Year 5
Autumn 2
The second half of Autumn term has gone off with a bang… and that’s not just because of the fabulous School Fireworks display! The children have been busy with our Science topic – Materials – and conducted an experiment using insulating and conducting materials to see how long they could retain the heat in a container.
We have also created some beautiful monoprints using rollers and printing inks.
On Remembrance Day, we studied the history behind the day and observed the two minutes silence at eleven. Prior to this we made a stunning poppy display with words of respect and gratitude for those who have made such a huge sacrifice for us.
This term we have been studying the Anglo Saxons and the Vikings. We have learned about why these settlers came, where and how they lived and worshipped. The Viking raid on Lindisfarne was studied in depth and some fabulous comic strips were created to retell the gruesome story. Topics of particular interest were chosen and the research undertaken was presented as information posters.
The culmination of the children’s learning was a project where they were challenged to research and creatively present their findings. A stunning array of longships, longhouses, artistic drawing of Gods /Goddesses / themed boardgames and sagas was produced and proudly displayed to the school and visiting parents this week.
As we reach the end of such a busy and exciting term, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and look forward to working with you again in 2025!
Autumn 1
Welcome to Year Five!!! What an exciting time we’ve had getting to know each other and getting used to our new classrooms, increased responsibilities and routines!
We have launched two main topics for the term already. One is Art, where we have practised the careful reproduction of the stunning work of a great illustrator of the natural world, Jackie Morris. We have attached some of our beautiful sketches to share with you.
Our Geography topic for this term will Rivers and we had great fun on Friday working collaboratively and creatively to generate mixed media 3 D plans of the course of a river, showing our understanding before we begin to learn about how rivers really work! Don’t they look great?
Science is one of our favourite subjects in Year 5. We have been continuing to explore ‘Materials’ and have conducted a full experiment on dissolving and understanding how solutions are created.
In Religious Education, we spent time looking at how different religions pray – in Judaism; Christianity; the Hindu faith and Islam. We were extremely fortunate to have a wide range of religious items from each faith to look at and touch – for example, a copy of The Quran; some rosary beads; a Jewish skullcap (kippa) and a Hindu Pooja set. The children were fascinated and asked many thoughtful, respectful questions during our investigative session.
Summer 2
Monday was our World War Two day and what a great day we had! We baked carrot biscuits (natural sweeteners during Rationing); learned all about Overton in the war and then created some beautiful Blitz artwork using silhouette. The children’s costumes were simply great and we all had lots of fun!
Our Science topic on Forces continues and we have been busy creating some excellent models to showcase friction this week – marble runs!!! Our challenge was to create a marble run where the marble takes the LONGEST amount of time to complete the route – using items to generate the maximum amount of friction. Next week we will race against each other and see whose run has the most friction.
In Design and Technology we have made working fairground rides using electrical circuits. The rides were hugely successful – chairs spinning like crazy and the themes for the rides were really well done.
This week, we were lucky enough to participate in an Athletics circuit workshop as part of our ’Sport for Champions’ dress up day. We learnt to throw javelin and shotput as well as sampling hurdling, long jumps and sprinting. Amazingly, the sun was shining (for once!) and we had a wonderful morning!
Summer 1
Our Summer term history topic is World War II and we have had a fascinating time so far investigating and learning more about Evacuation. We shared our own Evacuee’s suitcase contents and discussed what the children might pack to take with them and how it would feel to be have been an evacuee.
This week we set the children a research task where in small groups they had to research and present their findings on four areas of life on the Home Front during the war:
- Make Do and Mend (including Dig for Victory and rationing)
- Entertainment (including fashion)
- The role of women
- Volunteering (including Home Guard / ARPs etc)
Each group was allowed to present their findings as they chose and the saw some high quality and informative PowerPoint presentations; information posters and mini dramas created to educate us.
At the start of the topic, we challenged the children to go home and ask their families about their own war histories and involvement in the War. It has been particularly lovely to have the children bring in memorabilia and stories celebrating their precious family stories.
