Y5 Friday 1st December

(an old post which I didn't publish at the time as I was waiting for some photographs - but thought I would put it up anyway!)

Christmas has begun!!

We are happy to see everyone returning to school after a couple of weeks of illness!

Although we have had lots of children absent we have tried to carry on as much as we could!

The Christmas play this year will be 'Ebeneezer' (Scrooge) - a play based on the famous novel 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens and will be performed by Years 3, 4 and 5.
As we have only a small number of children in these classes, most children will take more than one part.

It is now actually very close!! And really important that the children all learn their words and the songs so that we can do rehearsals without scripts!!

We did auditions for the parts in the play and due to having quite a large number of girls (who didn't want to play boys' parts), we have also changed the characters a little!!.
We have been rehearsing a little each day and are starting to remember who goes off stage when, which way to go, when to stand up or sit down etc.

We have also been busy fitting in as much of our usual maths and English lessons as possible!!

In maths, we started by learning about Multiples - looking at different ways to work out whether any number can be divided by the single digit numbers 2 to 9 and of course 10.
We then moved on to Factors and identifying Prime Numbers and then on to Prime Factors.

Our next area has been Fractions. First of all looking at how to actually say the fractions in English! And then on to other vocabulary such as numerator and denominator.
We have looked at comparing the sizes of fractions as Equivalent Fractions and when they have a different denominator -first using a pictorial aid but then later moving on to how to manipulate the fractions so that they are all using the same denominator.
We have looked at Improper fractions where the numerator is the larger number and mixed fractions where there is a whole number and a fraction together.

In English we have begun to look at all the grammatical terms for sentence structure and are now starting to look at how we can use these to improve the level of our writing by adding extra information.

We are learning to identify a main clause and add adverbial and expanded noun phrases and then a range of different types of subordinate clause such as a relative clause, as well as nouns, verbs, prepositions, determiners, adverbs, adjectives and conjunctions.

Y5 Friday 27th October

We have had a very interesting week as we have celebrated Harvest.

We learnt that Harvest is celebrated in many different ways all around the world and has changed a lot in modern times.

In England many years ago, it was a celebration of all the food and crops being harvested and stored ready to feed the village over the winter.

In modern times of supermarkets, fridges and freezers and food coming from all around the world we no longer need to do the 'harvest and store' but, instead we think about people all around the world who, for many reasons, do not have enough to eat.

We all started by thinking about people in our own city and brought food to school that could be taken to help families in Moscow.

In Y5 we also learnt all about Fair Trade.
We played the Trading Game - and very quickly learnt that some countries in the world start with massively more resources, skills or money than others. Others just have lots of resources - and no matter how much they try, they cannot become major power holders in our world.
They were not impressed when the prices for their goods (shapes) in the Stock Market suddenly dropped and other shape prices rose -but some very quickly learnt to 'speculate' and keep certain shapes to trade when the next 'Stock Market Newsflash' came in - hoping the price had risen this time......

We role played being 3rd world farmers trying to sell our produce to big companies and found they could very easily be cheated, particularly if they could not read.

We then also role played being 3rd world farmers who grouped together to form co-operatives and worked together to get fair treatment from the big companies (click useful links top right).

We watched video clips from the Fair Trade Company to see how they helped the 3rd world farmers to get fair prices for their produce but also educate them about their farming and improve the lives of their families by installing water pumps and building schools.

We harvested our own vegetables (well, the carrots anyway!) that we planted as seeds in May  - and ate them with our lunch the next day (Thank you to the kitchen staff!!!)

We had a super Harvest Assembly. So many children joined in with great costumes or autumn colours and leaves. We displayed the fantastic amount of food we had collected to give to families in need and all classes joined in with our Whole School Bake and made biscuits.
We had also learnt some special Harvest songs and even one where we learnt the words to sing - but also in sign language (BSL).

We really learnt a lot about so many different things!!!

Y5 Wednesday 18th October

Maths

We have continued to learn more about 2D shape (polygon) and geometry.
We can translate a shape and locate the new position using co-ordinates. We can find the lines of symmetry in regular polygons and orders of rotational symmetry. We can identify whether a polygon will tessellate or not.

We have learnt vocabulary associated with geometry - diagonal, parallel, perpendicular,right angle, obtuse, acute and reflex angles.

We have estimated and measured angles.

English

We have been looking at correct spellings where there are several alternatives for the sound and how to find which one is best to use. We have looked at long a;  ay  ai  a/e  aA  ei,      i;  I  i/e  igh  y      and e;  e  e/e  ee  ae  y  ey.

We have also looked at spelling and using past tense by adding ed  (whether it sounds like ed, t or id), changing y to ied,  doubling the consonant before ed and lots of irregular past tense verbs.
Most of Y5 use some of these some of the time, so we are trying to improve this.

Handwriting

We are now able to join all the letters and make our writing small, rounded, correct heights for tall and tails - when we are copying a sentence, but.... we are now moving to keeping the good formation when we write and have to think about the content as well as the handwriting - which is a bit more tricky!

