Welcome back to what is always a fun-filled and exciting term - Christmas is coming!

Our lessons are taught discretely, in order that the children learn the subject specific skills in each area of the curriculum, however, we are always making connections across our learning. In Science, we look forward to learning about the solar system and all the planets within it, as well as finding out - how do scientists know all of this? There will of course, be many links with our learning last term about Forces and the Space Race.  

Our English work includes biographies, and links through the renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, whose life story has much to teach us about resilience and determination. Exploring narrative through the dramatic novel War of the Worlds follows this.

In amongst all this, we have Bonfire Night, Children In Need, and of course, all the Christmas preparation - put the date of St Thomas Christmas Fair in your diary! Year 5 will also be performing a Christingle and Carol Service at St Thomas Church on 9th December, everyone is very welcome. 

Week 1

We have started the term with some retrieval of our year 3/4 learning about time, including understanding 12 and 24 hour time. We all enjoyed getting the clocks out and being able to both work out our answers and show them on the clock faces. We were able to apply our understanding of time into reading and answering questions about timetables.

Our first unit of the term in English is writing to inform using the genre of biographies. As always, we started by reading. For this unit we read a biography of Stephen Hawking, which we enjoyed as we were able to make links with our class book! We then used the features we discovered to create a toolkit which has helped us to plan our own biography of Tim Peake.

Week 2

Following on from last week, we completed our draft biographies and then used our revising and editing skills to try and improve the content. This week we enjoyed being able to publish our work by typing up our final piece on the iPads.

In 5T we enjoy taking lots of different opportunities to read. As part of our morning work, we sometimes have the opportunity for quiet reading, where we are able to independently read our home reading books. Many of us enjoy reading beyond our reading book, whether this is a novel we have started at home or a book from the class book corner that we enjoy. At wet breaks you will often find groups of us enjoying some reading time together with these books.

Week 3

We have been busy applying our understanding of vocabulary and sentence structure to find and underline the features of a biography as part of retrieval in English this week.

As we continue with our learning about the solar system, this week we have been exploring night and day. We have learnt how the orbit of the Earth around the Sun creates the light and dark. Working in groups, we wrote a script and filmed our own information videos to explain this process.

Week 4

As we prepare for Christmas at school, this week we have been paper mache-ing 3D baubles which will be hanging from our class hoop to decorate the main hall. We built up layers of newspaper, ensuring that we smoothed the paper round our sphere base.

Week 5

Year 5 are creating calendars inspired by the artist Banksy. We have started by blending shades of four key colours to create the background for our images.

In Science, our learning about the solar system has moved on to be about the specific planets. Lots of us have some prior knowledge of this which we have been able to retrieve from our time spent on the space homework last term. 

We explored fun and interesting facts about the planets using top trumps style cards. Then, we worked in pairs and chose a different fact for each planet and, as a team, created a poster about our solar system.

Week 6

It has been such an exciting week in year 5! The children have done a really good job of maintaining 100% across their learning.

Our calendars are looking great. With our backgrounds colours dry, we sketched the outline for our four different silhouette designs. Once they were ready we then used fine paintbrushes and black paint to delicately complete them.

This week has seen the annual school Christmas fair take place. Many families came to see Mrs Tewnion and Mrs Crawford on the year 5 stall where we were selling chocolate fudge. The children did a great job of measuring and combining the ingredients to make many bags of fudge!

Lots of the children were keen to have a go at fudge making at home, here is our simple recipe for delicious treats:

Ingredients:

750g dark chocolate 

200g condensed milk

55g butter

Method:

Add all the ingredients into a microwaveable bowl/dish.

Microwave on full power for 3-5 minutes.

Stir the ingredients every 1-2 minutes to ensure a smooth mixture.

Pour the mix into a well greased tray. 

Put in the fridge for 1-2 hours to set.

Once set, sit the fudge at room temperature before slicing and enjoying!

Oh yes it is! Oh no it isn't!

Puss in Boots came to see us on Friday and we all had a brilliant time! a highlight for 5T was certainly the whipped cream pies that got splatted into some of the character's faces. All in all it was a fun end to our penultimate week of term.

Week 7

Throughout the term, 5T have been working really hard to develop their balance and strength through yoga. During our final PE lesson, the children worked together to create their own yoga flows! They began by practising some new pair poses.

which they then

They then applied these by combining with some solo poses to build up their own sequence. Once they had planned their sequence, the children practised the flow from one pose to another before performing it to music.

During the performance, they all did a wonderful job of holding each pose before transitioning into the next.

Meanwhile in Art we have been busy designing our final piece for our sculpture unit. The children have been using images related to the Space Race as a stimulus to inspire them.

Then they applied the skills they have developed in form to mould their design in clay (using their fingers and tools) to tell the story of the Space Race through their sculpture. Inspired by the Little Dancer by Edgar Degas that started our unit, the children chose from a range of materials to add detail to their sculpture in the same way that Degas did to create his dancer's costume.

Our Geography unit has come to an end by looking at biomes, our focus has been on developing our understanding of the desert and tundra biomes. We used the opportunity to apply our skills from English and Maths to write a report on the tundra. Look how great they are...