Year 5 Weekly News

Happy Friday Year 5!

The week has flown by again. We have be busy learning lots of new things, and we have also had fun in the snow.

In English this week, we continued learning the story map and investigating our model text. As part of our investigations, we have thought about the emotions of our main character. We came to the conclusion that this story type has many ups and downs, so we must think about our vocabulary choices carefully to help us convey this. Throughout the week, we have also been focusing on parenthesis and how dashes, brackets and commas can be used to indicate this.

In Maths, we have been focusing on long multiplication. We practiced how to lay it out correctly and realised the importance of knowing our times tables. Keep practicing your times tables at home as this will make our learning much easier.

In MyHappyMinds, we have continued thinking about appreciation. We thought about the ways that we are appreciated, and how we can show gratitude towards those who appreciate us. Did you know that when we show gratitude, it realises dopamine which makes us feel good. It also makes the person we are appreciating feel good to. You have been challenged this week to think about when you have shown gratitude. Can you think of one?

During our afternoon sessions, we have covered many eras of the curriculum. This week in music, we practised holding the ukulele; making sure our posture was correct. The ukuleles are precious to us and we know we need to be very careful with them. We strummed to the beat. It was our first lesson for awhile, but we soon remembered what we needed to do. Great work, team! For French this week, we matched each tens number to the matching written French version. We joined number bonds to 100 and created number sentences and shared these with the class

In Science, we continued gathering facts about the solar system. Did you know that Earth is 93,000,000 miles from the sun! That is a long way. Neptune, the eight planet and last planet in our solar system, is even further at a staggering 2,880,000,000!

For out HeartSmart (PHSE) lesson, we had two main focuses. The first was the importance of sleep. We discussed how our bodies need sleep, and how many hours a child should sleep each night. A Year 5 child needs between 9 and 11 hours of sleep a night. Are you getting that much? Sleep is so important it even features in the bible:'In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me dwellin safety.'Psalm 4:8. Our second focus was the importance of 'Watch What You Watch'. We discussed how games and films have a rating, and we should use this to guide us when deciding what to watch.

We continued with our History unit this week. Each week we will be answer a historical question to help us better understand how the Ancient Greeks have impacted our lives today. This week, we were establish 'Who were the Ancient Greeks?'. We learnt that Ancient Greece was not a country. Instead, it was a collection of city-states. We learnt that two key city states were Athens and Sparta.

Coding was our computing focus this week. We learnt about 'events'. This is when a button can be programmed to perform a certain action. We enjoyed creating 'events' which made our avatars move around and collect things. Essentially, we made a game!

Towards the end of the week, we focused on Courageous Advocacy, Art and R.E. In R.E, we continued to learn about the Christian concept of salvation. Our big question this term is: What can we learn from Christian works of art about salvation? Last week, we learnt what salvation meant, and how the story of Zacchaeus shares this message. This week, we have been thinking about how Christians believe Jesus offers salvation if they welcome God into their lives. We thought about how Christians may feel knowing God is with them, and considered what colours we might us to represent this.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Miss P