Borrow a book, borrow a bike
With 100 days to this year’s Tour De Yorkshire, a local bike library has been set up locally at Moor Allerton Library.
Leeds City Council has introduced a new Yorkshire Bike Bank which will allow residents to borrow bikes as well as books from the library.
Some of our latest Creative homeworks
More fab homework to kick off our Big Topic. Lots of creative ideas made our weekly homework review very enjoyable and we learnt lots from, and about, each other.
Diagrams, messages, facts and pictures were just some of the things we saw around the classroom.
We really enjoyed this poem from Riya…
Many of use decided to go ‘techno’ this week so we also enjoyed listening to, reading and playing the many PowerPoint presentations, blogs and coding that came from the Y5 email.
Update on ‘Life’ in Y5
This week has seen the launch of our new Big Topic, ‘Life’.
It’s an exciting week for us as it comes with a great (very informative) class assembly and a trip to Leeds Museum on Friday morning. We started our topic with an incredible journey from the beginning of Earth, 4.6 billion years ago, to this very day.
As a class, we created a giant timeline in our classroom and then wrote some fantastic, detailed recounts on it.
We’ll be using our ‘Life’ knowledge in English over the next few weeks to write informative texts on various animals: old, new and some just plain old fictitious. Help at home by looking through animal information books, magazines and websites for some vocabulary the children could learn and use in their own writing.
In Maths, we’re focussing on fractions, percentages and decimals. We need to know the relationship between these three areas of Maths and be able to fully understand what they mean and how to use them. At home, help by drawing images of fractions and then identify the equivalent percentage and decimal.
What’s the ‘solution’ to our problem?
Last week, Y5 explored which solvents (substances) would create a solution when added to a solvent (water).
If you can’t see any of the particles from the solvent (salt, sugar, rice, sultanas etc…), it has created a solution. If the particles of the solvent sink to the bottom, this is called a residue and a solution has not been created.
Can you get the solvent back once it has been mixed into the solute (water), even if it made a solution?
We sieved and filtered our variables to find out whether we got any back.
The rice and sultanas could be separated from the water and some things were trapped by the filter but lots of our tests still haven’t separated. We’re now leaving them to evaporate to see if anything is left in the cup once the water has all gone.
Tuck shop returns
Tuck shop will be back this Tuesday.
Eighty four portions per week have already been prepaid for this term but there is still chance to buy fruit on the day for 20p per portion.
Is your child in Year 3 and therefore goes swimming on a Tuesday afternoon? Some children buy a portion of fruit from the tuck shop and keep it for their healthy snack after swimming.
Science: Wow!
On Wednesday, Y5 enjoyed a morning jam-packed working scientifically. We saw some awesome reactions that made us gasp as well as taking on some observing, measuring and recording of our own mini experiments.
Here is some of our favourite ‘Wow’ science. Don’t worry… no Y5s were harmed during filming.
What happens when you heat custard powder?
What happens when you set hydrogen on fire?
Welcome back!
2016 has hit the ground running in Y5. We welcomed each other back on Monday with a great circle time…
We’re working really hard on new English targets and are tackling measuring capacity in Maths.
Our new mini topic ‘What’s the Matter?’ started with lots of questions and hands on discovery as we explored which materials would conduct electricity.
Let’s get sugar smart
Today has seen a new campaign launch by Change 4 Life, the government’s public health initiative, aimed at reducing the amount of sugar that children consume.
The free Sugar Smart App can tell you the amount of sugar in items by scanning the barcode, and then displaying the result as a number of cubes or in grams. The app can be used as a way of revealing the hidden sugar content in foods and to make us more aware of what children are consuming.
Public Health England, which runs the Change 4 Life campaign, hopes the Sugar Smart app and campaign will help combat tooth decay, obesity and type two diabetes and encourage families to choose healthier alternatives.
New SEAL theme…Good to be me
Our new SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme for this half-term, Good to be me, focuses on three main areas of learning:
•Self-awareness – feeling good about yourself, taking risks.
•Managing Feelings – understanding feelings, and why and how they lead us to behave the way we do – particularly the feelings of being excited, proud, surprised, hopeful, disappointed, worried and anxious and standing up for yourself –assertiveness skills, standing up for your views.
•Empathy
This theme explores feelings in the context of the child as an individual, developing self-awareness and helping the child to realise that it really is ‘Good to be me’. The theme is about understanding our feelings as well as considering our strengths and weaknesses as learners.
As part of our current mini topic, What’s the matter?, children will also ask ‘What’s the matter?’ from a social and emotional point of view, understanding feelings and thinking about how they can solve problems.
The key ideas and concepts behind the theme of Good to be me are:
Building emotional resilience
Children need to become resilient if they are to be healthy and effective life-long learners.
Coping with anxiety and worrying
Worry and anxiety are major features in many children’s lives. Many children have good reasons to be anxious. Exploring worries is important.
Calming down
Although getting stressed, anxious or angry are important and useful emotions, sometimes these feelings can be overwhelming.
Assertiveness
The theme encourages children to become assertive – that is, able to recognise and stand up for their rights while recognising and respecting the rights of others.
Understanding feelings and how they influence behaviour
The theme explores the relationship between ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ and the way each impacts on our behaviour. It looks at Flight or Fight rapid response to situations of threat and our responses to feeling threatened /under stress.
‘I respond to difficult situations in a positive way’ is the first SEAL statement for this theme.