Year 5 Team: Mr J McCabe (Class Teacher) : Blog items
Date: 30th Mar 2022 @ 8:47pm
What an excellent and typically busy week within Year 5 to end the Spring Term!
In our RE learning, we learned about La Semana Santa (Holy Week) and Pascua (Easter) which is one of the most important religious festivals and celebrations in Spain. We wore our black thinking hats to explore the various events and customs of the Spanish people before then testing our knowledge with a quiz.
Not only that, we also played a virtual Easter egg hunt too in order to continue our Spanish learning.
In our English learning, we have enjoyed exploring the lyrics of different songs in some music comprehension lessons. As a tribute to their late drummer, Taylor Hawkins, one of songs we explored was ‘Times Like These’ by Foo Fighters. This song was also covered during lockdown by an all-star line-up of some of the biggest and most respected artists from the UK and around the world – aptly titled the ‘Radio 1 Allstars’. So much discussion took place in Year 5 about why this song was lyrically suited to this time in our lives. Afterwards, we then moved onto Disney classic, ‘Be Prepared’ from The Lion King which was equally a hit!
In a week of many highlights, we particularly enjoyed our Maths Easter egg hunt (or 'the Chicken Run Challenge') which involved us solving Maths questions and then finding the hidden missing number somewhere on our school field in order to earn a prize! Our other Maths lessons have focused on calculating angles around a point (up to 360°) and we applied our skills in a fan-favourite game of ‘Crypto Hack’ through the Blooket website. We also competed in a high-pressure Maths game based on 'The Million Pound Drop'. After the half term break, our Maths will focus on properties of 2D and 3D shapes.
Another treat this week involved the Easter Bunny visiting us as he hopped past our classroom and dropped off some treats for the children!
A fitting week as we approach Easter! The Year 5 children really do deserve an enormous amount of credit for all of their efforts throughout this term and a two-week break is no less than they deserve. Wishing you all a safe and enjoyable time with your families. See you in the summer term!
Reminders:
-PE lessons next half term will take place every Tuesday and Thursday.
- There is no set Maths and English homework for next week, however the Year 5 ‘Virtual Classroom’ has been updated and attached to this blog, which includes links to a variety of websites and resources. All pupils' individual passwords can be found on Google Classroom. Don't forget, there is also the ‘Practice’ section on Mirodo where the children can choose any topic they wish to practise for Maths, Reading, SPaG or Science.
-School re-opens on Tuesday 19th April.
-The children will be taught by Mrs Healy, who met the children this Monday, until Mr McCabe returns from paternity leave. Another massive thank you for all the kind well-wishes received which have meant an awful lot!
Date: 24th Mar 2022 @ 7:53pm
In a week where the sun has shone, Year 5 have continued to shine too.
Our Collective Worship focus on the monthly value of ‘Sacrifice’ allowed us to reflect on how people often sacrifice things for Lent and the reasons behind this. After then discussing the things which we would find most difficult to sacrifice, we explored the ‘iceberg illusion’ animation and how sacrifice is a key element to achieve success. The children were then tasked with seeking out a quote relating to sacrifice which they found particularly inspiring and that resonated with them personally.
In PE, we have reached the end of our focus on Speed Stacking after improving our skillset and speed throughout the half term. This final lesson involved a round robin tournament that took place in the sunshine before five children who had secured the most victories progressed to the grand finals to compete against one another. Our overall winner was proudly crowned, however each child should be proud of themselves for the resilience, effort and improvement that they have shown throughout our PE lessons this half term.
In our English learning, we were extremely proud to write up the “top copy” of our biographies on Commander Chris Hadfield within our Author Books. Accompanied by pictures representative of Chris Hadfield’s life and career, the children worked hard to present their work in the style of a biography whilst also ensuring that their handwriting was neat and showcased their best. Very impressive!
In our Maths work, we have continued to challenge ourselves as we have honed our skills when multiplying fractions by fractions and also when multiplying fractions by whole numbers. As we progressed so well in these areas, we were then able to apply our skills to a range of multiplying fraction word problems, including a QR code hunt in our outdoor area. Next week’s Maths lessons will focus on word problems involving the four operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
We can’t quite believe that next week is (already) the final week of this term. In the meantime though, have a great weekend and see you on Monday!
