Life Education Bus

We had a fun, engaging lesson with Julie on the Life Education Bus. We learnt so much and Harold even joined us for a song at the end! 

Happy New Year

Dear Parents/ Carers of Year 5 Pupils,

Welcome back and happy new year! We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are ready for another busy term. Thank you very much for your kind messages, cards and gifts.

Spring Term Curriculum

Here is an outline of some of the areas of learning that we will be covering in class this term. 

Maths	Multiplication and Division (whole numbers) Decimal numbers (reading, writing, ordering, rounding) Calculations involving decimal numbers (+ - x ÷) Time Word problems
English	Word play poetry Recounts (biographies and autobiographies) Performance Poetry Stories told from a different point of view
Science	Properties of Materials and Changes of Materials
R.E.	What is God like? How does believing in God influence people’s lives? Focus on Christianity and Hinduism
Computing	Selecting, using and combining different software
P.E.	Health and fitness / Games (Tuesdays) Gymnastics (Thursdays)
Topic (History, geog, art, D.T.)	Discover Brazil

How you can help at home

Homework – Please note change of day

Year 5 children will continue to receive one English and one Maths homework weekly. However, as a change from last term, we will ask for English homework to be handed in on Tuesdays and Maths homework to be handed in on Wednesdays. We will set some MyMaths homework tasks as part of the Maths bubble homework. If you do not have access to the internet at home children are welcome to use laptops at school to complete these tasks during Friday lunchtimes.

If your child has any trouble with homework, all they need do is come and ask us (where possible before the due date).  It is also appreciated if you could help encourage children to take responsibility for their own homework.  

In addition, the children will continue to learn a spelling rule each week. They will receive a list of spellings that follow this rule every Monday and will need to learn these for a weekly spelling test on a Friday.

Please find attached to this letter the half termly spellings the children need to learn at home (and what they scored when tested on these spellings last week). These will not be taught in lessons and will be tested at the end of the half term. Thank you for your support with this – it makes a big difference.

Reading

Please continue to read regularly with your child. It is so important as children become more fluent with their reading that they understand what they have read. Please ask them questions about the characters and plot to check their understanding and encourage them to express their own opinions about a story/book. Please also encourage them to read aloud with appropriate intonation and expression, paying careful attention to punctuation marks used by the author.

Planners

The children are using their planners very well to record their daily reading and their homework tasks. Please could you check your child’s planner at the end of each week and sign the bottom of the page. Your child should take responsibility for asking you to check and sign it. We will collect the homework planners each Monday.

P.E

Please continue to have P.E. kits at school every day. As the weather is unpredictable it would be useful for the children to have both outdoor trainers and plimsolls (or clean trainers) as part of their kit so that we can use both the hall and outdoors. Joggers and jumpers may also be needed.

Planners, reading books and homework books.

Please have all of these in school each day. Thank you.

Please don’t hesitate to come and see us if you have any questions.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Michelle Parkin and Mrs Marika Hortop

Amazing Christmas Crafts!

Thank you to Mrs Tennant and her all the wonderful helpers for our fantastic Christmas Craft workshop! We love all the items we made!

12 Days of Christmas

We are so proud of our whole school '12 Days of Christmas' hall display.

We made the lettering for the display. We blanket stitched around each of the letters - they look fabulous!

Then every child in the school made a star to go around the lettering.

These are close-ups of the 12 panels:

Computer Control Workshop Day

Thank you so much to Mo Follis from STEMworks and Al from TT Electonics for a brilliant Computer Control Workshop!
We started the morning thinking about what computer control means, what engineering is and what an engineer does. We learnt that an engineer solves real world problems that improve the world around us. Al shared with us some of the work his company does and we realised that engineers do not get designs right first time! They solve problems by continually testing and improving their designs.
We then split ourselves into groups of 2’s and 3’s and made our 15-minute robot.

Once our robots were built we were set a series of challenges. Each challenge was worth a different number of points.

Challenge 1 – STOP  (worth 20 points)
We had to start with our robots in the STEMworks box, program our robot to travel forwards in a straight line and stop with the 2 front wheels exactly on the black line at the stop sign.

Challenge 2 – PARK  (worth 30 points)
We had to start with our robot in the STEMworks box, program our robot to travel forwards to the end of the mat, turn right, travel forwards and park the whole robot inside the other STEMworks box.

For the afternoon session we were given 4 different challenges. We had to complete as many of these, as accurately as possible, in the time given. Each challenge was worth a different number of points with 120 points in total up for grabs! We had to write and test each program. When each program was ready it was judged by Mo or Al and we were awarded points. We had to adapt our robots to complete these challenges. Some of the changes we made included adding sensors, adding lights, adding a push button and building scoops.

Challenge 1 – ULTRA  (worth 30 points)
We had to start our robot on the coloured lines and program the robot to move forward until it sensed an object in front of it (using the sensor), reverse and then make it do something amazing (dance, turn it’s lights on, make sounds)

Challenge 2 –  GOAL  (worth 50 points)
Three balls were placed in the centre of the mat. We had to start our robot in the STEMworks box and program the robot to move into position and push the balls into the goal. The robot was not allowed to touch the goal – if it did points were deducted!

Challenge 3 – PUSH  (worth 20 points)
We had to start with the robot in the STEMworks box and program the robot to push the 2 cups over the stop line. However we needed to program the robot to stop on the opposite side of the line.

Challenge 4 – DANCE   (worth 20 points)
We had to start with the robot in the STEMworks box and program the robot to travel into the oval in the middle of the mat and perform a ‘dance’. The dance had to finish within the oval.

After additional points were awarded for team work and how well we dismantled and tidied our Lego all the points were added and the winning team announced.

To finish the day we thought about how many skills and subjects areas we covered in our day’s computing work. It was an extensive list which covered aspects of English, Maths, Science, PSHCE, and D.T. as well as computing skills and engineering skills!

Jam Making

Today we made jam using ingredients from the school garden. Yum!

Class Assembly

Thank you to everyone who joined us this morning for our class assembly. We hope you enjoyed it and learned a lot about the Stuarts, the Great Fire of London and the plague! These are some up close photos of our paintings of the Roundheads and the Cavaliers.

Gears, Levers and Pulleys

We have been exploring how mechanical devices such as gears, levers and pulleys allow a small force to have a great effect.