Year 5 Weekly News 27.01.23

Happy weekend, everybody. We have been so busy this week that the days have whizzed.

As always, Maths and English have filled our mornings. In Maths this week, we have continued learning about multiplication and division. In particular, we have focused on short division. We have learnt what to do when you cannot make equal groups (when a remainder is left), and how to tell if a question will have a remainder without even working it out. This meant we used rules of divisibility which are like magic. This week in English, we have started writing our own 'Beat the Monster' stories. Before we could start, we had to pick the ancient Greek monster our main character would be battling. Our choices were Cerebus, Medusa or the Cyclops. Once we picked our monsters, we gathered an array of words to help us describe them. Towards the end of the week, we started writing our stories. I have loved reading them so far, and I can't wait to see how your stories will end.

During our MyHappyMind session this week, we continued to focus on the importance of 'Appreciate'. We learnt that by practicing an 'Attitude of Gratitude', we release a happy hormone called dopamine, and that when someone receives gratitude dopamine is released in their brain too. Therefore, by practicing an 'Attitude of Gratitude', you are making yourself and others happy. Who wouldn't want to do that? We learnt that the more we practice gratitude, the better we become at it too. This linked beautifully with our HeartSmart lesson which was all about learning to 'Let Love In'. In this session, we were reminded that when other people use kind words or actions to show us they love us, we need to remember to 'Let Love in' and allow it to strengthen our hearts. We practice the sentiment shared in Mark 12:31 of 'Love your neighbour as you love yourself' by thinking about what kind words we can say to ourselves and others.

We had lots of fun on Monday when we got out the clay to practise the different skills we would need to create our Ancient Greek pots. These skills included how to make a thumb pot, how to make a coil pot and how to use slip to attach the different elements a pot has such as the handle, the foot on the neck. It was messy, but it was lots of fun.

On Tuesday, school has a very special visitor... Olympic athlete Lauren Quigley.  We took part in a fitness fundraising event.  It was great fun and the amount you raised was very impressive.  Great work, team! 

On Tuesday, it was time for your P.E lesson with Mrs Jenkins, and your Music lesson with Miss Holland. This week in music, we began our lesson by recapping how to hold the ukulele and grading how we felt about this. Following the onscreen instructions, we recapped strumming – on and off the beat. To help us with this, we wrote an abbreviation on the whiteboard and counted how many down strokes we needed to play at the start, and then counted to 12 to keep in time with the beat. Check out Mrs Jenkins P.E post for information about this week's P.E lesson.

On Wednesday, it was time for Science. We learnt about the difference between the heliocentric and geocentric model, and how the geocentric theory developed over time.

On Thursday, our lessons were D.T and Computing. Our D.T. unit this term is all about textiles. We will be making our own cushions. How exciting. In our first lesson, we investigated the product (different types of cushions) and realised that you can have functional and decorative cushions. We talked about how a cushion needs to match its purposed and we discussed the sewing techniques we already know. In Computing, we continued with or coding lessons. We use code to create algorithms.

Finally, on Friday our focus was R.E. We learnt about the Easter story and how salvation is linked to it. We learnt that Christians believe Jesus died on the cross to offer salvation to humans and how Jesus was the bridge between humans and God. We used this idea to create some artwork.

I hope you're all having a fabulous weekend.

See you tomorrow (ready for Young Voices),

Miss Pennance