Patch the Pumpkin this week. Patch is a pumpkin hero. We learnt that he was a hero because he was kind to others and this let his light shine. After shelter building and pumpkin carving, it was time for our last fire making session (with marshmallow toasting of course). We have loved all of our sessions. They have been amazing, and we'll cherish every moment.

This week, we paused our learning about the how the railways changed Crewe, so we could honour Black History Month by studying Katherine Johnson, one of the key women who contributed to N.A.S.A's missions into space. We explored her remarkable contributions to society as a whole, and were surprised to learn that, at the time, people did not fully appreciate her work. She was a truly inspiring women, and we were very intrigued to find out about her life.

To finish our week off, we were visited by PC Nick. He came in to tell us all about how to stay safe during Bonfire Night and on Halloween. You listened beautifully and really took on board his top tips. These tips were:
On Halloween:

• Please Don't play tricks or games like 'knock a door run' – people may get frightened or angry and the consequences could get you in trouble with either your family or the police!
• Or go out on your own, you may get lost – Always stay with an adult.

For Bonfire Night:

• Make sure your bonfire is not too big for your garden.
• Don't light you fire under hanging branches of trees and make sure it's not close to any outbuildings like sheds.
• Stand well back from the fire.
• Don't throw items into the fire.
• Always keep a bucket of water or sand close by.
• Fireworks should not be set off between 11pm & 7am

Thank you so much for all your hard work this half term. You are super stars. I hope you have a fantastic half term break, and I can't wait to see you all when we come back.

Have an amazing half term,

Miss Pennance