Our writing in English has focused on London just before the war, resulting in some beautiful, evocative work detailing cramped, squalid conditions that may have been the homes of some of the evacuated children before 1939.The next journey will be to create equally evocative writing about the evacuee’s new living conditions (inspired by the book ‘Goodnight Mr Tom’).
Summer term also sees the launch of our Forces topic (supported by the eagerly anticipated trip to Paultons Park). We have begun our understanding with a look at balanced and unbalanced forces and an investigation into gravity involving weighing objects to identify their weight and mass using Newton Meters.
We have had such an exciting term learning about Forces in Science. We made parachutes to demonstrate the forces of gravity and air resistance then launched them off the mezzanine floor to see which teams parachute had the greatest air resistance and therefore fell the slowest.
One of our most unusual school days this half term was our trip to Paulton’s Park, where we were involved in two amazing Workshops – one taught us all about the ways rollercoasters are affected by forces; whilst in the other we had to create a working circuit to light up and power a swing ride to move. We also had a bit of time spare to ride some coasters! It was great fun to experience the power of forces at first hand whilst enjoying a big loud scream with our classmates!
Our English journey this half term is all Second World War based and so far we have explored and described how London looked before the war, comparing it to how moving to the countryside would have felt to an evacuated child. We have also written some lovely letters home as if we were evacuees ourselves.
After half term we are looking forward to more hands experimenting in Science and to our Dress Up day on 17th June!
Spring 2
After weeks of rehearsal, our ‘Big Moment’ arrived! Both Year Five classes performed their versions of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at The Haymarket Theatre.
The children were incredible – lines learnt and delivered clearly – with such emphasis on making their play as funny as possible. We all had such fun and it certainly sounded as if the audiences did too! All of us in Year Five are very grateful for the many lovely comments we have received about how obvious the children’s enjoyment of the experience was and how special an evening it had all been!
We have also begun practicing our Reader’s Theatres (a little behind the rest of the school for obvious reasons!). Both classes are focussing on vocal expression and intonation to make our theatres as engaging as possible to listen to. Having just performed live in front of over 300 people has definitely helped with this!
Spring 1
Happy New Year! What a busy start to 2024 we’ve had in Year Five!
We have auditioned for our Shakespeare production and scripts will be going home next week. Everyone is very excited that we will soon start rehearsals. Tickets have now gone on sale for our performances on March 5th and 6th.
Our science topic for this half term is Life Cycles and we have been investigating the ways that plants reproduce. Tulips were carefully dissected so that we could examine them under magnifying glasses and try to spot ovules in the ovaries.
This half term we will also be designing and baking our own flavoured breads. Today we conducted our market research to identify which type of bread is the most popular – based on appearance, texture, smell and taste. White bread was a clear winner in both classes. Although a lot of Class 12 children were partial to some fruited bread!
In PE, we have been lucky enough to have 'Chance to Shine' sports company come and share their cricket expertise with us. The children have had great fun enhancing their batting and catching skills with Steph!
Shakespeare
Another busy Year Five term comes to an end! We have been brushing up our Shakespeare and are rehearsing madly for our performances on March 5th and 6th at The Haymarket in Basingstoke.
We were fortunate enough to have a visit from a professional Theatre Director at the end of January who held a Theatre Workshop to give us acting tips, then helped us with the rehearsal of a few scenes.
Design and Technology
Continuing our Design and Technology focus on Bread – we have been designing a shape and choosing flavouring to create our own bread rolls. Lots of fun ( and some frustration) was had experimenting with bread dough to create our roll design and we were all extremely pleased with our flavouring choices when we ‘taste tested’ them for evaluation at the end of the day.
MFL
Year 5 started the term by revising their core numbers 1-20 and using our knowledge of French phonics to improve our pronunciation when reading the written word – in particular ‘eu’ (neuf), ‘c’ (cinq), ‘r’ (treize) and silent consonants at the end of words. We looked at number patterns and thought about funny images to help remember counting in tens. Most children should now be secure with numbers up to 69! We then used our knowledge of cognates and our dictionary skills to introduce the world of sport in French. The children are able to give their opinion about different sports and are starting to talk about what sports they play and when. www.linguascope.com would be a fantastic resource to practise the core vocabulary over half term!
