Class Blog for Year 5

SUMMER 2 UPDATE

Summer 2 Update

I can’t believe that we have already moved into the final half-term in Year 5! I hope that you and the children have had a great half-term We have a whole range of fantastic learning opportunities planned for this half term and the focus in firmly on ensuring that the children are prepared and confident going into Year 6. Please see some of the important details below.

The Year 5 Mind-map - attached below is a mind-map which details what we plan to learn across the curriculum this half term.

PE Lessons - Our timetable for PE remains the same this half term. Our PE will be on Tuesday. Children can come into school in their PE kit on PE days.

Times-tables and Key Instant Recall Facts (KIRFs) – Much of the maths we do in Year 5 and Year 6 relies heavily on the children already knowing important number facts. We call this ‘declarative’ knowledge. We use the KIRFs in school to help the children learn and remember these important facts. The most important facts that the children learn and remember are their quick addition and subtraction facts (eg: 13 - 6 =, 21 + 7=) and their times-tables facts (and corresponding division facts). We do a lot of work in school to support your child to know these key facts and any support you can give at home to ensure that these facts are recalled automatically would be fantastic.

Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)

This year, we have continued to implement the Jigsaw PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) Programme in Year 5.

The Summer Term units are all about Relationships (unit 1) and Changing Me (unit 2) and they will cover all areas of statutory requirements for the delivery of Health and Relationship education which came into place for schools to follow from September 2020. The Changing Me unit includes lessons to help children understand the changes puberty brings and how human reproduction happens.

We sent a letter home with the children detailing the objectives we cover in Year 5, and have attached a copy of the letter below.

Supporting learning at home - We encourage learning at home to support the work we do in school and enable children to become more confident.

Our home-learning expectations are:

Daily reading (15 minutes) - reading which is recorded in your reading record will contribute towards your Reading Karate reward.

Times-tables and KIRF practice (20 minutes weekly) using Times Tables Rock Stars (TTRS) and the KIRF sheets (attached below).

Spellings (20 minutes weekly) - focusing on our focus spellings and the Year 4/5 and 5/6 statutory spelling lists (attached below).

Online learning - This will be set on Atom Prime (logins stuck in thy front of children's reading records)

This term we will be running additional 'booster' sessions for selected children in Reading, Writing and Maths. To support these sessions we may send home a CGP Question Book for the children to use. We will be in touch directly if we have selected your child for the additional booster sessions.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns please do get in touch.

All the very best, the Year 5 team.

Image Gallery

Documents

5H Mindmap - Summer 2.pdf

Spelling words.pptx

Statutory Spelling Year 3 and 4.pdf

Statutory Spelling Year 5 and 6.pdf

Year 5 RSE letter for parents (2).docx

Karma & Dharma

Karma and Dharma

In RE this half term we have been learning about what Hindus believe. We have learned about how they believe that their God 'Brahman' is present in everything - and represents all aspects of life on earth. We also learned that although there are lots of different different Hindu Gods (we particularly like Ganesha, the God who looks like an elephant), they are all representations of different aspects of Brahman (the one true God).

We learned that Hindu's believe that all living things have a piece of Brahman inside them (called Atman) so Hindu's treat all life as sacred. We learned that the Atman goes through a cycle of birth, death and reincarnation called the Samsara.

Hindu's believe that if they do their duty (their Dharma) then they will receive good Karma. Receiving good Karma in this life will mean that Hindu's get reincarnated closer to Brahman in the next life. Eventually, Hindu's believe that they can achieve Moksha which means that their Atman is released from the cycle of reincarnation and is joined back with Brahman for eternity. They are really tricky beliefs to understand - so to help us we played a game of Moksha Chitram (snakes and ladders). At the foot of every ladder we wrote examples of things which Hindus would do which might lead to good karma, and at the head of every snake we wrote actions which might lead Hindus to receive bad karma. We think we are starting to understand the Hindu beliefs about birth, death and reincarnation.

St Cleer Well Dressing

We were really pleased to be invited by Cornish Heritage to join them in the St Cleer well dressing ceremony. After last year, we were also pleased that it didn't chuck it down with rain!!

Our class had worked with a local artist to produce a fantastic collage of the well, and we were excited to process through the village to the well. We took part in a small ceremony, laid flowers on the well wall and watched some traditional Cornish dancing. We were interested (and a bit confused) that half of the ceremony was conducted in the Cornish language. We agreed that we'd need a bit of practice before we could understand any of it!

