WELCOME TO YEAR 5

Each week we will be keeping you up to date with a "Wow of the Week". In addition to this, please read our half termly curriculum map to find out what will be happening in Year 5.

Important information

PE - Monday and Friday. Please come to school in your PE kit on these days. 

Books - Change books on Thursday. Your child will come home with new reading books and a library book every Thursday. Please make sure you have been reading at home at least three times a week. Please record any reading you have done in your reading diary. Your reading diary must always be in your book bag so that we can read with you in school. 

Spellings - New spellings given every Friday. Please see our spelling page where you can easily access the spellings every week. Spelling tests will happen every Friday.

---

Wow of the Week

Spring 2

Week 5

On Monday, we took part in our Easter music concert, playing ukuleles. We loved performing for an audience and this helped us to achieve our first award for playing musical instruments.

We have continued to work on writing our 3rd person narrative for the short film Alma. This week, we worked on adding personification and metaphors to enhance our descriptions.

We have all been working hard on our assessments this week and we have really impressed Miss Wager with how well we have done! All our hard work is really paying off.

Week 4

On Monday, we had a visit to Farsley library. We had a chance to explore the books they had there as well as take part in a game about selecting a book without looking at its cover. We even chose some books to bring back to school.

In geography, we learned about the ways in which humans can use the desert. We learned about farming and ranching as well as mining and recreational activities. We then wrote a speech as if we were the desert explaining all the ways we were useful to humans.

Week 3

This week in English, we started our new unit of writing. We are using the video Alma as a stimulus for a 3rd person narrative. We LOVED the video and found it to be really creepy - we can't wait to add suspense to our writing as we develop this skill over the coming weeks.

In geography, we learned more about the desert and some of the physical features you can find there. We now know more about sand dunes and salt flats as well as mesas and mushroom rocks.

 

Week 2

This week, we completed our biographies on King Henry VIII. We worked really hard to make sure our edits and improvements were made as well as having good presentation.

On Thursday, we celebrated World Book Day. We dressed in our pyjamas to promote bedtime reading. During the day, we took part in book quizzes, reading with our Reception buddies and a book swap. As it was such a lovely day, we sat outside reading during the afternoon soaking up the sunshine!

Week 1

This week in maths, we began our unit on decimals. We consolidated our knowledge of tenths and hundredths before we move onto thousandths and ordering decimals next week.

We also began our new geography unit - Would you like to live in the desert? We learned about biomes and focused on the characteristics of hot deserts. 

In English, we began our hot write on our King Henry VIII. We are working hard to include the key skills of relative clauses, using commas to avoid ambiguity and present perfect tenses of verbs.

Spring 1

Week 6

We finished our history unit on the Tudors this week. We looked at inventories from the Tudor times to see what clues they gave us about people. We used the information to work out potential occupations and the wealth of various people.

In science, we have looked at chemical reactions and how these are irreversible changes. We looked at which liquids had a reaction with bicarbonate of soda and discovered the acidic liquids such as lemon juice and vinegar caused a chemical reaction.

In our ukulele lesson, we performed to year three. We have been working on our chords and strumming all half term and it was great to show off all our hard work to another class.

Week 5

This week, we began our new writing unit on biographies. We began by looking at some examples of biographies to discover the key features before moving on to researching King Henry VIII - the subject of our biography writing.

In science, we conducted another investigation. This time we were looking at how rusting occurs and the conditions needed to make a nail rust. We have set up a variety of investigations such as looking at whether the type of liquid affects the rate of rusting or if water or oxygen has the biggest effect. We will look at the results next week.

Week 4

It's been another busy week in Year 5! In English, we completed our narrative poems and they were epic! All the skills we learned were included and we worked hard on having a good rhythm and rhyming words too.

We learned about irreversible changes in science this week and conducted an investigation into combining materials to make new products. We now know that we cannot change these things back to their original material as a new one has been formed. Have a look at the pictures below.

Week 3

This week, we have been beginning to write our narrative poems about The Alchemist's letter. We learned about personification and alliteration and have incorporated these into our verses along with similes and metaphors. There are some amazing verses written so far - we can't wait to finish them off.

In History, we learned about King Henry VIII's absolute power and how this contributed to the execution of his wife Anne Boleyn. We studied sources to deduce how and why things happened and what we learned about both Anne and Henry.

 

Week 2

We have started our multiplication and division unit in Maths this week. We recapped short multiplication before moving on to long multiplication. We found it tough at first but showed great resilience and were feeling much more confident by the end of the week. 
We have continued our ukulele lessons with Mr Fisher and love using the plectrums to help with the strumming. We've also started learning some new songs which is very exciting too.

In Science, we have been learning about how to separate mixtures using evaporation. We had two bottles of water - one had salt in and one didn't. We used evaporation to work out which was safe to drink.

Week 1

This week in English, we started our new writing unit on narrative poems. We read and analysed The Highwayman as our WAGOLL before watching The Alchemist's Letter which will be the subject of our writing in the coming weeks.

In history, we began our learning about life in Tudor England. We looked at portraits of Henry VIII and analysed what they could tell us about him and his life.

Autumn 2

Week 7

Our final week has been busy but fun too.

In English, we completed our writing based on Odd and the Frost Giants. The children wrote the beginning and middle of the story and many are wanting to complete them at home over the holiday!

In Science, we had a mess to clear up! Lots of materials had been mixed together and we had to work out how to separate them. We used sieving, filtration, evaporation and magnetic attraction to get the job done.

We also completed our final History lesson on the Vikings and discussed which achievement of theirs was the most important.

 

Week 6

We have been working on our story writing in English this week. We are continuing to read the book Odd and the Frost Giants and creating our own story based on the story. 

