😊Welcome to Year 5!😊

Year 5 Class teachers: 

5F - Mrs Fraser

5B - Mrs Ballinger 

LSA - Mrs Mailing

You can contact us on 01287 713284 or by emailing:

lesley.fraser@racemeadow.org

julie.ballinger@racemeadow.org

It is so lovely to see you all back and ready to learn. We have some wonderful mini missions planned for you this year and we really hope that you will enjoy them. 

Key information: 

PE Days are Thursday for 5F (swimming kit and PE kit both needed this day - swimming will continue until February 2022)

Thursday and Friday for 5B (PE kit on Thursday and swimming kit on Friday - swimming will continue until February 2022)

Homework will be given out on a Friday, marked in school with the children on the following Friday and new homework given. Homework should be handed in by Wednesday of each week please. 

Spellings will be tested on a Friday and new spellings will be stuck in to the front of diaries to learn for the following week. 

Please record reading at home a minimum of three times per week and sign your child's diary to acknowledge that this has taken place. Your child has a reading bingo card in the front of their diary. This is to encourage reading across a range of genres. When your child has read a book, comic or magazine from one of the bingo squares, please record this in the diary and it will be stamped when diaries are signed on a Friday. Once the children complete a line, they will receive a dip in the prize box from Mrs Collinson. When the whole card is completed they will receive a book of their choice from a selection. 

Sharing assembly will take place at 9:00am on a Friday morning in the Key Stage One hall, you will be notified by Marvellous Me if your child will be receiving a certificate in sharing assembly. If you no longer have Marvellous Me installed, please contact school for a joining code as this is the main way for us to share messages, good news and reminders with you. 

Your child should bring their water bottle, a healthy snack and their pencil case (if they have one) to school with them each day. The tuck shop is now open for children to purchase toast, crumpets, teacakes, milkshakes or juice during their breaktime each morning. 

Autumn 1 

🐸Tuesday 🐸

Our first mini mission for the Autumn half term is based on the book 'Tuesday by David Weisner. It is a picture book with amazing artwork. In this mini mission the children will use figurative language to write a narrative for the story. They will also use more formal language to create a crime report about the mysterious incident. In Science, the children will learn about friction, air resistance and water resistance linked to the story. They will carry out scientific investigations and write them using scientific language. Using geographical skills, maps and plans they will plan a route around Atherstone for the frogs, incorporating symbols and using grid references. 

To complete the mini mission, children will practise sketching, using perspective to create a watercolour of a scene from the story. 

Music, Art and Religious Education will also take place during the half term, but will be taught discretely. 

🐸

We had a lovely day creating a colourwash background for our art work, inspired by the images from the book. We used two different colours for our backgrounds to show the effect that colours have on mood. Using a variety of brushes, we used different strokes to paint reeds, bull rushes and the log which was in the centre of the pond. Afterwards, using sketching techniques, we sketched a frog on its lilypad. With water colour paints we painted our sketches and cut them out. To complete our artwork, we added the frog to the background. The final effects were fabulous! We hope that you like them!  

Autumn 2 

Horrible Histories 

In this mini-mission, the children carried out a thematic study of crimes and their punishments from the Roman era up to the Early Modern era. Throughout their learning they considered bias and opinion to create a balanced argument debating the issue of capital punishment (the death penalty).

In Design and Technology, the children used their knowledge of crimes and punishments to create an interactive book using pop-ups, levers, wheels and flaps to make the content interactive and interesting. The children worked in groups to produce two pages in each group for their era that used a variety of interactive devices. They also had to illustrate and explain the crimes and punishments that they made. 

Watch our slideshow to see our plans, the making process and our finished pages, which we then made into one class book. 

During this term we were lucky enough to have Little First Aiders come into school and teach basic first aid to Year 5.

They were fantastic and learned how to treat minor burns, cuts and grazes and used the resusitation dolls to perform CPR. 

Spring 1 

It's a wild, wild world!

This mini mission is all about the extremes in our world - earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, hot and cold places and tropical ones too. We investigated natural disasters and their causes, discussing their impact on the environment. During this mini mission, we explained the processes involved in some of these natural disasters and used atlases and digital imaging to find out about techtonic plates and where in the world they are found and their link with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. 

Try this link to find out where in the world there are earthquakes right now!

http://ds.iris.edu/seismon/index.phtml

To begin our mini mission, we recreated a volcanic eruption using bicarbonate of soda and vinegar. When these two materials are mixed together they cause a chemical reaction and gas, in the form of bubbles, is forced out. We used plastic bottles to recreate this process. 

Our Design and Technology part of this mini mission focussed on bridges. We learned how they can be made more stable by producing trusses and beams to strengthen the sides and deck. We designed our own scaled prototype suspension bridge according to set criteria and tested them with weights to see if they could withstand 500g. Our slide show demonstrates the process of practising making trusses and beams and then a full suspension bridge and the testing process. 

Marvellous Mayans

Sacrifice, ball games, rainforests, howler monkeys, gods, maize, avacados, tattoos, temples and of course - chocolate! 

These are all things associated with the ancient civilisation of the Maya people, who lived in mesoamerica (the modern day countries of northern Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, and central to southern Mexico). from around 1500 BC to 1500 AD - overlapping with the Romans and the Greeks!

During our mini mission, we used maps to locate mesoamerica, researched the religion that the Maya people followed, learned about the kinds of foods that they ate, how important the cocoa beans were to them and of course we learned all about the game of pok-a-tok!

To begin our mini mission, Simon from the Explorer Academy came in for the day for our Maya workshop. Having been to the rainforests in the Maya region, he was a real life explorer and had lots of information to share with us about the way of life of the Maya people. We learned about the interesting, and sometimes dangerous creatures of the rainforest, which included leeches, spider bites, deadly snakes, noisy howler monkeys, poisonous frogs but also beautiful toucans, birds and some incredibly cute monkeys!! 

After completing further research of our own about the Maya gods, sacrifices and foods, we created non-chronological reports. Working in pairs, we used a title, subheadings, pictures, captions and information to inform the reader about the beliefs and the life of the Maya people. 

Rain Player 

Inspired by the book 'Rain Player' by David Wisniewski, a story of a Maya boy who gets himself involved in a game of pok-a-tok that will be life-changing if he wins or if he loses, we completed the story with our own dilemma, resolution and conclusion. 

Mini mission art

After looking at examples of Milhazes' art to evaluate how she uses colour and shape in her designs, we used the patterns that we had seen to design a set of 4 collagrahs. From these we chose 2 to make into blocks and print onto our designs. 

Summer 1 

The inventions of Hugo Cabret