Welcome to Class 5!

O-Gen!

Year 5 had a fabulous afternoon on the 8th July learning how to become music composers and producers! We had Mike from O-Gen teach us how to use a music program to compose our own music using different layers and textures - starting with the drums, then the bass, adding in different rhythms, before putting on a melody. Year 5 really enjoyed their learning!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

We hope that you had a wonderful day and enjoyed receiving your cards from Class 5. These 3D cards required a lot of careful work, using our DT skills to build the flowers. Thanks to Lunathi for the idea of putting in the butterfly trail!

This house believes that Harry Potter should never have been told that he is a wizard.

This was the statement today for our class debate! Some children were for the argument, some were against and we had a group of children as Chair, questioning both arguments and deciding who won the debate. We set it up so that the groups worked together on their arguments, questions and concluding statements, with 3 children from each group chosen as debating leads. The Chair decided that the motion was carried!

18th January 2019

This week we have been working on using a variety of different ways to make our writing descriptive, including expanded noun phrases, personification, simple and compound sentences and embedded clauses. Below are some examples of the brilliant writing that we have done!

The Wizarding World!

Welcome back and into 2019!

I hope you had a lovely holiday. This week we have begun our new topic of 'The Wizarding World', combining the book 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone', with a Science focus of Forces and Multiplication and Division in Maths. We have moved into our new houses - Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin and Gryffindor- and are excited to begin earning house points!

In English, we have done a lot of work on description this week and hope to impress you next week with some of our learning!

Reading continues to be a big focus for us in Class 5. Please can I remind children that they must be reading every day - reading is the biggest influencer for great writing!

I have been incredibly impressed with the children's swimming skills in our first lesson this week - we have a lot of natural talent in our class!

Spelling, Spelling, Spelling!!!!

As the children have moved into Year 5, they also now have a new set of words that they are expected to know how to spell by the end of Year 6. You will find these in the back with the Partnership Book, along with spellings for Year 3 and 4, but I have also placed a photo of them below.

Along with our weekly spellings, based on spelling patterns, we will be practising the Year 5/6 spellings every week. 

5th October, 2018

The children have been absolutely fantastic lately at developing their growth mindset and are keen to learn as much as they can!

We are doing a lot in improving mental maths skills and will be using various methods to do this including regular practice, songs, Mega Maths, Times Table Rockstars and Sumdog. This is also a good way to help children improve their Maths at home. A couple of good websites, aside from Sumdog and Times Table Rockstars, are below. 

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/daily10

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

I would also like to encourage children to continue reading at home as much as possible. As they grow older, more importance in reading is given to understanding of text and making inferential assumptions. In the homework section, I have uploaded some independent reading activities that the children should frequently do when they have finished reading a book. We're aiming to get as many Golden Tickets as possible!

17th September, 2018

I hope that you all had a lovely weekend.

Last week, the children made excellent progress in understanding the expectations of Year 5. This is an important year for the children and so we discussed the importance of being responsible and independent in our learning and in life. We came up with some ideas of what makes a fantastic learner with some 'Learning Skills'. These include:

Perseverance

Confidence

Resilience

Focus

Keeping healthy

Cooperation

Being Responsible 

Listening to others

We have also begun to develop our 'Growth Mindset'. This is an ability to think positively about learning and has been shown to actually grow our brains! It takes the approach of 'I can't do this' and turns it to 'I can't do this...yet', thereby recognising that we learn from mistakes and we are all, always, learners.

More information on this can be found below.

https://www.mindsetworks.com/parents/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/help-your-child-try-new-things

7th September, 2018

I hope that the children have settled into Year 5 well and are excited by their new learning space and curriculum! In this half term, we will be learning about the Mayans, through our topic 'Mayan Mayhem!', focusing on the geography of the Central American region, the history of the Ancient Mayan civilisation and some their artwork and music.

We will be linking our topic to the book 'Journey to the River Sea' by Eva Ibbotson and have been absorbed already by the first chapter, where Maia finds out that she will be moving to live with her family in the Amazon rainforest!

Our P.E. days this year will be Monday for outdoor P.E. and Wednesday for indoor P.E.

I look forward to meeting you all in the coming weeks.

Miss Butterworth