Author: Mr Catherall

For the last four weeks, during our PE lessons, we’ve been learning all about rugby. Visitors from Leeds Beckett University and Roundhegians RUFC have taken over our PE lessons to teach us the skills needed to be rugby players. It was great fun and I know the children had a great time.

If your child is considering playing rugby outside of school, which I strongly encourage, there are a number of clubs in the local area. The closest to school is Roundhegians RUFC. Roundhegians are an established club that are well known in Yorkshire rugby for their thriving junior section. Training is on Sunday mornings and children of all abilities are welcome.

Last week, we continued our Explorers topic by combining our topic and writing lessons.

In writing, we looked at some examples of reports and picked out the key features. Then, we discussed writing our own report about the Arctic (we’ll write this next week). We made a brief plan, splitting our report into four sections, and decided what we’d need to find out.

In our topic lessons, we began our research. First, we made notes about where the Arctic is and what it is (To be able to describe the physical features of an area). It was useful to practise our note taking and summary skills as we learnt all about the size, climate and physical make-up of the Arctic region.

In a different lesson, we read about two explorers who both claim to be the first person to explore the Arctic on foot (Who was the first person to explore the Arctic on foot?). We used our reading skills to find key information in each text, answered a range of questions and pretended to be roving reporters interviewing each person. We then had a debate about who we believed.

This week, we’ll continue our research by asking ‘What lives in the Arctic?’ and ‘What does the future hold for the Arctic region?’.

Yesterday, in our reading session we used our debating to skills to answer the question ‘Is there too much money in football?‘. The debate came about because of an article we read last week in First News.

The children were given some information and had to collate this into a table in their books. We had to think about our own arguments whilst considering an alternative viewpoint so that we could put forward a better argument.

It was great to hear what the children thought, especially where pay in other professions was concerned. Most agreed that whilst footballers have a relatively short career, they shouldn’t be paid as much as people in other, more important professions: doctors, nurses, police officers, fire fighters, paramedics and even teachers!

The skill of debating is a useful life-skill and one that we’ll focus on throughout the year. Help at home by encouraging your child to form opinions about a range of things: things they’ve seen on the news, something they have read, something they like or dislike, political issues, social issues. Be sure to encourage your child to consider an alternative viewpoint as well.

In topic lessons this week, we’ve been exploring the less explored. We learnt about the first British woman to climb Everest and then delved right to the deepest part of the ocean: the mariana trench.

Then, we set sail to the Arctic. After discussing what we knew (and didn’t know) about it, we imagined that we were at a research camp, ready to set out on a day-long expedition. Working in the Arctic requires lots of calories so we worked in groups to plan what food we would take with us. We had to think about eating enough calories (3305kJ) to have enough energy for the journey; taking enough for all four members of the team to eat; and ensuring we stayed within our expedition budget of £60.

The children found the task difficult but worked well and resiliently together.

This week, we’ve been learning/revising loads about grammar and punctuation. To ensure the children were actively learning, we spent the week making a PaG board game. Each day, we focused on a specific area of grammar (word classes, punctuation, sentence types) and at the end of each lesson we prepared test style questions for each area.

Today, we enjoyed playing our games. Obviously, we weren’t just playing; without realising we were learning. It was great to see children helping each other learn whilst having fun.

Last week, children were given a list of words to learn. I asked children to evidence their learning in their spelling books. Three children in particular really stood out.

Lori and Nicky showed that they had definitely been practising their spellings…

And so did Pia…

It’s important to remember that different children learn in different ways. What you see here may not work for your child. However, what I really like about these examples is that the children have actively engaged with the process of learning their spellings. They haven’t just learnt them by rote for a test. It’s likely that these children will have learnt these spellings for life. These children are also demonstrating that they have learnt how they learn best – this is a huge predictor of future of success. Well done to everyone in Year 5, especially Pia, Nicky and Lori.

To continue our weekly science learning, we planned an investigation today. We started off by looking at a range of balls and wondered what we could investigate.

In groups, we decided on one investigation that we could carry out in school. Then, we had one minute to convince the rest of the class that everyone should carry out our investigation. Here’s the results of our vote:

Then, we planned the investigation that we will carry out next week.