Y5 Weekly News 07.03.25

Our week has been a little different from normal because this week we took part in our first Wybunbury Moss visit. The sunshine kept us company the whole time, and it was lovely to be out in the open air. As part of our session, we walked around the moss and even went onto the moss itself! We learned about the different types of plants and animals that can be found there too. As we walked, we heard woodpeckers, robins, and many other wonderful birds. One of our favourite parts was jumping on the moss because we could feel it bounce! It was so much fun. We also carried out an experiment to test the acidity of the water on the moss. The results showed it was very acidic! We can't wait for our next session.

Back in the classroom, we have been busy with Maths, English, Book Club, RE, Heartsmart, PE, Music, History, Science, and Computing! What a busy week.

In Maths, it has been great to see you continuing to develop your understanding of decimals. In our lessons, we used our place value knowledge and our knowledge of fractions, which helped us further understand what thousandths are. We were surprised to see a thousandths grid, and we took the time to look at the value of one thousandth compared to one tenth and one hundredth. We then learned how to order and compare decimals too.

In English, we have embarked on a new unit centred around the enchanting storybook The Promise. Through drama activities, we have delved into the initial pages of the book, allowing us to bring the story to life in your own unique ways. We then crafted beautiful poetry inspired by our reading. Finally, on Friday, you did a fantastic short piece of writing using wonderful descriptions. Well done!

In Book Club this week, I've been particularly impressed with your predictions about what we think will happen in the new story we've been exploring. Our new story is called The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day. It's been brilliant to see how engaged you are with Maisie's journey and the challenges we think she's going to face in her quest to reunite with her family. Your imaginations were running wild, and that's exactly the spirit we need!

During this week's RE lesson, we began a new unit. Our Christian concept this time is 'Salvation'. As part of our lesson, we considered what the word 'victory' meant and answered the question: 'How was Jesus's death and resurrection a victory?'

In our PSHE lesson this week, we looked at what forgiveness means to us. We considered how looking at things from different perspectives can give us a better understanding of a situation. After discussing the importance of this in our everyday lives, where fallouts can occur, we used role play to resolve an imaginary scenario and then tried to consider how we could use this to help us resolve our own issues in the future. There are always two sides to a story, and neither is more important than the other. This linked to the passage: "Love does not count up wrongs that have been done" from 1 Corinthians 13:4-5.

In your first PE lesson of the week with Mrs Whittingham, you continued learning about netball by working more on the chest and bounce passes. You played some games to encourage you to pass and move quickly after passing. You worked hard to improve your technique and your speed in the games. In your second lesson of the week with Coach Gabe, you worked on your throwing, catching, and dodging skills as part of your 'Invasion Games' unit. This meant you played bib tag and cage dodgeball and finished with a game of cricket to put the skills into practice.

In Music this week, we listened to a reggae song called Erie Canal. We could tell straight away that this song was definitely old. With a slow tempo and a thin texture, the song was easy for us to listen to. The main emotions we used to describe how we felt listening to the song were both happy and sad. The tonality of the song was minor, and this was shown by the use of the bass guitar. We linked this to our history knowledge and discussed how, before the use of steam power, each boat was pulled by two or three horses. Some passengers would sit on chairs on top of the boat, so when the boat passed under bridges, the boat's crew would shout, "Low bridge--everybody down!"

In Art, we have embarked on the final project of our 'Typography' unit. You have impressed me with your creativity in drawing maps of imagined islands and experimenting with various typography styles when labelling the different places.

In the first of our two History lessons this week, we learned about democracy. We discovered that ancient Athenians used a democratic style of government to make decisions about how the city-state should be run. However, there were limitations to their democracy, as not everyone could vote. We then looked more closely at what democracy looks like in the UK today. We learned about Parliament, its role, and how it is made up of three parts. Finally, we compared the Ancient Greek style of democracy with the democracy we have today. We realised that there are elements that are very similar. Democracy is certainly something we can thank the Ancient Greeks for!

For our second lesson, we learned about the Olympics. We combined our current knowledge to help us explain what happens in the modern Olympics. We then carried out research to find out what happened in the Ancient Greek Olympics. As our last task, we compared them to see what was similar and what was different.

Finally, in Science, we learned about the difference between the heliocentric and geocentric models and how the geocentric theory developed over time.

Hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Miss Pennance