Welcome back to school! We hope you have had a wonderful summer break and are ready to bring enthusiasm and curiosity to all the learning we have planned for you. Most exciting of all will be our visit to Leicester Space Centre. Letters for this will be sent out soon with all the information you need. This is always a brilliant day, many budding astronauts are inspired by the fun learning experiences on this trip! 

Race to Space

In History this term we are exploring the Race to Space and the significant events and achievements that led to the first man walking on the moon as well as the achievements which followed this.

Forces

In Science we are learning about forces and how they work including gravity, air resistance, water resistance and the effects they have on the movement of objects.

Relationships

Our PSHE is going to focus on relationships and how to build healthy relationships - we will have a particular focus on creating and sustaining positive friendships.

Hinduism

We will be building on the children's prior R.E. learning from Y3/4 and developing their understanding of how Hindu's beliefs are reflected in their actions.

Listen & Appraise

Our focus in Music this term is to be able to recognise different instruments and instrument groups when listening to a piece of music. We will have the opportunity to listen to a range of pieces of music which will discuss and form opinions about using our musical knowledge and understanding.

Ma Famille

In French this term, as well as practising and securing our numbers, colours and weather from prior learning, we will also be learning about our families and how to describe who is in our family.

Art

In Art we will explore the work of Edgar Degas to develop our understanding of sculpture. We will create our own sculpture inspired by our learning about space.

P.E.

Mr Melson is going to be leading us in football and developing both our ball control skills and our ability to work together as a team. In fitness we are discovering what our bodies are capable of and developing our agility and stamina.

Reading Event

Thursday 20th October
 

Thank you so much to all the parents who joined us for our Year 5 reading event, it was wonderful to see so many of you. The children enjoyed the reading activities and loved showing you round the library. Inference riddles, designing front covers and curling up on cushions - we love reading!

Thursday 20th October 

Science

The best way to make sense of how gears work is to try them! We explored how gears fit together and the effect a small one could have on a larger one. This built on our previous lesson, in which we learned about small forces having greater effects through levers and pulleys.

Poetry week

We memorised a poem over the week, as we realised this helped us perform a poem rather than reading it. We put actions and facial expressions to the words to bring it to life and then performed in front of the class. Everyone did a super job, in spite of being a little nervous!

Friday 7th October

Trip to Leicester Space Centre

Finally the day of our eagerly awaited trip arrived! We were thrilled by the range of interactive activities, the information available and the displays in the Centre. We discovered lots of information about the moon in the very tall tower, exploring four floors following the journey of man’s attempts to reach it. After lunch was a brilliant show in the planetarium, which taught us all about astronauts and inspired some of us to want this career. A live It Is Rocket Science followed - in which (to our amazement) the presenter set things on fire! This was a fantastic day, we learned so many facts and cannot wait to learn more about the solar system next term.

Wednesday 5th October 

Science

Following on from our investigation last week into air resistance, we were able to apply our learning about that to exploring water resistance this week. We proved that we could change the amount of water resistance an object experiences by changing its shape. The mass had to remain the same. We were able to create shapes that sank quickly and shapes that floated, and discussed how streamlined outlines affected the outcome.

Monday 3rd October 

History

There are many conspiracy theories about the moon landings, today we investigated all the evidence supporting that they really did happen and the evidence suggesting they were faked. We had to consider the reliability of the evidence, as well as looking into possible counter arguments. The fact that many countries tracked the progress of the 1969 moon landings using their radars was one of the compelling pieces of evidence that persuaded us it happened. We were able to debunk one conspiracy theory by explaining why the flag looked like it was moving when there was no wind - the astronauts put a frame in it to make it look that way. 

Wednesday 28th September 

Science

We investigated air resistance by making different sized parachutes and comparing the time it took for them to land. We discovered that the larger the canopy, the slower the rate of fall.

Thursday 22nd September 

PE

We have worked on our speed and stamina in previous lessons, today we focused on strength by doing repetitions of exercises designed to use different muscles. We learnt about triceps and biceps, glutes and pectorals. By the end of the lesson we all felt stronger, because we could feel all of these muscles!

Thursday 22nd September 

English

We had an exciting development in our English lesson - having started with a story we knew well, it was turned on it’s head and made us think again! The three little pigs framed the wolf, claiming he had blown their houses down, but then it transpired that the wolf had asthma, so he could not have committed these crimes. We had great discussions about his guilt and innocence before applying our knowledge of subordinate and main clauses to write sentences about the case.

Wednesday 21st September 
Science

We learned about gravity today, and the renowned scientist who discovered this force. Issac Newton was able to explain planetary movements because of his understanding of gravity. We discussed the quote attributed to him, “… standing on the shoulders of giants,” to recognise that he read what others had learned and used it to develop ideas.

Having learnt the difference between weight and mass, we used newton meters to weigh objects (ensuring we conducted this as a fair test) looking for the correlation between weight (N) and mass (g).

Wednesday 21st September 

Maths

We used our understanding of place value to help add and subtract 10, 100 and 1000. Adding and removing counters in the correct columns made this really clear, and moved on to applying this skill to different problems.

Friday 16th September 

Art

We discussed form in sculpture, then practised with clay. We tried to recreate “The Little Dancer” by Edgar Vegas, moulding clay into limb-like shapes and working out how to attach them to a body shape. Some of us even made the tutu and the upturned face, showing impressive attention to details!

Wednesday 14th September 

Science

We worked scientifically and investigated the effects of friction on different surfaces. Having established how to make this a fair test, we recorded our results in a table then presented our results in the form of a graph.

Thursday 15th September 

PE

We focused on speed and stamina today, thinking about how to improve our sprinting technique and develop stamina when running long distance.

Monday 12th September

English

We discussed the features of an introduction, working out the best order for the when, who, what happened and where. The class directed the children at the front into an order that flows and makes sense.

Thursday 8th September 
Maths

We began our term by recapping our understanding of place value. The base 10 equipment was used to show our knowledge of how the column affects the value of a digit.