Autumn 2
We have had such a busy start to our second half term in Year Five! On 31st October we visited the Gilbert White Study Centre and spent a beautiful sunny session measuring the depth and width of the local river and then examining some of its inhabitants. We really enjoyed using all our newly acquired knowledge about rivers on this trip.
Back at school, we have reached the end of our science topic on ‘Materials’. It has been so much fun conducting all the ‘hands on’ experiments. We have even made plastic (casein plastic from milk and vinegar) and carbon dioxide (using vinegar and bicarbonate of soda)!
Last week, we marked Remembrance Day by making some poppies for display and covering them in words that summed out how we feel about this very event in our national calendar.
The next few weeks will be full of Anglo Saxons, Vikings and rehearsing Christmas Carols for our Carol Service so watch this space for more pictures soon!
Autumn 1
Welcome to Year 5!
We've been doing so much already! We started the year by getting creative to put our own touch on our year 5 area. This also gave us a chance to use our learning powers and strengthen our learning relationships!
In Science, we've been learning about materials and their properties. We've had lots of fun doing hands-on experiments involving dissolving, separating and creating solutions.
This half-term, we studied the beautiful illustrations and poetry in 'The Lost Words' by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris. We tried to reproduce some of Morris' illustrations and were very pleased with the results. What do you think?
Summer 2
We have had an incredible Arts Week.
We were in mixed groups with children from all over the school doing a variety of different art activities.
In the afternoons, we did art activities as a year group and on one of the days we created aerial art.
We had to think about what shape or symbol we wanted to create and then how to make it obvious from the sky. It was tricky to think about how to position our bodies, but were thrilled with the results!
Summer 1
We have had a whirlwind of a term!
We started our new topic of World War II and have been thrown into the war, evacuation, propaganda and much more. Next half-term we shall be having a WWII themed day where we get to dress up and take part in wartime activities.
In Science, our topic has been forces and we have been lucky enough to go on a trip to Paultons Park where we learnt about forces and how they impact roller-coaster design.
We even got to program some of our own roller coasters before adventuring into the park!
Spring 2
It has been a very busy and exciting half term.
We began by performing Romeo & Juliet at the Haymarket Theatre, which as you all know was fantastic.
We have also been creative within our computing. We linked our learning to previous science learning around the life cycle of a chicken. We explored stop-motion animation, which is where you have 3d clay models that are moved slightly and captured repeatedly until animation is created. We got into groups and created some of our own animations based on the life cycle of a chicken.
We also tested, designed and baked our own breads. We explored the most popular types of bread, then we designed 4 possible new recipes for bread. The chosen one was then made and baked and was soooooooo delicious!
We've taken part in a brand new topic this half term, focusing on European volcanoes and earthquakes. We had a volcano mapping visitor show us how he maps and evidences their movement and effect on the surrounding areas. For our projects we had to present a European volcano of our choice in any way. There were some truly fantastic projects that quite literally hit the roof!
Spring 1
We are well underway with our rehearsals of Romeo & Juliet.
We will be performing at the Haymarket this half term and are needing to think carefully about learning our lines, working the stage space and projecting our voices!
Autumn 2
Our topic this half term has been the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. We created some wonderful Viking projects varying from Longships, board games and many other Viking related items.
Our Computing for this half term was to create and write our own news reports then film them against a green screen. We combined our topic learning and wrote news report scripts as if we were reporting on the first Viking raid at Lindisfarne in 793. We had to decide who would be the reporter, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings.
We had a lot of fun writing, rehearsing and then filming. We had to think carefully about how to stand and talk so that we were all seen and could be heard. We then had a premiere of all the news reports.
We finished our Rivers topic with a trip to a real river and did a variety of experiments.
We measured the rivers width, depth and speed of flow and then were shown, with green ink, how the water flows. It was amazing!
Autumn 1
Autumn 1
We launched into our Computing learning with coding.
We learnt how to code a racing game and then created our own using Scratch.
We had to think carefully about how to design our cars and track and then code the correct keys so that two players could race.
We then tried each others games and it was a lot of fun!
We also did some wonderful printing in art. We sketched some animals or plants from the book The Lost Words and then used them to create an ink print.
