Highlights from Year 5

At the end of term, just before the Easter break, we had our last visits by Charlotte from Ufton Court. The children thoroughly enjoyed everything about these visits and trips and were rewarded with certificates and their unique passports as mementos. We also took part in a Hockey Tournament with other schools in the area and the children all displayed fantastic behaviour and skills they had been taught during PE lessons.

In English, we created instructions for how to make a tulip out of paper ready for Mother’s Day. The children worked hard on writing everything so that another person could make the tulip. We used imperative verbs and commands. All the children created their tulips. We finished off a letter of complaint about a bad stay in a hotel where we complained about the food, hygiene, noise level and delayed flights. The children enjoyed role playing complaining about these issues and this translated into some great letters.

In Mathematics, we have been focusing on shape and using protractors to understand a variety of angles and how to draw and measure with accuracy. From this we have been looking at angles around the classroom and the school deciding if they are acute, obtuse, right angle or reflex. The children enjoyed this investigation. We are still working hard on our Times Tables and the scores each week are really showing huge improvements and this is great to see.

In Science, we finished off last term with a Materials topic which looked at the most suitable materials for certain objects, like rubber for tyres, clay for plates and that different materials have different properties and some like eggs and flour in a cake once cooked cannot be separated! So this is a irreversible change. We used Skittles to see what would happen when milk was poured over them! The results created a rainbow of colour which came off the hard sugar coating. You were then left with a sticky brown mess!

In History, we studied the Maya who lived in Mexico and then vanished! The children loved looking at how they lived and created a Maya god and mask which were very significant in the Maya period. They were also pleased to learn that this is when the caoco bean was discovered which is what chocolate is made from! Yum.

In Music, Bon Jovi was the band and Livin’ On A Prayer was the song. We looked at the lyrics and learnt the words, tune, and beat. I did mention that this was one of my favourite bands! We also listened to other songs along with the similar theme of soft rock.

Computing was creating a game using Scratch which is a programming program. I was extremely impressed with the ability all the children had using this program and created their own simple games using de-bugging and then evaluating what they had created. I think the children all liked being gamers!

In all the subjects the children have produced some amazing work and have learnt so much through the various topics and themes.