More great Creative homework
Last week’s homework has filled the classroom with Lego.
I can design a Lego mosaic/model.
Some of us chose to design a model for a First News competition commemorating the Queen becoming the longest reigning monarch.
Some of us chose to design a model linked to the Holidays topic.
Well done, Year 5. Keep it up.
What’s going on in class
Having thoroughly enjoyed our mini-topic ‘The Lost Thing’, we’ve now started a Big Topic called ‘Holidays’. The topic began by exploring two suitcases and predicting where we could be visiting (real and imaginary) in the next 8 weeks. We then look at the top ten holiday destinations from the UK in Summer 2015 and researched one of these countries in greater detail.
Topic – In the next couple of weeks, we’ll be planning a holiday abroad, looking at temperature, rainfall and all sorts of other important deciding factors. We’ll delve into the world of physics to understand how planes stay in they sky and boats don’t sink as well as starting to compare the UK to a (currently mystery) destination in the Americas.
Help at home by searching flights online, looking at how long it takes and discussing the children’s idea for how the plane works.
Maths – Alongside this, we’ll learn lots about other countries by understanding graphs, tables and charts in our maths lessons. We’ll need to answer basic retrieval questions as well as compare data and use graphs that might be less familiar to us (pie charts).
Help at home by exploring different ways of presenting data and see which you think are the clearest and what makes them easy to understand (labelled axes, titles etc).
English – We’ll look at different types of sentences (simple, compound and complex) and practise writing these accurately before moving on to writing discussions to put forward different sides of an argument.
Help at home by discussing guided reading books and how sentences vary their openers, some are very short and some very descriptive and there are different joining words (but, because, although) used to link ideas together.
We’re loving maths.
In addition to our Maths lessons each day, Y5 have a maths carousel on Mondays and Thursdays. We do a variety of maths-based activities that are fun, logical and allow us to practise our skills in a range of contexts.
Maths challenge table – This involves activities based on our current or previous learning. We can work independently and it often requires us to think differently or apply our learning in context.
Times tables – We practise our times tables independently and have come up with fun and creative ways of doing that on our own. (Below, we’re playing bingo.) There are sometimes maths puzzles to complete on the table we’re learning at the time too.
Maths puzzles – Can be anything but at the moment we are learning how to play Su-Doku, taking on the countdown challenge and completing logic puzzles in pairs.
Mathletics – We all love Mathletics and in the carousel we have the opportunity to use it in school, whether we want to go on Live Mathletics or complete activities.
Holidays
We’ve kicked off with our new Big Topic, ‘Holidays’ by delving into suitcases and guessing where we’ll be going.
Mr Owen and I each brought our suitcases packed for a particular holiday and, from the evidence we gathered, we guessed where each person was heading and thought about who we’d most like to go with and why.
Mr Owen’s suitcase
As Mr Owen had scarf, hat, gloves and four pairs of socks, we decided he was heading somewhere cold. He’d packed his walking boots, a waterproof coat and he didn’t pack his passport.
Not many people wanted to join him on his holiday!
Miss Rushbrooke’s suitcase
Miss Rushrooke’s also contained walking boots but these were accompanied by insect repellent and an insect hat. We thought she might be going walking in the jungle. She had sun cream and beach-wear, too, and had packed a snorkel, camera and… her passport. 
Lots of Y5 wanted to join Miss Rushbrooke on her holiday. I wonder why?
We’ll be exploring a UK break and a holiday abroad through this topic and these cases give us clues as to where we’ll be going.
To help at home, discuss what they children know (and don’t know) about different countries. Can they find them on a map or tell you what continent they’re in. Do they know whether it’s hot or cold and why this is given their location (poles and equator). We’ll also be discussing currencies in maths and the different time zones across the world.
Great first lot of homework
What a great start to homework this year!
To design/create a ‘Lost Thing’
Our bottle top collection
Shaun Tan, the main character and author of our topic book ‘The Lost Thing’, spends his time collecting bottle tops. He kindly shared with us a picture of his collection at the front of his book. He’s managed to collect a whole range of weird and wonderful designs so we decided to create a collection of our own to rival his.
We’ll reveal our whole collection very soon…
Newsletters
This term’s newsletters have been emailed and paper copies will be sent home later this week.
This year, we’ll publish the newsletters on the website, too. Here are the first half-term’s…
- Year 1 and Year 2 newsletter
- Year 3 and Year 4 newsletter
- Year 5 and Year 6 newsletter
- The whole school newsletter
Reception provide their own newsletters and lots of photos, top tips and news on their class news page.
Rugby world cup activities
As the Rugby World Cup approaches, Roundhegians are organising activities for both children and adults at their local facilities.
Fun in maths
Having reminded ourselves of place value this week, we used all of our refreshed knowledge to play some maths games and challenge ourselves along the way.
Beanbag drop
Somebody threw the beanbags into the basket and everybody had to write down the number it made.
Then, that person took charge and asked us questions about our number. How many thousands? What is 100 more/less? What is this number rounded to the nearest 10,000?
Target challenge
We rolled a die to decide how many digits we were working with. Then, we picked a target (the greatest number, a multiple of 5, the number closest to 6000). Each person then picked a playing card for us to write into our place value grid aiming for that target. Sometimes we all won and sometimes one person had thought more carefully.
Questions dice
For this, we roll the die to make a number and then we had to roll again to choose a question. Sometimes we had to add 100, sometimes we had to take 10. It really helped us to understand what each digit was worth in that number.
Welcome back
Hello all and welcome back.
It will be great to see everybody back in school having had a long summer to refresh ourselves. I’m excited to be in a new classroom and year group as, I hope, our new Year 5s are, too. We’ll be diving straight into a great mini-topic based on a picture book by Shaun Tan (more below) which has some amazing artwork. Each week, I’ll post on here an overview of what we’ll be focussing on in English, Maths and Topic. This means that people at home will be able to get an idea of what the children will be learning and what they might need support with.
English starts with us recapping our grammar, recognising nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, prepositions and conjunctions while we enjoy our class picture book. This will run alongside developing our skills in descriptive writing by using all of those different word classes effectively. To help at home, test each other on what type of word is on a road sign or in a recipe. Here’s a list of definitions and examples if you need a refresher too and there are some posters in the playground…
noun – can be an object (the table, a book, an orange), a place or person (Miss Rushbrooke, Leeds, Moortown Primary School).
adjective – gives information about a noun (large table, clever Miss Rushbrooke, wonderful Moortown Primary School).
verb – an action word (to play, to sneeze, to hink). These might have ed or ing added to the end, too.
adverb – gives information about the verb. You might say how (play nicely, sneeze extravagantly, think carefully), where (play on the grass, sneeze in assembly) or when (play after dinner, sneeze all through the night).
conjunction – joins two sentences together (We went to bed because we were tired. It’s raining so I’ll get an umbrella.).
preposition – indicates where or when (in, around, under, through, after, whilst).
Maths will be kicked off by ensuring we are able to read numbers up to 1,000,000 and we understand what each digit in that number is worth. This will involve ordering, comparing and rounding numbers before then applying this knowledge to real life contexts. To help at home, notice numbers around you and say them out loud. Decide which is bigger or smaller and test each other by asking what is 100 more or 10 less.
Topic will be focussed around Shaun Tan’s ‘The Lost Thing‘. We’ll look at art by Salvador Dali and take on the role of news reporters as we write a class report on the discovery of the ‘lost thing’.