Year 5 2021 - 2022
Welcome to Year 5!
Spring 1
Throughout this half term, the Year 5 children have enjoyed exploring their class topic ‘It’s Not Fair’. After having their own ideas and discussions about what all children should have, the children learned about how poverty prevents a lot of children from accessing these things. Our class novel, ‘Home of the Brave’ has enabled Year 5 to explore the huge differences in the lives of children around the world such as the lack of safe drinking water, inadequate housing and unequal opportunities for education. They have also taken inspiration from the figurative language in the novel to improve their own creating writing, which has been a huge focus this term.
Our Science topic, ‘Earth, Sun and Moon’, has proven to be extremely popular with everyone! I was blown away by the children’s information posters about the planets, so much so, Mr Townsend came and helped us to create planet movies using iMovie. The children were so excited to use the green screen and microphone to film their videos; they used the editing software to change the backgrounds and learned how to layer the sounds to their videos and add other visual effects and titles. Every single movie was fantastic and the children are looking forward to creating their next one!
Another highlight from the term has been the children’s incredible symmetry artwork. Each child chose an animal and was tasked to draw the other half of the face to make it look as realistic as possible. I was really impressed by how carefully the children observed their photographs to match the detail and colours as closely as possible. You can see a photo of the wonderful display below!
Autumn 2
I can’t quite believe that we are nearing the end of our first term in Year 5 and what a fantastic term it has been! The children have shown so much enthusiasm towards our topic, ‘Antarctica’ and have produced some incredible work. We have been thoroughly enjoying our class novel, ‘Shackleton’s Stowaway’, which has inspired a whole range of learning. The children have written impressive persuasive letters in Literacy, convincing Ernest Shackleton to become crew members on his Trans-Antarctic Expedition. They have discovered who reached the South Pole first and had a go at designing their own version of Robert Falcon Scott’s Hut, located on Ross Island in Antarctica. Year 5 have also been busy designing and creating their very own Antarctic penguin using mod roc. I love the creativity each child has shown and it has been wonderful seeing their plans come to life so successfully! Recently, we have finished our ‘Healthy Bodies’ topic in Science. We had a rather messy and exciting lesson where the children created their own blood vessels using various items to represent the different components of blood!
The children have worked their socks off all term and I hope they all enjoy a relaxing break over the Christmas holidays. I would like to wish all the children and their families a Merry Christmas and we look forward to welcoming you back to school in 2022 for more learning adventures and excitement!
Miss Leaton
Autumn 1
The children have settled brilliantly into their new year group and I have been mightily impressed by the hard work and amazing learning that has taken place so far. We began the year by immersing ourselves in our class country, Mauritius, which is new to Year 5 this year. During Literacy lessons, the children wrote fantastic letters to family members, sharing their new knowledge about Mauritius and comparing the geographic features to those on the Isle of Man. The children have also created some truly beautiful artwork of the Mauritian dodo. They took part in an online art class with a talented artist from ‘The Drawing Rooms’ based in Kent and learned new drawing and watercolour techniques. Their final pieces can be seen in the front entrance, as well as our class canvas, inspired by Mauritian artist, Vaco Baissac!
‘Active Travel Week’ was a great success in Year 5 and I was blown away by the number of children who managed to travel to school in all sorts of creative ways – we had some scooters, walker, cyclers, skaters and even horse riders! Well done!
The start of our latest topic, Antarctica, has been a great hit, especially the emperor penguins! The children wrote brilliant non-chronological reports, which they are in the process of publishing using their ICT skills. If you have any questions about these beautiful creatures, the Year 5 children are the children you need to see!
Most recently, Year 5 have been learning about ‘The Global Goals for Sustainable Development’. They offered many thought-provoking and inspiring contributions during our class discussions and enjoyed painting a tile to represent each global goal, which will be fired in the kiln at the Craftworks Studio later in the week.