We'd like to say a big thank you to Cornish Heritage for all of their support in making the day a success.

Learning by questions

This week in maths we have been learning about perimeter and area of 2D shapes. We learned how to calculate perimeter in different ways, and how we can use information we are given to calculate the length of any sides of the shape where the dimensions are missing. We applied our understanding to regular shapes and also to rectilinear shapes.

Once we were confident with perimeter, we learned how to calculate the area of different rectangles and rectilinear shapes. To apply our learning we used an adaptive teaching software called Learning by Questions (LbQ). The children really loved the different types of questions they were asked and also that they had visual representations of the problems to help them master the concepts of perimeter and area.

We all wanted to use LbQ every day - which Mr H didn't allow!

History detectives

Our learning adventure this half term is investigating the legacy of the Ancient Greeks. We started it off by looking at where Greece is on the map - and how the physical features of Greece impacted on how their civilisation developed.

Then we worked to create a timeline of important events in Greek history. We were surprised that the Ancient Greeks were around at the same time as the Ancient Egyptians and the Romans. We discussed some important features of Ancient Greek society - like the Olympics and democracy. We had also heard of quite a few of the famous Ancient Greeks.

We had heard about lots of different Greek myths and legends. One of the legends was Theseus and the Minotaur. We wanted to think like historians - so we set up an evidence trail with lots of different types of evidence which would be available to historians today. We needed to think about how these pieces of evidence could have proved that the encounter between Theseus and the Minotaur could have actually happened. We enjoyed looking at the different historical sources, and we were great at thinking like a historian!!

Life Skills

We were really excited to attend the Junior Like Skills Workshops at Liskeard fire station on Thursday afternoon. We didn't know what to expect but it was an action-packed afternoon full of really useful information and tips on how to stay safe in different situations.

When we got to the fire station we rotated around lots of different activities:
- Online safety
- How to catch a bus safely
- What to do if somebody is choking
- How to administer CPR - using the DR ABC acronym
- Staying safe on the roads
- How to make sure our passwords are secure
- Checking our homes for potential fire hazards
- Staying safe near railway lines

We all learned a lot - and enjoyed all of the different activities. We also came away from it all with a lot of freebies!

A huge thank you to all of the organisations involved in putting on such an interactive session!

Books and potatoes

This year we celebrated World Book Day in style. The children really got into the spirit of the day and dressed up in some wonderful character outfits.

The day started with an MC Grammar rap about World Book Day, and then we had a class quiz to test our knowledge about children's books and their characters.

Once we had completed the quiz, our challenge was to decorate a potato into a book character. We had lots of fun designing our potato characters - everything from Mr Men to ladybirds to Chinese gangsters! Take a look at some of our photos.

In the afternoon, we had to figure out the 'Masked teachers' who all read a favourite children's story but had their voice masked by technology. Then we were able to share our love of reading with our parents before we went home. What a great day - and a bit thanks to Miss Kite for organising it all!

Multiplication murder mystery

This week, there was a terrible crime committed in 5H - and we were determined to get to the bottom of what had happened. To round off our maths unit looking at multiplication and division, we took part in a murder mystery challenge.

The children were given a clue sheet - and list of possible victims, suspects, motives, locations, weapons etc. To solve each element of the crime, the children had to work together to solve the multiplication problems. The answers gave them one part of the key needed to 'unlock' that clue. The only problem was that as the children progressed through the mystery - the multiplication problems became more tricky!

We loved solving the crime and used a lot of our school values (creativity, determination, excellence, kindness) to help us. In the end we apprehended the killer and we are confident that there is no further risk to our school community!

I would walk 500 miles...

I would walk 500 miles (or steps)

LIt has been an excellent start back to the new half term. We're well under way with our new Learning adventure looking at the importance of water on Earth, have started learning about the important grammatical features in instruction texts and have mastered long multiplication in maths. However, the highlight of the week so far has been creating step counters using the Micro:bits.

We learned that the Micro:bits have something called an 'accelerometer' in them which senses when the Micro:bit is moving. We were challenged to write an algorithm which would allow us to use the Micro:bits as step counters. At first we were a bit daunted by the scale of the challenge but with a little bit of determination we were able to create effective step-counters.

We are looking forward to seeing what else we can program the Micro:bits to do!