Term 1
So much is happening in 5T this term!
Most exciting of which is our visit to Leicester Space Centre! Letters for this have been sent out with all the information. We can't wait to share with you what we get up to on this day.
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 be focusing 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.
Structures
Our Design Technology will be all about building a secure structure and how we can use this understanding to design a moon buggy.
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.
Weekly Highlights
Week 1
This week we have kick-started our learning about the Race to Space by exploring a time line of key events. We looked at the images and used our inference skills from Guided Reading to consider what the event might be. We then read the descriptions of the events and tried to match these to the pictures. When we had descriptions for each picture we tried to form them into a timeline.
We brought our thinking together and as a class we matched the events to the date to create a complete timeline on our classroom display.
Week 2
This week in Music has been all about familiarising ourselves with key vocabulary. We used retrieval of prior learning to match words to their meanings and then we discussed how these things might be seen different across a range of music.
We are ready to start appraising musical compositions next week, using our knowledge of these different musical elements.
Week 3
Our focus in our fitness lesson this week was speed and stamina. We warmed up with a speed challenge that required us to be able to increase and decrease our speed at intervals. It definitely got our hearts racing!
We went on to begin developing our stamina by completing a circuit of fitness activities. At each station we had to try and keep up the activity for the full 3 mins. This was a challenge at times, particularly as our muscles began to get tired but we showed resilience and persevered through.
Meanwhile, back in the classroom we have had the laptops out, to start working on our typing skills. We used 'Dance Mat' on BBC Bitesize which breaks down typing skills into fun levels to be completed.
Why not have a go at it at home together:
In English we have spent the last 2 weeks studying the picture book 'The Journey'. We finished this week by publishing our own descriptive re-telling of this magical story. To go with our published work, the children completed an illustration of their favourite part of the story.
Look at these wonderful representations of the moment the girl steps through her door and into another world...
Week 4
Our school trip definitely made this an exciting week for us all.
We started the week by retrieving our knowledge of newspapers and developing our understanding of the features of newspapers through an article all about the heroic woodcutter who saved Little Red Riding Hood from the jaws of a terrifying wolf!
Lots of great discussion in our English lessons as we worked together to identify key features and their roles within the text in order to build our own toolkit.
We started our D.T. learning this week by looking at the difference between portable and permanent structures. We applied what we learnt to identify and sort a range of structures.
Our week ended on a high point with our visit to the National Space Centre. There were so many amazing things to see! It was great to see the children enjoying the many interactive exhibits. The astronaut reaction test was particularly popular, even Mrs Tewnion had a go! We saw fellowship as children worked together to complete challenges such as building a rocket, completing puzzles and driving a mars rover. We were very proud of the respect and compassion that was shown towards other school groups and members of the public. Most special of all, was the enthusiasm shared by everyone as we explored.
Week 5
As our fitness unit develops we have been working on our agility this week. We had to pay attention in order to quickly change speed and direction.
In Science we have continued to improve our understanding of forces by investigating the effects of air resistance. We created our own parachutes to look at what difference the size of a parachute makes on the time it takes for a skydiver to fall.
Week 6
As part of our school celebrations for Harvest, we have been exploring harvest around the world. Year 5 have focused on Ghana and the celebration of Homowo. Together we have learnt about what crops are harvested, and the ways in which the people of Accra celebrate this special time together. A key part of the celebrations are family gatherings when everyone comes together to share a meal. 5T wrote prayers and reflections to be shared at Homowo family meal.
Look at the amazing collection from 5T for our school donation to Boston Foodbank.
All of Diversity class are working really hard to secure their recall of counting and the alphabet in French. This wonderful bunch have all earned their first certificate for either independently counting 1-10 or for independently reciting the alphabet!
As our Hinduism topic draws to a close for the term we have been reviewing the understanding we have developed of good and bad karma and the impact it has on our samsara cycle and being able to achieve moksha (enlightenment) for our atman (soul). They have been some tricky concepts to get our heads around, particularly reincarnation, but 5T have done an amazing job, with some interesting debates along the way. This week we created a snakes and ladders game based on good and bad karma. The finish was to achieve moksha. Landing on dharma (our duty) fulfilling actions brought us good karma and we were able to get ahead in life via a ladder. However, unkind deeds brought us bad karma and we were taken back in life via a snake! We had fun designing and making our games, and we even found time to play them with each other.
Week 7
To conclude our Science unit on forces, we completed our air resistance investigation. For this we worked together with 5C to compare the different sized parachutes with Mrs Tewnion showing resilience and overcoming her fear of heights to launch them!
This week has been poetry week in school. We have been learning about the cinquain style of poetry. Having looked at some examples and the features of this style, we had a go at creating some of our own about animals.
We went on to collect vocabulary associated with autumn and published autumn cinquain poetry which will be shared with a local care home for their enjoyment.
Our D.T. unit of structures has come to an end with us building our own moon buggies! There was a lot of resilience, trust and fellowship needed when working in pairs to measure and cut the materials to bring the designs together. Everyone did a great job and once the finishing details have been added they will be displayed proudly in our year 5 shared area.
