Year Five

SPRING TERM

Welcome to our Spring Term in Year 5. Following on from Autumn,  we have lots and lots of exciting learning to do in the forthcoming weeks linked to our school vision (John 10:10, "Live life in all its fullness’), our four virtues (perseverance, respect, courage and honesty) and our school rules (being ready, being respectful and being safe). These are at the heart of all we do. 

IMPORTANT DATES:

Friday is our PE day – we will be doing gymnastics with a focus on controlling our movements with fluency and finesse.

Homework is due in Wednesday (ready to mark on Friday). This allows children to have a couple of reminders before we mark.

Reading Diaries also due Fridays, BUT could children bring them every day as they might read with an adult and we want them to receive those certificates!

CURRICULUM. Much of what we are doing this half term is based around THE VIKINGS. Our reading, writing and History are based on this, along with some computing and artwork.

Reading

This term, we are looking at “Odd and the Frost Giants which tells the story of Odd, a young Viking boy with bad luck, who helps Norse gods Odin, Thor, and Loki, trapped as a bear, eagle, and fox, reclaim their home, Asgard, from conquering Frost Giants, battling hardship with cleverness and kindness to restore spring to the world

In addition to this, children have their own reading books PLUS a reading book for a Friday ‘love of reading’ session in which we read in groups and get to really enjoy the books.

Our class book at the end of the day is The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken is a classic children's novel set in an alternate 1832 England overrun by wolves migrating through a new Channel Tunnel, following cousins Bonnie and Sylvia as they escape their wicked governess, Miss Slighcarp, and her harsh boarding school with the help of a goose-boy named Simon to reclaim their home, Willoughby Chase. The story blends adventure and peril, highlighting themes of courage, friendship, and loyalty as the girls outwit villains and survive wolves to regain their happy lives. 

WRITING

We have some amazing pieces of writing planned this term and will be using this time as a basis to cement the foundations in writing (ensuring we are confidently using punctuation and grammar taught from Year 1).

Our writing this term is based upon the book, Arthur and the Golden Rope which tells the story of young Arthur, an unassuming boy in an Icelandic village, who must embark on a quest to help the Viking gods capture the monstrous wolf Fenrir, who has extinguished their life-giving fire. Guided by the god Thor, Arthur uses his unique skill of collecting curious objects from the forest to find magical elements (like the sound of a cat's footfall and mountain roots) to forge the magical Golden Rope, ultimately proving himself an unlikely hero and saving his village from freezing. 

In writing, we will be focusing on 3 key skills (whilst continuing to practise skills taught previously)

              *Using relative clauses to add extra information: Artur, who was a very timid boy, decided to volunteer for the adventure.

              *Using adverbials to link ideas and to like paragraphs: The very next day, he decided to set off.

              *Using expanded noun phrases to convey information concisely: The large, gold plated fountain in the middle of the village contained the fire.

MATHS

Our maths this term is predominately based upon fractions – what are fractions? How to tell if a fraction is equivalent or not? Converting improper and mixed fractions. Comparing and ordering fractions etc.

We continue our journey into multiplication and division, learning how to multiply a 2 digit number by another two digit number and learn the short method of division (“Bus stop” to us oldies!).

Lastly, we focus on statistics, linking data collection and presentation of data to the real world.

HISTORY

Our topic this half term is The Vikings. We learn who they were and where they came from. We delve into the often one-sided view of them, written by Anglo-Saxon monks and discuss why first hand accounts may be biased. We learn how the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons tried (and often failed) to live harmoniously together, and how the Vikings were allocated the Danelaw (The North!) and were paid off (Danegeld). We research local place names and see how much of The North is steeped in Viking history (including place names with THORPE in such as Waterthorpe or that end in _by such as Whitby).

SCIENCE

We are tackling the Big Question in science: What on Earth is puberty and what is going to happen to me!!?? We delve into classifying mammals (including humans) and research life cycles or various animals and plants, before focusing solely on Humans, discussing puberty and the changes our children will face before talking about the human reproduction cycle and the gestation timeline.

RE – Hinduism

Within this unit, pupils will build on their learning about the Hindu worldview and way of life with particular progression from the units on ‘what do Hindus believe God is like?’ and ‘what does it mean to be a Hindu in Britain today?’  They will build on their understanding of dharma.  Pupils will hear and interpret the story of the man in the well form the Mahabharata. They will investigate the key concepts of Karma, Dharma and samsara and how this might affect how a Hindu chooses to live their life using the example of two charities

COMPUTING

As we are delving further into a technological world, it is of vital importance that we consider we are keeping our children safe. We learn how to stay safe when researching on the internet and learn about cyber crimes and scams such as phishing, smishing (SMS texting scams) and Quishing (scams involving QR codes).

We also complete a unit of word based on online databases (linked to our maths unit) and create our very own searchable database, ready to create some top trumps!

Watch this space for some of our children's writing and artwork - COMNG SOON!