Geography
In our geography topic, we have been learning all about mountains and why so many tourists choose to visit them. To launch our topic, we visited The Roaches to explore how upland areas are different to our community, Meir. Before we visited The Roaches near to our local area, we focused on developing our geography skills, reading 8-figure compass points and O.S maps. This helped us to understand how the land is used. We have also used digital maps to locate mountain ranges in the U.K and in the world. In particular, we’ve enjoyed focusing on The Alps, researching how they were formed and what activities tourists do there. We even debated whether tourists should visit The Alps or not!
English
Over the last 10 weeks, we’ve really enjoyed reading our love of reading text: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. We have been using our knowledge of the story to create many pieces of descriptive writing. At the beginning of the year, we wrote descriptions about magical creatures from the story itself, focusing on the acromantula and the basilisk: we used plenty of adjectives and relative clauses to give information about nouns to create our descriptions and we made a documentary using iMovie, about the creatures. We also wrote an explanation text, to guide muggles and wizards alike on how to fly the Flying Ford Anglia car. This inspired us to invent our own magical vehicle for the wizarding world! Finally, the children discovered something unusual in the corridors of our school… We enjoyed writing a description of settings from the book, focusing on the eerie corridors of Hogwarts and the deadly chamber below it
Science
We’ve enjoyed science so much this half-term! In our lessons, we’ve been learning all about the properties of materials and sorting them, based on their transparency, absorbency and hardness, for example. Through investigations, we’ve explored thermal conductivity, understanding why cooking items are made out of particular materials. Most all, Year 5 have really enjoyed experimenting the solubility of materials. Our classrooms became very messy when we explored how to separate materials too, using filters and sieves! After we separated many materials in the classroom, we concluded that insoluble materials can only be separated using filtration or sieving, whereas soluble materials can be removed from a liquid using evaporation! We were so impressed with Year 5’s knowledge of scientific processes and vocabulary! Well done, Year 5.
Maths
In maths, we’ve been working hard on developing our place value knowledge! This term, we’ve learnt how to build, read and write ten-thousand and hundred-thousand numbers. We’ve represented these numbers further, using number-lines and part-whole models. This term, Year 5 have recalled learning of column addition and subtraction, demonstrating great resilience in exchanging and regrouping across multiple columns. We’ve worked very hard to practise rounding, using numberlines to help and then we used this skill to estimate calculations. Next, we’ll be delving into multiples and factors. Excellent effort, Year 5!
Design & Technology
Recently, Year 5 have learnt all about frames and structures. We explored how to reinforce a frame, learning which shapes are the strongest. We used spaghetti straws and marshmallows to build a square frame and a triangle frame: we learnt triangles are stronger because they distribute weight along the base of the frame, whereas a square has equal weight on top and on the bottom of it. We researched many examples of triangulation (adding triangles into structures), as seen in Truss bridges, pylons, beams and buildings. We also tested the strength of different 3D shapes, placing weights on them to see compression acting upon them. All of our research was very useful when designing a product! Our brief was to create a small-scale model of a bird hide, which could be built for our school. The children considered the shape of their design and built their frames, before decorating. Take a look at some our designs below!
PSHE/RE/SMSC
In PSHE, we’ve been learning all about our identity… what makes “us”, us! We learnt there are characteristics which form our identity, such as age, race, ethnicity, beliefs, gender and many more. Using scenario cards, we also discussed what stereotypes are and how to challenge them.
In R.E, we’ve focused on understanding how Christians worship Jesus and what he means to them. We handled The Bible, explored items found inside a church and listened to hymns to find out what believers think about Jesus and God.
During this term, we’ve had two SMSC days: Celebrating the Nations and Influencers. For our Celebrating the Nations day, we researched a festival called The Burning Man, which focuses on expressing freedom and creativity. This year’s festival was themed on ‘Alice in Wonderland and Curiosity’, so the children designed their own sculptures and art work for the festival! During our influencer day, each year group had a musician to focus on and we LOVED learning all about Freddie Mercury, his life and legacy. We created factfiles, art and even sang along to his most influential songs!
