Year 5 Weekly News 04.10.24

Happy Friday, Year 5. It has been another fantastic week where we have worked hard and tried our best; you have been superstars once again! As well as working hard, we have been busy practicing for our harvest worship. You have been doing an amazing job, and I know our friends and family will be excited about seeing it next Tuesday.

When we haven't been practicing, we have been giving it our all in our lessons. In Maths this week, we forged ahead with our journey through addition and subtraction. Our main focus was on mastering column addition and subtraction, a written technique that showcased the importance of exchanging between columns to ensure accurate calculations.

In English, we came to the end of our first-person exploration narratives. Throughout our writing this week, you demonstrated remarkable skills by incorporating parenthesis, dramatic dashes, and subject-specific vocabulary to craft beautiful stories. Your dedication and hard work shines through, and I'm incredibly proud of everyone. In our spellings, we have been learning some of our Y5/Y6 common exception words and we have been learning about words that end in ible.

On Monday afternoon, Heartsmart and RE were our focus. For Heartsmart this week, we continued to think about how our hearts are so precious they need to be protected. We talked about how we can protect them and some of our ideas included healthy eating, exercise and being kind to others. We also talked about how we can protect our hearts by being careful about the things we watch online or on the tv. We talked about how we can make good choices and were inspired to think about the Bible and the message of 'Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking.' Colossians 3:15. After Heartsmart, it was time for RE. During Monday's RE lesson, our exploration of the Bible continued, leading us to discover that it has been translated into numerous languages. We engaged in insightful discussions about the significance of these translations, sparking beautiful ideas and reflections.

On Tuesday afternoon, we were busy with French and RE. In French this week, we have learned how to count in tens to prepare us for our next lesson when we need numbers to 100 to help us with addresses. We noticed that the French put multiples of ten together to make some numbers, such as soixante-dix and then make four lots of twenty for eighty (quatre-vingt) and four lots of twenty and a ten for 90 (quatre-vingt-dix). After that we were introduced to the four operations and we made number sentences and practiced saying them aloud to work on our pronunciation. Last week in music, we spoke about how tempo speeds are written in Italian on sheet music. We already have knowledge of what tempo means, but we listened to examples of tempo speeds through a piano piece. We know where to look for the beats per minute based on the tempo of a piece of music. Leading on from this we played our new piece on our glockenspiels. To start with, we played at full tempo – 100%. As we found this difficult, we reduced the temp to 60%. We found the music was very slow and distracted us slightly. On reflection of this lesson, we feel having the note names in front of us will be beneficial as following the onscreen notes, and quickly looking down at our glockenspiels is a skill we need to work on. We created a class mind map about a new song – Words Can Hurt. Reading the lyrics, we could see this song was about: anti bullying, showing love to others, friendship and kindness.

On Wednesday, it was time for another amazing forest school session. Throughout our session, we focused on building shelters using ropes, pegs, and tarpaulins. It was wonderful to see how each group worked together to create sturdy and imaginative spaces. You all did an excellent job tying knots and securing your structures--your teamwork truly shone! In addition to building, we used natural materials from the surroundings to create beautiful decorations. Finally, one of the highlights was undoubtedly gathering around the fire. We learned the important skill of building a safe fire, and it was great fun to see everyone toasting marshmallows to perfection! Remember, the key to a good marshmallow is patience – don't rush it, and you'll get that lovely golden-brown finish!

On Thursday, it was time for PE and Computing. You enjoyed playing American football with Coach James, and during our Computing lessons we delved deeper into the world of search engines and the worldwide web. We learned about the architecture of webpages and even designed our own webpages on paper, showcasing our newfound knowledge.

Finally, on Friday Science was our focus. We delved into understanding the male and female parts of a flowering plant, which was really fascinating. You did such a great job identifying the stamen and the carpel and it was amazing to realise how each part plays a crucial role in the plant's life cycle. Next, we got some hands-on experience by dissecting a lily! You carefully cut it apart and did an excellent job labelling the different parts that you found.

Thank you for another fantastic week. I hope you have a wonderful weekend,

Miss Pennance