Date: 17th Mar 2022 @ 7:47pm
Another brilliant school week is in the bag as this half term continues to tick on by!
We enjoyed marking British Science Week with an experiment linked to this year’s theme of ‘growth’. This involved the children growing their own rainbow! To achieve this, we decorated the edges of pieces of kitchen roll before submerging each end in a bowl of water and allowing the scientific process of capillary action to occur. To spice up the investigation, the children were given a cheap, mid-range and expensive kitchen roll product in order to make predictions and investigate which kitchen roll product created the best rainbow effect and why. We learned how water is absorbed through the kitchen roll because when the first water molecule adheres to it and begins to move upward, it pulls the next water molecule up with it, like a chain. Alongside that, we enjoyed a colourful experiment and had lots of fun!
In Maths this week, we practised the method for finding fractions of amounts before progressing onto multiplying fractions. We will continue our focus on multiplying fractions next week too.
In our English work, we have completed our journey through the excellent picturebook, ‘The Darkest Dark’. Using our learning about the book's main character, Chris, we began to research further information about what he went on to achieve in later life. We learned how Chris embarked on three missions to space, including being the first Canadian to walk in space as well as serving as the Canadian commander of the International Space Station. With a wealth of facts and information at our disposal, we planned out a biography about the life of Chris Hadfield and are very much looking forward to completing our top copies within our author books next week.
In RE, we completed our mapping out of the main events of Holy Week where the children showed their adeptness at summarising each event and matching it to the appropriate picture. It is fair to say that our black thinking hats were used expertly and our knowledge of the many events during Holy Week is vast.
What a fantastic way to end the week with our class Comic Relief celebrations. Alongside a class quiz, we also took part in a Rock, Paper, Scissors Hoop Relay followed by an outside Dodgeball tournament in the sun for our PE lesson. Such enjoyment, resilience and friendly competitiveness was displayed throughout.
All that is left now is to wish you all a brilliant weekend. Hopefully the sun continues to shine and see you on Monday!
Reminders:
-Year 5 Parent-Teacher Meetings take place on Monday 21st (Y5 classroom) and Wednesday 23rd March (school hall).
Date: 10th Mar 2022 @ 9:27pm
Another exciting week in the Year 5 classroom and even more so with National Careers Week and International Women’s Day being a part of it too!
For International Women’s Day (and launching our National Careers Week), we completed a gender-based activity that set out to prove that there is no such thing as a girl’s occupation or a boy’s occupation. The children were first tasked with drawing a picture of their first impression when they heard different job roles. Such occupations included: doctor, footballer, policeworker and hairdresser. We then discussed the main gender choices made and how the pictures that we completed may have looked very different if the same activity was completed in a previous generation. The discussions we had were brilliant for unpicking gender stereotypes and promoting equality. All of our discussions and learning was then cemented by watching the powerful ‘Like A Girl’ advert from Always as well as Nike’s ‘What are girls made of?’ advert which further inspired us to research some powerful female role models of our own.
Our National Careers Week focus continued with two amazing and motivating career talks from both a neurosurgeon and a psychologist. We are greatly appreciative to both Mrs Harris and Mr Guyers for sharing their career journeys with us and for helping to inspire a new generation of potential future workers in your chosen fields.
In RE, we continued to explore the events of Holy Week whilst linking this to Christianity’s view of Easter as both a victory and a sacrifice. The children ordered the main events of Holy Week and summarised each within their RE books by linking each point to its picture representation.
For Maths, we have worked with both resilience and effort as we tackled some assessments to check our understanding of our learning so far this school year. Not only that, we also managed to fit in ‘The Pirate Game’ as well as a percentage scavenger hunt on our school field.
In our English work, we continued to progress in our reading of the excellent picturebook, ‘The Darkest Dark’. We explored the development of Chris’ character from the beginning of the story to now and, next week, we will move onto preparation for our first piece of author book work of this half term. Bring it on!
Last but not least (and we do advise you to approach with caution when entering into this) but please do ask your child their stance on our question of this week: ‘Are there more doors or wheels in the world?’ This class debate started up a frenzy within Year 5 with so many opinions willingly and enthusiastically shared en masse. We fully see why this particular question went viral across the Internet throughout this week and it certainly prompted such excellent thinking within our class.
Time does always seem to fly in Year 5. Wishing you all an enjoyable weekend and see you on Monday!