Y5 Weekly News 08.11.24

Welcome back, Year 5! It's been lovely to see you all again this week and hear what you've been up to during half term.

We also want to say welcome back to Miss Griffiths who is an associate teacher. As shared in Mrs Chesters' newsletter, CDAT are a Schools Direct provider for initial teacher training, and we first welcomed Miss Griffiths into Year 5 in September. Last half term, she was with us a few days a week and this half term she will spend the entire half term with us; she will then leave us for the spring term and go to another school for a different experience then return back to us in the summer term.

So, what have we been up to this week? Well, we had some special visitors in on Tuesday! The fire service came back to visit us. They kindly took the time to talk to us about the importance of fire safety and how to stay safe in the event of a fire. The firefighters shared valuable information on what to do and demonstrated the correct actions to take to ensure our safety. One of the highlights of the visit was experiencing the smoke tent. The firefighters explained why it is crucial to crawl when there is smoke in the air. It was a very interesting experience and exciting experience.

In the realm of mathematics, we delved into the secrets of numbers. The quest began with unlocking the mysteries of prime numbers – those special digits that dance to their own tune. But the adventure didn't stop there! We embarked on a journey with squared and cubed numbers, using awesome tools like multi-link cubes and counters to understand how these numbers got their names. Finally, towards the end of the week, we learnt about multiplying by 10, 100, and 1000.

In English, our imagination was ignited when some clues were left in the classroom at the start of the week. These clues included mud, leaves, a magnifying glass and a torn up map! We pieced the map together and found out that it was the floor plan to a place called Baskerville Hall. This set our minds racing, and we began to predict that our new story might be a murder mystery! We didn't have to wait long to find out that we were right! Our new English unit is going to be based around 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'. We have started reading the story, and we're very excited to see what happens next. Also, in spellings this week, our spelling pattern revolved around words ending in 'able'.

We completed two Science lessons this week. At the start of the week, you did a brilliant job when learning about life cycles life cycles. We learnt how mammals are born and grow, and we compared this to the life cycles of amphibians, reptiles, birds and insects and their metamorphosis, especially butterflies. You shared wonderful facts. Great job. In our second lesson on Friday, we learnt about the life cycles of plants which involved learning how plants asexually reproduced. We kicked off our exploration with the spider plant, which grows from "runners." You noticed these little offshoots sprouting from the main plant. We also looked at garlic, discovering how the cloves we love in our cooking are actually bulbs that can sprout into a whole new plant. Isn't it amazing how something so delicious can grow in such an interesting way? Our journey didn't stop there! We learned about potatoes, which are a kind of tuber. These underground treasures can sprout into new potato plants, giving us plenty of delicious meals. And let's not forget our adventure outside, where we practiced taking cuttings. We have carefully potted up an example of each one. Let’s keep our fingers crossed to see what happens.

In RE this week, we are coming to the end of our exploration into the significance of holy texts. This week, we used the knowledges we gathered from half term to begin creating presentations. We are looking forward to completing them next week and sharing them with each other

In Music, you focused on answering the social question: 'How does music connect us with our past?' You came up with some amazing ideas such as it links us to memories, holidays, people and much more. In PE, you enjoyed a basketball lesson with Coach Gabriel and with Mrs Whittingham you completed a fitness challenge. You were challenged to complete as many reps of different exercises as you could in 60 seconds whilst recording your own results so you can see how your fitness improves over the year. This will be repeated in spring term and finally in the summer term and you can compare their results. You were responsible for counting and recording your own reps so it is a personal challenge and each child is on their own journey to improve their fitness.

On Thursday, Miss Griffiths taught you all about how the railways changed Crewe. We learnt how Crewe grew dramatically thanks to the arrival of the railway. We learnt that this was because there were lots more jobs for people to do. Because of the jobs, it meant that people needed more houses, schools, hospitals and other local amenities. We have also been busy finishing off our fantastic work on Katherine Johnson.

I hope you have an amazing weekend,

Miss Pennance