Author: Miss Goswami

In Living and Learning, the children discussed and defined ‘a compliment’ as “giving someone praise in a respectful way”.  We then went on to give ourselves a compliment, others a compliment and also talked about how it makes us feel when we are given a compliment. Some of our emotions included: being happy; feeling embarrassed; being proud; feeling appreciated and validated.

Year 5 also gave out anonymous compliments to their peers in class. The children really thought about why each person is special to them. It was lovely to read these out in class!

Here are some of the things the children complimented themselves on:

Help at home: Why not go around the dinner table tonight and give each other compliments?

As next week is the last week of Spring Term, your child’s target page is the end of the book (no matter the group). Guided reading books need to be returned before Friday 4th April, if possible. If your child will not have finished their book by this time, please ask them to speak to me and we can see if they can have the book for the break.

Today, Year 5 made vegetable pasta bake! This is part of our Living and Learning (healthy eating) and Design and Technology (food preparation) learning. We worked in small groups to prepare the ingredients and then cook them. The children peeled, crushed, chopped, diced, cubed and sliced! We made sure that we washed our hands and wore our aprons for hygiene reasons.

We used the bridge cutting method and the claw cutting method to cut up our ingredients. These methods are the safest way to cut food as they help us from hurting ourselves!

Help at home: The children have been given a recipe to take home. Why not try it for yourselves? Is there anything you would change?

 

 

In Computing, this week, we have been creating a pedometer. Pedometers are devices that measure the steps you walk. They have a device or arm inside that moves up and down with your hip motion. Each time you walk, your body tilts to one side, and you swing a leg moving forward. Your body then shifts the other way, and you swing your other leg forward as well.
Every tilt of your hips coupled with a shift of your legs counts as a step.

In our first lesson, our code did not go to plan. We had to use decomposition to help debug our code. So, in our next lesson, we used logical thinking to help create a different code. Thankfully, this one worked! Being a happy and healthy school, we put our pedometers to the test – some groups got up to 500 steps!!

Help at home: Why not have a go at creating a program on Makecode?

Here are the target pages for this week’s guided reading. These need to be read by Friday 28th March.

Extra Time: up to chapter 38/page 177.

Flood and Fang: up to chapter 15/page 183.

Rooftoppers: up to chapter 17/page 150.

The Girl of Ink and Stars: up to chapter 21/page 186.

Kensuke’s Kingdom: up to chapter 8/page 117.

Today, we decided to take our reading outside to enjoy the sun! This was a great opportunity for the children to read a book they were enjoying and catch up on their guided reading pages.

Help at home: Make sure your child is reading everyday and is up to date with the guided reading book target pages.

In Science, we are currently biologists! Biologists study living things. In this unit, we are looking at life cycles. Life cycles are the series of changes in the life of an organism.

Take a look at our key vocabulary:

In our lesson, our enquiry type was ‘research using secondary sources’. The children used the iPads to find out about the life cycles of mammals and amphibians. Year 5 stayed safe online by looking for a padlock; checking the URL and the source is reliable; and typing ‘for kids’ at the end of their searches.

Did you know butterflies and frogs go through metamorphosis? This means that their young form looks nothing like their adult form.

We then discussed the similarities and differences between these life cycles. Can you spot any?

Help at home: Research the life cycles of birds, fish and reptiles.

Year 5 have taken part in bikeability; they have all really enjoyed the sessions! The leaders of the session have praised the children for their brilliant behaviour, great listening skills and fantastic determination.

Help at home: Why not go out on a family bike ride this weekend and ask your children to explain how to stay safe whilst out?

This week, in writing we have been looking at lots of different grammar units: subject, verbs and objects; active and passive voice; dashes, semi-colon and colons; and relative clauses.

Every main clause must have a subject and verb and sometimes it has an object. The subject is the ‘do’er or be’er’; they are the person or thing that is doing the action. The verb is the doing or being word and the object is the person or thing that is having the action done to them.

An active sentence always follows the rule of ‘subject, verb, (object). Whereas, a passive sentence always goes ‘object, verb, subject’.

Dashes, semi-colon and colons always go after a main clause (a sentence that makes sense by itself).

A relative clause can be used to give additional information about a noun.
They are introduced by a relative pronoun like ‘that’, ‘which’, ‘who’, ‘whose’, ‘where’ and ‘when’.

Help at home: Have a go at these exam style questions.

Here are the target pages for this week’s guided reading. These need to be read by Friday 21st March.

Extra Time: up to chapter 28/page 133.

Flood and Fang: up to chapter 11/page 137.

Rooftoppers: up to chapter 12/page 106.

The Girl of Ink and Stars: up to chapter 16/page 144.

Kensuke’s Kingdom: up to chapter 6/page 85.