Writing

We have been learning how to write an explanation text. This involves looking at the sections we need to include; an introduction, a conclusion, which order the information needs to come in, using 3rd person, specific technical vocabulary and cause and effect connectives.

Reading

We are just starting to work on formal comprehension exercises (which from now, will be a part of Y5 weekly homework as an online task). So far, we have talked about texts as we read them and asked questions but we now need to think much more deeply about what we are reading.

We are much further into our class novel, 'Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief' -and we now know that Percy is the son of Poseidon, God of the Sea - which has some advantages, but considerably more problems!

History

We have learnt much more about the Ancient Greeks - their use of Democracy to rule their city, they were the originators of the Olympic Games and some more about Greek Gods and Greek myths.

Our Medusa heads...

Art

We have continued making the planets from Papier Mache and are almost ready to begin painting them!

Y5 Onegino October 2017

Hello and Welcome to the Y5 Blog!!

Please have a read and let me know if there are any other things that you might like included!

After a bit of a slow start, we are now 'all' (yes all 5 children!) back in school!

Our Y5 classroom is small but snug, and plenty big enough for us.

Over the last 4 weeks we have done quite a lot. Take a look;

We talked about class room rules and expectations and whole school rules and made our own classroom poster.
We also discussed our new Whole School Behaviour Policy and how it would work in the classroom.

We have a classroom Reward System where the children can collect points (called Dojos) and win the individual 'prize' or if the class total reaches past 200 Dojos they can win a class reward.

The rewards can be chosen from a list of things such as 30 minutes of a film (English) or cartoon, 30 minutes extra playtime (outside if the weather is good or in the gym if not) etc. Individual rewards can be to have a cushion to sit on all week, to bring their own pen into school or other ideas chosen by the children.

We have also had some very exciting developments in the dining room! We now have adult sized plates and knives and forks (though nobody seemed quite so keen to have adult sized soup bowls...!)

Curruiculum.......

Maths

Place Value to 100,000 - addition, subtraction and rounding

Negative numbers











Decimals to 3 decimal places - addition, subtraction and rounding

Money - UK coins and notes
              giving change
              problem solving

2D shapes - names and properties

3D shapes - names and properties

Times Tables up to 12 x 12

Literacy

We have looked at describing settings - using adjectives and adverbs and using all of our senses, but also similes, metaphors, personification, to create better pictures in our reader's minds.

We have had a practise at summarising small parts of a story, so that we are able to do this for our reading homework.

We have learnt how to use a 'Fronted Adverbial' to make our writing more interesting and sound more grown up.

We are starting to work our way through common spelling patterns and sounds and learn when we can use a rule to tell us which pattern to use for a sound that can be made in different ways.
Although we do do a weekly spelling test, the real test of this is actually in the children's own independent writing - which we are also starting to learn to do.

We have learnt how each letter should be formed to enable us to do joined handwriting (some of them are not quite happy with some of the letters that change their shape - 'what a silly way' they said - until I pointed out that as I was trying to learn Russian and the same thing happens - d, t, g...... LOL!! Ohhh yes, so it does!!!)

Our current class novel fits very nicely with our history topic of The Ancient Greeks. It is called 'Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief' by Rick Riordan. It is very exciting -but isn't it strange how each time it gets to an exciting bit, I have to stop and we have to wait till the next time......

History

Our topic is The Ancient Greeks but first we needed to put our history into perspective. We have made a timeline to show where 'our history' fits in with the history of the planet. We have also learnt about BC and AD.

We have made mind maps of our current knowledge of the Ancient Greeks and thought about what we would like to find out about their lives.

We are finding out about the Greek Gods of Olympus and listening to/watching Greek myths to find out more about their beliefs.

Science

In science we have been learning all about the movements and timings of the sun, moon and earth and how they affect each other.
We have used ourselves to represent them and also used a globe and various balls to understand the movements.

Art

We have just begun to make the planets of our solar system using papier mache - which is proving to be fun and 'interesting' (though not sure our Nanny agrees!).

Music Week

We had a very interesting week last week as we studied The 'Planets Suite' by Gustav Holst. We learnt about each suite (all linked to our Greek.. well ok Roman! Gods) and watched them played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Halls in London. We then celebrated International Music Day by having a great assembly on Friday, all organised by our super music teacher, Miss Natalia!!

So, quite a busy first month back at school!!

Tuesday 14th February

Happy Valentine's Day
(more about that at the end of this week)

Here are our beautiful pieces of art that we made together with Nursery and Reception to start Art Week (previous week).  We all worked together (in small groups!) to produce each big picture.

Snowmen in the style of Eric Carle's tissue paper illustrations in his children's books........

Under the sea collage frieze using all sorts of materials...

The London skyline all coloured by our fingerprints...

Last week we learnt more about Australia. We found out about and then wrote about the Australian flag and found out about the Aboriginal flag too.

In our own writing we are trying to use 'and' to join our sentences. First we think of the two things we want to say, then we say the sentences, then join them with 'and'.  Some of us are using finger spaces and some capital letters and full stops.
We can see a huge difference in how much we are writing and in our handwriting since we started Y1 in September!!! We are very proud of ourselves!!!

