Year 5 - Autumn 2 - Week 4

Date: 24th Nov 2022 @ 6:26pm

Well, another typically busy week in Year 5 draws to a close! With plenty to choose from, here are some of our main highlights…

We were lucky enough on Tuesday to have the opportunity to take part in a Christmas Recycling Craft Workshop from the Recycling Discovery Centre. Following a fun and interactive assembly (including a ‘wrap battle’), it was time to head back to the Year 5 classroom to get creative with recycled items. The children had great fun creating their Christmas crafts and learning how items can be repurposed rather than simply disposed.

In RE, we completed the final lesson of our unit focused on the Bible. We used this lesson to explore Christianity as a living faith through the inspiring story of Desmond Doss. Desmond Doss was a Christian combat medic who was awarded the congressional medal of honour for saving the lives of 75 men. He was a conscientious objector who never carried a gun. He is also the subject of the 2016 film, ‘Hacksaw Ridge’. First, we completed a circle thinking map using only picture clues to infer what we could about Desmond. Then we further learned about his life and his honourable actions that all came about because he fervently stood by his beliefs. This helped us to really explore Christianity as a “living faith” and to unpick our key question, ‘how can belief affect people’s actions?’.

In Maths, we have focused on finding the perimeter and area of rectilinear shapes. We extended this to a much-enjoyed problem solving task on Friday as we designed our own robots according to specific criteria. This built on a similar task that the children completed in Year 4 but in a way that further stretched and challenged the children whilst still being thoroughly enjoyed by all…not to mention the creativity in designs too! Next week, our focus will shift to further area and perimeter problem solving challenges.

In English, we completed ‘The Lost Happy Endings’ which has been our focus within our writing lessons throughout the half term to date. There were shocks and gasps across the classroom as we brought this story to a close due to the shocking (and quite gruesome) twist at the end of the story. This led to an excellent class discussion where the children explored the critical question: ‘Is Jub the villain?’ There were impassioned responses from the children as they justified their views and applied reasoning to back up their thinking. We are already looking forward to next week where we can write our own fairytales…with a twist!

Wednesday brought our first Swimming session of the academic year. This will now inform our second PE lesson with Year 5 PE lessons being Wednesdays (Swimming) and Thursdays (school PE).

An excellent week with plenty more to come as we tick down towards December and all things Christmas! Enjoy the weekend and see you Monday.