Year 5 2024/25

February 2025 update 

What a wonderful first half of Spring term it has been in Year 5! We kicked off the term by focusing on mental health during our Mental Health Week. The children created beautiful affirmation hearts, each one filled with positive messages to hang up at home, serving as daily reminders of why they are amazing. We also worked together to make individual boxes filled with heartfelt notes from every child, celebrating the things we love about one another. These boxes are a special treasure, something the children can turn to whenever they need a reminder of how loved and valued they truly are.

In Art, we explored the fascinating world of turning 2D shapes into 3D masterpieces by using shadows and shades to add depth and dimension. It was inspiring to watch the children's creativity come to life in such a hands-on way. We also dove into our World War 2 topic, sparking an incredible amount of interest and curiosity which we can’t wait to continue this exploration next half term. In Science, our Space topic captured the children’s imaginations as they learned about the universe, planets, and stars. To top it off, we had a fantastic visit from A-Level French students from Bryanston, which was an exciting opportunity for us to develop our French vocabulary linked to 'space'.

It was a fantastic, enriching half term and I couldn’t be prouder of how the children have embraced every new topic and activity with such enthusiasm and kindness.

January 2025 update 

Happy New Year! I want to start by congratulating our Year 5 children for coming back to school with such a brilliant attitude after the Christmas break. It can be challenging to get back into routine after two weeks off but our children have made an incredible start to 2025. I know they are super excited for our new topics this half term and were keen to get started!

Towards the end of last half term, we thoroughly enjoyed the lead up to Christmas. We enjoyed 'party day', competing in 'Candy Cane Olympics', Christmas jumper day and a lovely Christmas dinner! We made some beautiful scenic cards and took 'elfies' which we turned into decorations!

In English, we were inspired by the ' Inner Child' Christmas advert which shows that you are never too old to find joy at Christmas! We used this to become more confident punctuating speech.

As well as all of the Christmas fun, we continued working hard through our fractions unit in Maths, 'Animals including humans' in Science and 'The Ancient Maya' in History.

We look forward to a new term of learning, where we will explore World War 2, Space and Hinduism.

Balancing in PE! 

October 2024 update 

What a lovely October we have had in Year 5! As part of our learning in Geography, we visited the River Stour. Although the river was heavily flooded, the children were able to spot so many features we had discussed in our lessons and some children even spotted an otter! During our trip out, we visited the library. We were overwhelmed with the response from the children; they all sat down to enjoy a book on their own or with a friend and all said they would like to visit again with adults from home. There was an incredible book about endangered animals which caught the attention of so many children so we have decided to buy a copy for our class to share. It was wonderful to see such engagement and interest during our time there.

In other areas of the curriculum, we have been exploring multiplication and division in Maths, relative clauses in English, components of fitness in PE and learning to use Google slides in Computing as part of our digital systems unit of work.

We are looking forward to another full half term of learning as we delve into some of our new topics including The Mayans, Animals including humans and Incarnation.

Wow – what an amazing start to the year we’ve had! We have been so impressed with the children’s efforts to learn and become familiar with our Year 5 routines. They have all started the year with such a positive attitude and we are looking forward to a great year ahead!

In maths, we have started by recapping our place value knowledge and moved onto learning to read, write and partition numbers up 1,000,000! We have felt so proud of the children’s resilience with this topic and they have made excellent progress already.

In English, we have been learning how to write suspense narratives following reading ‘Fowler’s Yard’. Our new favourite word is ‘ominous’ and the children have been keen to include this new vocabulary in their writing!

In Art, we have been exploring how artists join clay using coiling. We are working towards creating pots to be used at our Macmillan coffee morning.

In Geography, we have been learning about rivers, with a specific focus on the River Stour. We are looking forward to our trip to Stour Meadows later in the half term where we will complete a river study and hunt for the features that we’ve been learning about! 

Have a look at what our Year 5s got up to last year and all of the exciting things you have to look forward to! 

In Geography, we've been finding out about what causes a volcanic eruption! We made these amazing dioramas to show the sequence of events. 

In Science this week, we investigation chemical reactions. We mixed different liquids with bicarbonate of soda after seeing how it reacted with vinegar last week! The reaction between ketchup was amazing and really surprised up! The greatest eruption was when we mixed it with lemon juice! 

Look at our amazing volcanoes! As we are learning all about volcanoes this half term, we decided to make some paper mache models, ready to erupt! In Science, we have planned an investigation (after observing vinegar and bicarbonate of soda react!) into what liquids would react with bicarbonate of soda. Next week, each volcano will hold a different liquid and we will observe which erupt highest! 

In Art, we have been looking at shadows and how we can make a 2D image look 3D. We began by sketching crisps and their shadows before adding paint to our work. 

Solubility in Science! 

We've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to use microcontrollers in computing. Crumbles (the microcontroller) work by attaching components like LEDs, buttons, and motors to the Crumble using crocodile leads, and you can program your Crumble using free software.

In English lessons, we have been creating a suspense narrative based on the picture book 'The Water Tower' by Gary Crew. One of our objectives has been to move the story on through the use of dialogue. We used strips of paper to identify our spoken and reporting clauses before working together to add accurate punctuation. 

What an amazing day we had at Nothe Fort this week - despite the torrential rain! All dressed up as evacuees, the children experienced life in WW2 through various re-enactments. They visited a shop and learnt about rationing during 1940, a laundry and kitchen which taught us about all the jobs that evacuees had to take on and lastly, the anderson shelter which provided a sensory experience of an air-raid. We even earnt a little bit about how the war impacted Blandford!

We were all so incredibly proud of the behaviour and attitude of all the children throughout the day. Every adult that met our children complimented them hugely on their manners and their excellent, thoughtful questions.

To start this half term's history unit all about The Battle of Britain in World War 2, we began by using timelines to chronologically order events in history that we have previously learnt about in other year groups. This included WW1, The Great Fire of London, The Stone Age, The Iron Age, The Vikings, The Anglo-Saxons, Th Maya and our new unit, WW2. 

Over the next two weeks, we are learning more about punctuating speech accurately. We are using the McDonalds Christmas advert from 2020 to inspire our writing. The children have been very reflective about channelling their inner (younger) child this Christmas! 

The link to the video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJntbYytPz8