English
During this unit, we have focused on many aspects of our English curriculum whilst continuing to make progress with our basic punctuation, handwriting and spelling. Our focus text this time was ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ and this has been the inspiration for our writing. We have written for many purposes, including entertaining our audience when we wrote a location description from the perspective of Hiccup entering the dragon cave. We thoroughly entertained our audience! Our text has many fascinating and entertaining characters within it and so we took advantage of that by writing a character description with a focus on dialogue and expanded noun phrases. Hiccup never sounded so good! We then looked at newspaper reports and writing to inform an audience – including using reported phrases so we sounded like journalists. We learnt of a ‘dragon attack’ at school over the weekend and reported on that before then using these skills to report on the Lindisfarne raid by the Vikings in 793AD.
Maths
During this 10 week block of Maths, we have built upon the basic skills that we have revisited and reacquainted ourselves with this year. We have focused on multiplication (short and long) and division as we built upon skills learnt in LKS2. We will continue to have these tricky skills as a focus for the rest of the year so that we are extra prepared for the future. We then delved into fractions! Some of us were concerned by fractions – we thought they would be tough and we’d heard they were tough – but we’ve absolutely smashed it so far. We knew we had to have the same denominator to add and subtract and have used our fantastic times tables knowledge to change denominators to the lowest common multiple and then add and subtract. We look forward to moving on to doing this again soon but with mixed number fractions. Our teachers are very proud of our Maths skills!
Science
In Science during the last 10 weeks, we completed our unit on reversible and irreversible changes to materials. We loved this unit as there were lots of experiments to complete, including how changing the amount of bicarbonate of soda affected how much a balloon inflated. Our predictions were correct! We then moved on to our fascinating ‘Space’ unit. We learnt all about the planets and learnt a sentence that would allow us to name the planets in order. We discussed why Pluto was no longer a planet too – clearly Year 5 knew lots about this already and they challenged their teachers with their questions! We learnt about the relationship between the Earth, Moon and Sun and created fact files about this. We also learnt about the phases of the moon and enjoyed experimenting with torches to show how the light from the sun affects the way we see the moon (see the pictures below of this experiment). Another Science unit that we thoroughly enjoyed We can’t wait to learn more amazing things during our next unit!
History
We have loved our first History unit of the year – the Anglo-Saxon and Viking struggle for control of England. Building on from the chronological skills learnt in Y3 and Y4, we placed this period in our minds and knew what had come before. We knew that Stoke-on-Trent was not a place that was inhabited up to this point but used research skills to discover that during this period, people would have begun to settle and live in Stoke. We found out where the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings came from, discovered that they didn’t always get on as they fought for resources but did settle and assimilate in the end. We discovered that a crime at this time was to be either an Anglo-Saxon or a Viking (many of us were fascinated to learn about the blood eagle!) depending on your point of view. Many important historical figures were learnt about, such as Alfred the Great and Athelstan and what they did for our country and how they influence England to this day. We’ve loved bringing our knowledge up to 1066 and this has been part of a 3 year learning journey so we are so proud of what we have learnt and what we now know!
Our residential visit to York!
Our visit this time was a special one as it was an overnight stay in the fantastic city of York. What an historical treasure trove this city is. We were taken aback by the amount of history – from Romans, to Saxons, to Vikings to Normans and much more. We visited Jorvik and experienced life during the Viking occupation of the area and even got a coin to take away with us. We then visited Jorvik DIG to become archaeologists and learn about the process. We got our own trowls too and got to dig up some amazing finds. A Viking then met us there and told us lots of Viking sagas – some of us even got to dress up as the characters. It was great! York Minster was our next port of call as we looked around the exterior, discovering a Roman statue and pillar. We learnt about the history of the Minster from the Anglo-Saxon period through to the modern incarnation and got to see a special statue of Queen Elizabeth II – we even stood in the King’s footsteps! On day two we walked the old walls of the city and ended up back at York Minster, where we this time got to go inside. We explored every inch of the huge building, including the crypts and the underground museum where we learnt a lot about the buildings History. Our final stop was to York Dungeon! This was probably everyone’s favourite part. We laughed, we jumped, some of us even cried but we absolutely loved every minute of it. It’s a memory that will stay with us forever! Thank you York – you were amazing!
Art
During this unit, we focused on Art alongside History. Our focus artist this time was L.S Lowry. We researched the artist to find out about him, his artwork and when he lived. We looked deeply into the type of art that he created, the forms of the people and buildings that he painted and the use of tone and colours that he used. Did you know he only used 5 colours in his work? We then looked at perspective drawing and practised this by drawing a house. Finally, we put all of our learning and newly acquired skills together to create a ‘street scene’ using perspective and colour. Check out some of our work here!
RE
In RE, our focus was on Christianity and how Christians decide how to live. We finished our unit on ‘Jesus as Messiah’ including what Christians believe about Christmas. Our focus question after this was ‘What would Jesus do?’ and we explored this through parables and bible texts including the Sermon on the Mount. Our learning allowed us to see more clearly what Christians believe about Jesus and God and how these beliefs shape their lives and actions.
PSHE
In PSHE this time, we were working very practically as we learnt some very important life lessons. Our focus was on first aid and what it is. We learnt that first aid can be administered by anyone (including us) and that the actions we take when a medical situation arises can help people and, in extreme cases, save their lives. We learnt how to deal with cuts and burns and how to put someone into the recovery position, amongst other things. We will take this forward into the future.
SMSC Day – Martin Luther King Day (Racism)
During the last 10 weeks, we had our SMSC day. This time it was Martin Luther King Day and Year 5 had the focus of ‘Racism’. We explored what racism is and how someone’s actions, words and beliefs make them racist. We then explored scenarios and decided whether we thought these were racist or not. As this was MLK Day, we went back in time to America (when MLK was alive) and explored how he and so many others were affected by racism. We explored scenarios and images from the time and were utterly shocked by the way that people were treated during this time. We discussed equality and everyone’s right to be treated equally and fairly and found that we live in a time where the actions of people in the 1960’s (for example) are no longer as widespread. This was a shocking subject but an important one and the teachers in Year 5 were very impressed and proud of the children for the way that they approached the subject with sensitivity and maturity. You are all citizens of the future for sure!
PE
In PE during this unit, we finished learning about tag-rugby before Christmas and managed to put together all of our skills into small sided games. We then moved on after Christmas to Hockey and Gymnastics. In Hockey, we revisited our learning from last year as we familiarised ourselves with how to hold the hockey stick, which side to strike the ball with and how to pass. Our push passing was excellent and we were able to move on to shooting, finding space and tackling. This combined so that we could play some small sided games, which we really enjoyed. In Gymnastics, we perfected our skills in being able to complete a forward roll. We then moved on to the more complex backwards roll. All of our skills were put together to create short performances with a partner and it was great to see so many of us were able to perform the skills in time with each other.
We can’t wait to learn so much more during our Enriching Education Part 3. Our focus in Geography – Trade – next time but we will also be doing more Art, SMSC Days and our trip is Science-based next time when we visit ‘Awesome Walls’. We can’t wait to share our learning with you again!