In Maths, we are continuing learning about fractions. We are getting good at converting between improper fractions and mixed numbers and have begun to look at adding fractions with mixed denominators.

We conducted a Science investigation this week to look at soluble and insoluble materials. We found that coffee and salt would both dissolve but sand, chalk and flour would not.

Week 5

In Science this week, we have been learning about the hardness of materials. We conducted a scratch test on a range of materials to see which could be scratched and which couldn't. We learned that metal was a hard material and cardboard was not.

In English, we started to read a new book - Odd and the Frost Giants. We enjoyed reading this Viking tale and are going to be writing some stories based on Odd and his adventures.

We enjoyed learning about Viking trading in History. We played a game online where we became Vikings and travelled around the Viking trading routes, deciding whether to raid or trade. We discovered some places were better to trade with and some were better to raid.

 

Week 4

In Science this week, we learned about thermal conductors. We conducted an investigation into which material would be best to wrap around Miss Wager's cup of tea during playground duty to keep it warm. We discovered that felt was a good thermal conductor whilst cling film was not.

In writing, we wrote a first draft of our newspaper report about the Viking raid on Lindisfarne before editing it and improving it and then publishing it to look like a real newspaper. We are very proud of our work and how we managed to include all the skills.

In writing, we wrote a first draft of our newspaper report about the Viking raid on Lindisfarne before editing it and improving it and then publishing it to look like a real newspaper. We are very proud of our work and how we managed to include all the skills.

Week 3

The highlight of the week was our trip to York!

We started off at DIG where we learned about archaeology before taking part in excavations of different historical site.

We then moved on to JORVIK where we learned all about the Vikings in York and how they lived. We loved the ride around the streets and seeing and smelling the various houses and trades along the way.

Week 2

This week we have been learning about the Anglo-Saxon era in history. We discovered how and why the Anglo-Saxons came over to Britain and how the era ended.

As part of our learning for anti-bullying week, we learned about respectful and disrespectful conversations and how these can influence a situation. We did some role plays to see how a situation could be dealt with respectfully.

In reading, we have been reading more of our new book - Defenders: Killing Ground by Tom Palmer. 

Week 1

It's been a great start back to the half term.

This week we completed our hot write in English. We wrote a character description about one of the main characters from Malamander. We worked hard to show relative clauses and expanded noun phrases as well as using apostrophes for possession.

In Science, we learned about how gears, levers and pulleys can help with heavy loads and forces. We had a great time using Lego Technic sets to make simple mechanisms to see levers, gears and pulleys in action.

---

Autumn 1

Week 8

It’s been another very busy week in Year 5!

On Monday, we performed with our ukuleles to Year 6 to show how much we had learned so far. We performed three songs and Year 6 were very impressed!

On Tuesday, we spent the whole day doing art. We learned about art installations and had a go at making our own using a chair. We then went on to planning an installation to promote a message such as climate change or too much screen time for children. We had a great day!

We finished our Geography learning on the Alps this week and produced tourist information leaflets.

Week 7 

In Science this week, we investigated friction. We carried out an investigation to find out which surface allowed a shoe to move along the floor the easiest. 

This week, we took part in our annual Welly Walk to raise funds for the school. It was a lovely sunny afternoon and we got to walk around with our Reception buddies which made us feel very grown up!

It was also Harvest Festival in church. We love singing in Year 5 and really belted out the songs in church.

Week 6

It's been a very busy week this week!

On Tuesday afternoon, we went on a walk around Farsley to see what there is to do there. We are comparing it to Innsbruck in the Alps as part of our Geography learning on 'What is it like to live in the Alps?' We are very lucky as there are quite a lot of different activities to do such as shopping, go to the park or visit the art gallery.

On Friday, we again went down into Farsley but this time to Sunny Bank Mills. We were learning about our heritage and the how the Mills are important to Farsley. We had a great time!

Week 5

This week, we completed our hot write. The quality of writing from all children was phenomenal with everyone making sure all the skills we learned were included as well as making sure basic skills such as punctuation and spellings were as good as they could be.

In Science, we learned about water resistance and how it was similar too and different from air resistance. We completed an investigation to see if the shape of an object affects the rate at which it falls through water. Take a look at the pictures below to see what we did.

Week 4

In Science, we made parachutes to test air resistance. Although the investigation didn't show us the results it should have, we now know that the larger the parachute, the slower if will fall.

We finished planning for our diary entry writing next week. We have learned a lot of skills and will be applying them for our final piece of writing. Keep an eye on the blog to see the finished results next week.

Week 3

This week, we held elections for our new school council representatives. Each child who wanted to be considered wrote a manifesto to present to the class. The quality of manifestos was extremely high and all presented with passion and confidence.

Congratulations to Ayaan and Audrey who are now our elected school council representatives.

Week 2

This week, we began our ukulele lessons. We learned how to hold the ukulele correctly and began to play the different notes. We even had time to make up our own short tunes!

In English, we have been working on expanded noun phrases. We have been using them in sentences and then a short paragraph as we work on our diary entries.

In Science, we learned about gravity as a force and conducted an investigation. We also learned about Sir Isaac Newton and how he discovered gravity.

Week 1

What a great start to Year 5! We have hit the ground running and already shown off our positivity in all the work we have done this week. 

Our main focus has been learning about the Zones of Regulation. This helps us to better understand our feelings and how we can regulate ourselves depending on what zone we are in.

We have also been learning more about British values and protected characteristics. We worked in groups to think about how our lives might be if one of the British values were missing. We produced dramas to show this. Take a look at one of our videos below - can you work out which British value is missing?

British Values.mov