Welcome to Year 5!

Our value for this term is thankfulness.

Our learning this week:

English Writing: This week in writing, we have been writing our final draft of our newspaper reports on a topic of our own choosing. It has been great to see so many of the class being able to demonstrate their understanding of the concept of direct and reported speech within their articles.

Guided Reading: In our reading lessons, we have continued to read Pig-Heart Boy. Cameron has now had his operation and had faced a lot of media scrutiny. We learnt some new vocabulary this week including billowing, perceptibly, adamant and rapt.

Maths: This week we completed our addition and subtraction unit.

Science: Our science lesson this week focused on legal and illegal drugs and the potentially helpful or harmful effects of these. We used the Talk to Frank website to research the short term and long term effects of some illegal drugs such as cannabis, solvents and nitrous oxide.

Geography: We have started to learn about how the Tudors understood the world and learnt about the explorers such as Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh and John Cabot who discovered new lands or circumnavigated the world.

PE: In PE, we used the skills we have been learning to play a game of tag rugby on Tuesday and football on Thursday.

Our learning last week:

English Writing: Last week, we were planning our second newspaper report based on a topic of our own choosing. We practised using direct and reported speech, fronted adverbials and dashes to link two independent clauses. On Thursday, we began writing the orientation paragraph for our reports.

Guided Reading: In guided reading, we continued reading our novel, 'Pig-Heart Boy', and reached the point in the story where Cameron has just had his heart transplant. We wrote a diary entry from Cameron's perspective in the lead up to the operation and considered Cameron's different emotions, exploring these through the use of colour and symbols. We then answered questions using evidence from the text to support our responses.

Maths: We started our second mathematics unit this week covering addition and subtraction. Using the column method, we practiced adding and subtracting numbers with more than four digits.

Science: Last Friday, we began to discuss healthy lifestyles and learnt about the effects of smoking on the body. We discussed the concept of legal and illegal drugs including tobacco and alcohol and their addictive nature.

Music: Last week we listened to 'Greensleeves', a famous piece of music from the Tudor era, discussed it's composition and compared this to a modern love song: Taylor Swift's 'Love Story'. We then created our own accompaniments using percussion instruments that complemented 'Greensleeves'.

PE: In PE last week, we were practising our passing skills in our tag rugby lesson whilst in football, we focused on shooting. I was very impressed by everyone's positive attitudes to our PE lessons, with everyone joining in, having a go and encouraging one another.

PE Lessons:

Our PE lessons this term will take place on a Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning. We will be focusing on football and tag rugby. Please ensure your child arrives to school dressed in their PE kit on these days.