What’s happening in class?
Here’s an overview of what Year 5 will be learning in class in the two weeks running up to half-term.
Topic – Alongside learning about Brazil and seeing how it is similar/different to our country, we’ll be getting creative by looking at Brazilian art and picking up our saws and drills for some woodwork.
Help at home by looking at Brazil on Google maps, finding mountains, rivers, neighbouring countries and then do the same for the UK.
Maths – Fractions will be our focus all the way up to half-term. The children need to understand equivalent fractions, order fractions by finding a common denominator and they need to be able to add and multiply fractions together.
Help at home by joining in with Practice Makes Perfect homework. Ask your child to explain how to solve fraction problems to you as though you’ve never heard of the word fraction before.
English – Having focussed on writing promotions last week, we’ll continue this and write our own promotional text for a boat trip up the River Amazon. This will be followed by writing recounts.
Help at home by looking at the language used in adverts and read it to each other in your best ‘M&S voice’. Have a meal where only ‘writing talk’ is allowed. Everything you say must be in full sentences as though you were writing it down.
What’s on the menu in Brazil?
As part of the whole school Holidays topic, Year 5 and 6 have been ‘visiting’ Brazil. Following some research about popular foods in this South American country , we’ve recreated our own Brazilian dish. This was taken from a recipe book donated by the Brazilian restaurant Cabana. There is even a branch in Leeds if you’d like to try some more traditional Brazilian dishes. Our dish was a vegetarian version of moqueca (fish stew).
Take a look at our food preparation and tasting. Ask your child what skills they were using. Maybe you’ll get chance to try this at home as a few children were motivated to cook this for their family at home.
- ‘I love it and my favourite part is the courgette.’
- ‘I really like it, especially the coconut milk.’
- ‘I really like the sauce. This is new to me.’
- ‘It’s amazing – the best stew I’ve ever tasted.’
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.
