Year 5 2022 - 2023

Welcome to the Year 5 Class Page

Mrs Burtoft, Mrs Toomey and Mrs Spiby-Wilson

5BT have PE lessons on Thursdays

5S have PE lessons on Wednesdays

Both classes have swimming on Tuesdays until Christmas

We test spellings on a Friday

We test times tables every day 

Our homework is to read to an adult at home and practise our times tables and spellings in order to ensure we make the best possible progress during our time in Year 5. 

We encourage children to access TTRockstars to help them learn their times tables. We also run weekly TTRockstars sessions in school.

Click here to download our long term plan

Autumn Term

History - The Windrush

Geography – Trade and famous explorers

Science – Space

Science - Properties and changes of materials

Music - Learning to play the recorder using standard notation

Art - Renaissance and Baroque – Drawing and Painting Portraits

DT – Sewing

Spring Term

History - The Victorians

Geography - Mapping Skills

Science - Living things and their habitats

Science - Animals, including humans

Art - Art Nouveau

DT - Mechanisms

Summer Term

History - Our Local Area - Doncaster and Mining

Geography - Doncaster and the UK

Science - Forces

Art - Industrial Artists

DT - Cooking and Nurtrition

Our learning so far...

Autumn Term

We began reading The Boy at the Back of the Class as our English Text. This is the story about how one ordinary nine-year-old child and three classmates are full of empathy for Ahmet, a boy that comes to their school as a refugee from Syria (he is the boy at the back of the class). Through their sensitivity, curiosity, ingenuity, bravery and innocence, they make a massive impact on Ahmet’s life, friends, class, school, community and wider world.

We have been thinking about what it means to be a good person whatever your circumstances and realising the power of kindness.

For World Poetry Day we utilised the knowledge we had from our science lessons to create a piece of poetry about being thankful for the Sun or the Moon. We then performed these to the class adding actions for key words we had used from our vocabulary wall. For Remembrance day, the children worked collaboratively to each learn a line from the Poem Flanders Field which was then recited after the two minutes silence.

Our Maths lessons so far have been covering units of work based on reasoning, addition and subtraction with large numbers and reading and creating line graphs and tables. Our first lesson focused on building a pyramid using the domino method with Roman Numerals. We have now moved on to multiplication and division work using prior knowledge to help us understand new ways to calculate.

As part of our History topic we are learning about Windrush and the generation of people it brought to England, helping us to rebuild our country after the war. We have looked at the prejudice that people suffered and the reason so many people chose to leave thier own country and migrate to England. We have also taken the time to teach the children about the culture of the Caribbean, where it is and physical geography of the islands.

As part of our Geography unit we are looking into trade, what it is, how it's grown over time and the impact it has had on society. For our first lesson we focused on recognising different types of trade. We are now learning to recognise landmarks around the UK and to identify if they are human or physical geography.

In Science, we have been learning all about Space! So far, we have learned about the plantets in our solar system and their distance from the sun as well as the theories of our solar system over the years. We will be moving on to what causes night and day, phases of the Moon and how shadows are cast! 

Music has become a large part of our daily routine this year. We have been learning to play the recorder focusing on learning new notes and then playing a small piece of music. At the moment we have learned the notes B, A and G and are not trying to move between these notes within a piece of music. We have also begun to challenge ourselves by attempting to compose some music independently. 

Our Design and Technology lessons have been focuing on sewing a Rastamouse. This links to our History topic of the Windrush. We have also been learning to sew different types of stiches to create different aesthetics in order to create an original Rastamouse. So far we have learned the running stitch, laced running stitch and blanket stitch.

Our Art focus is the drawing and painting of portraits. In order to help the children to understand portraits they researched some famous pieces of art to find out about its history, media, medium, the artist and the artists intention for the piece of work. We then focused on each feature of the face independently working on sketching, blending and shaping of the features.

Each week we are ensuring that the children can make use of time in the library. During this time they can read to others, read to a teddy or read silently to themselves in a calming environment. The children have loved their library lessons so far.

Big Talk Education have been in school to speak to the children about changes they may be experiencing throughout this year now that they have reached puberty. The children were very respectful of each other and were comfortable to ask questions they had. The informative session allowed children to normalise some of the scientific vocabulary associated with the body. 

Throughout the year we complete computing lessons and our current focus is on coding. The children are very adept at following the instructions to code and create moving objects such as mini games. We will be delving deeper into this through the coming weeks

Our PSHE lessons this half term have been focusing on relationships. The children have been working hard to understand how relationships can be created, built on, maintained but also broken. They have been looking at how their emotions and actions can contribute to this. We have been purposely trying to work with peers that we do not usually spend much time with in order to work on our relationships. 

Our French this term is focusing on recapping the alphabet, numbers and beginning to form sentences related to the place we live- Doncaster. The children love trying to speak using the French accent and are becoming better at testing each other on their prior knowledge. 

Each year we celebrate and learn about religion through R.E. drop down days. This means we spend a whole day focusing on learning about different areas of one religion. This term we have explored the Judaism. We have looked into the history of the Star of David and how it came to be associated with the faith. We also investigated the Judaism story of creation and its similarities and differences with other religions. As part of this we introduced Scientology to allow the children to recognise and understand different ideas, opinions and beliefs that exist.

Year 5 celebrated Halloween in style with their very own Spooktatular Halloween Disco. Ghouls and goblins, Zombies and Vampires all were in attendance for the dance off. 

Each year we celebrate Christmas with a Christmas party and then our final day in school is Christmas Eve. Our children have loved being able to celebrate Christmas this year as a class, building dens, drinking hot chocolate, sharing stories and watching films. Merry Christmas from Year 5!

We enjoyed a lovely Coffee Morning in supprt of McMillan. As a school, we raised over £416! Thank you for all of your donations.

TTRockstars link:

https://play.ttrockstars.com/auth/school/student

Internet Safety:

Children have internet safety lessons using Gooseberry Planet once per fortnight. The children can play and access the games at home and parents can log in and check their child's progress on the website:

https://gooseberryplanet.com/

Our displays this year!