In maths we continued to use number lines to complete addition and subtraction number problems. Some children are starting to be able to use the number line to do jumps of ten using numbers up to 100.

We are really enjoying playing in the snow tunnels that we have made outside and are really starting to play together.

We also had an interesting 'play' session at the end of the week as we were able to watch ourselves in the Christmas Concert (see Karina at the Reception desk if you would like a copy!).

Dress Code - Robes!

Homework  

Reading as usual!

Handwriting this week is to try and focus on forming numbers correctly - and the right way round!

Sunday 5th February 2017

Hooray - nearly all back this week!!And it was also Whole School Art Week!!

On Monday we all mixed up with Nursery and Reception and took turns in each classroom, helping to produce 3 big pieces of art work!
In Nursery, we made a deep sea frieze, full of fish. In Reception, we used fingerprints in paint to fill in the London skyline. And in Y1 we used tissue paper collage in the style of Eric Carle (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) to make 3 giant snowmen (photos later!).

Then, we set sail across the ocean on the White Shark Pirate ship.

We found ourselves blown south (using our compasses!!) and landed in a very hot strange land full of very strange animals...

The pirates noticed kangaroos, koalas, echidnas, emus and even duck-billed platypus - we were in Australia!!!
We found out about the first people who lived in Australia - the Aborigines and listened to a traditional story about the Rainbow Serpent. We listened to people playing the Didgeridoo (and had a go ourselves using a big tube....

And as it was Art Week, we found out about Aboriginal Dot Painting. We looked at lots of pictures and then had a try ourselves....

It takes a lot of patience - but we made some fantastic pictures...

We also managed to fit in some maths. We are learning to use a number line to help us calculate answers to addition and subtraction number sentences.

We know to put our finger on the number to start, then count how many jumps and look at which number we finish at - but we also know that Miss Karen might try to trick us - so we have to look carefully to see if it is an add, or a minus sign, then think about which way to jump!!

Homework this week is reading (Please remember to make sure an adult signs to say you have read your books!  And spelling words;  so,  go,  no,  we,  me  (remember to think about the sizes of the letters!)

Saturday 28th January 2017

Hi!! Sorry about the gap!!
Christmas is just so busy!!

Happy New Year (better late than never!!)

Literacy (and Topic)

Our first three weeks back in the New Year have been rather odd as we haven't had more than 6 or 8 children in and often different children each day or week - so we have done some little short projects!!

We began by finding a note from Pirate Captain Killer Karen, who needed some new sailors (Deck-hands) to join her pirate ship - the White Shark.

One child said they were scared and didn't want to go, so another suggested we should just send all the Dads instead!!!!

Our new pirates made their pirate outfits and wrote a letter to their parents to say where they had gone - off on a new world adventure!! And we all now have a Pirate name!

We have read books and stories about pirates and learnt about a compass and the directions - North, South, East and West. We even made our own compass by magnetising a needle and floating it on water so it turned to point North.

This also led to a lot of play and investigation of magnets and which materials are attracted to magnets and which not!

We haven't managed to set sail for the new world yet as we are waiting for a few more of our Deck-hands to come back!!

But we have made pirate hats, eye patches and cutlasses!

We are now very good at knowing the days of the week and putting them in the right order, so we are now concentrating on the months of the year (very important as it means we can all talk alot!! about our birthdays!!!).

This week we have done a mini project after reading an excellent book by Julia Donaldson, called Stick Man.
We have written a letter, pretending to be Stick Man, telling his children he is trying to get home, and have all made our own Stick Man (or Lady), as well as a few extra stick people to put on our display!!
We have also watched the BBC animation of the Stick Man (which is very well done and definitely worth watching if you can watch BBC iplayer!!).


Maths

We have looked at and practised counting in 5s and noticed that all the numbers we say when we do this end in a 5 or 0!

We have learnt lots of new names for 3D shapes and can tell the difference between a 2D and 3D shape. We have counted faces, edges and vertices.
We had a go at making our own 3D shapes from the magnetic construction set and made labels for them on our display shelves.

This also prompted lots of building projects, where they were telling us what shapes they had used....

We have also started to learn about number sentences with missing numbers. First we looked at how the equals sign acts as a balance scale and we have to try to make it balance by making the numbers on each side have the same value.
This also prompted lots of exploration using the balance scales!!

We have also looked at how we can use a number line to help us add and subtract - but you have to be careful...... or Miss Karen might trick you and make you go the wrong way!!

Homework

Homework has changed a little bit - please check your child's folder for the letter!!

But it must still be returned on Thursday! This is the day when I have time to mark homework and check returned books.

Reading - Please note that we will only change/give new reading books if an adult has signed the form (in the back of the file) to say that the books have been read!!

Writing - we are now trying to help the children to remember how to write some of the tricky words, so the emphasis is more on remembering the correct spelling - but they do still need to think about their handwriting and the sizes of the letters.