5B - Hawks

Welcome to Hawks' Class Blog!

Mrs Gilbert (Class Teacher)           

Miss Burton (Teaching Assistant)

Miss Evans (1:1 Teaching Assistant)

Mrs Amess (1:1 Teaching Assistant)

Hello and welcome to Hawks! Here, you can be a fly on our classroom wall as you join us on our year 5 learning journey. Throughout the year, we will be adding regular blogs so please drop by to see what we're getting up to. 

Below, you will find some useful links for home learning:

Doodle Maths

https://www.doodlelearning.com/

Doodle Maths creates every child a unique and adaptive work programme that not only improves their ability, but also boosts their confidence, making them feel brilliant!  Doodle is fully aligned to the national curriculum, making it the perfect learning solution in the classroom and at home. And best of all, if you download the Doodle app, it can be used offline on tablets, phones and laptops, enabling children to learn anywhere, anytime.  

TTRockstars

https://ttrockstars.com/ 

In school, we use TTRockstars daily to support our knowledge and recall of times tables.  Every morning, at 8:45, every child completes a Studio or a Garage challenge which is timed - it's pretty addictive!

Spring term 2 and Summer term 1 – On the move

Sit up straight! Tuck in your shirt! And don’t look the teacher in the eye!

In this topic, we will be looking at the lives of Victorian people and children, and the industrial

revolution! We will be looking at the inventions and workhouses of the time (and the dangers

surrounding them!). We’ll also be comparing education in Victorian times to that of modern

education, in particular the curriculum, punishment and evil teachers!

As we progress through the terms, we will begin to look at the life of Queen Victoria I and the impact

she had on society. Our learning will lead us to write biographies about her life and reign. We’ll even

do research on Sir Walter Rayleigh – the man responsible for bringing us the spud!

English

In the first term of this topic, we will be exploring performance poetry in the style of a rap inspired by the popular 90s song, ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’. Following this, we will write newspaper reports based on life and industry in the Victorian times. Following this, we will write a recount based on the diary of Hetty Feather about her experiences in this bygone era.

The second term of learning in this topic we will be writing a descriptive character description based on a well-known character from our guided reading sessions. We use figurative language, relative clauses and high-level vocabulary to achieve this. Furthermore, we will be completing a poetry unit based on the poems of Benjamin Zephaniah.

Maths

Over the next two terms in Maths we will be looking decimals and percentages, perimeter and area.

To begin with, we will look at converting decimals into percentages and vice versa; ordering them in both ascending and descending order and identifying the place value of decimal numbers. We will then move onto our shape unit, measuring degrees and angles, looking at irregular polygons and 3D shapes and using a protractor accurately. We will find the perimeter and area of regular irregular polygons and related to real life problem solving.

Group 1 practising their freeze frame of the toy workshop for the start of our Pinocchio dance.

Group 2 practising their freeze frame of Pinocchio being eaten by the whale.

Each week, we really look forward to meeting up with the children from Year 1 to share a story. This week was even more special as we were all dressed up for World Book Day too!

Spring term 1 – To Infinity and Beyond

Journey through space – the final frontier! Let’s take a trip to the stars, planets and suns and discover the amazing wonders of the night sky. During this half term, we’ll read information texts to find out about the Solar System and the Sun, using mnemonics to help us remember the facts. We will be learning about the Space Race and the Moon Landing and the surrounding conspiracy theories, as well as looking at the hidden figures responsible for helping put a man on the moon. We will be extending our scientific knowledge of forces and using this to create a lunar vehicle that will need to be able to travel over different surfaces. We will be looking at a significant individual (Isaac Newton) and his contribution to the discovery of gravity and iPads to help us to research all about the planets. We will be then using this information to help us to write non-chronological reports about them.

Maths

In Terms 3, we will be spending some time learning about multiplication and division. We will

then apply our skills through a range of problem solving and reasoning opportunities. We will then

move on to learning about fractions; looking at ordering, adding, subtracting and finding fractions of amounts as well as identifying equivalent fractions and converting improper fractions to mixed numbers.

English

In English, we will begin with a poetry unit writing blackout poetry entitled ‘I found my secret buried…’We will then be using Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly to look at the impact Katherine

Johnson had on NASA’s journey to put man on the moon, moving on to writing a flashback narrative focusing on suspense and tension within a space setting. Within our guided reading, we will be using ‘Hetty Feather’ by Jacqueline Wilson as a stimulus for inference, deduction, prediction and retrieval.

In music this term we have been learning about music from Africa. We learnt the song Shosholoza and in this video we are learning to play the chord accompaniments.

Our RE topic this term is forgiveness. We enjoyed a Godly play session learning the story of Joseph and his coat. We completed a number of activities to delve deeper into the story and had great fun re-enacting the story with a beauitful rainbow coloured coat. 

We were learning about how the planets orbit the sun at such different rates. We enjoyed becoming planets ourselves and were amazed how long it took Neptune to complete one orbit compared to Mercury. 

Terms 1 and 2 – Greeks, Gods and Gorgons.

Join us on a journey of discovery, travelling back through time over 3000 years to the age of the Ancient Greeks. 

This term, we will be exploring what life was like in ancient Greece and looking at their many achievements. We will learn more about the empire grew as well as identifying the beliefs of people living at that time. We will discover the difference between the Athenians and the Spartans and observe how warfare played such a large role within ancience Greece.

Maths

In maths this term, we will be deepening our understanding of place value looking at numbers up to the value of 1 million. We will also be developing our addition, subtraction, multiplication and division skills with a particular focus on reasoning problems with more than one step.

English

Initially, this half term we will be completing a unit about reverse poetry. We will read different examples identifying the themes and how they change before attempting to write some of our own. Following this we will work towards writing our Greek style myths.

Today we have been following our design ideas to create an automata toy using cams. Mrs Gilbert was really proud of our teamwork and perseverance. We were really pleased with what we created. 

This week, we have been learning the importance of Remembrance Day. We created our own 3D poppies and worked together as a team to create a beautiful wreath for our special assembly on Friday. We were really pleased with how it turned out.

We had an amazing day for Greek Wow Day. We tasted Greek food, wrote our names using the Greek alphabet, took part in our own Olympics and learnt a traditional Greek dance to 'Zorba The Greek'.

We have been learning about how important religion was for the ancient Greeks in our history lesson. We found out about the different gods and goddesses and their areas of importance and used our findings to create a Top Trump card game to play against our friends. 

We had a super session using the VR headsets as part of our RE work. We looked at stunning examples of mosques from around the world as well as different cathedrals to identify similarities and differences. We were able to have 360 degree views of these impressive buildings and travel around the world at the click of button. Amazing!

In our English work we have been studing the Greek myth, Jason And The Golden Fleece. We looked at his perilous quest and identified the many challenges he had to face. We performed freeze frames to depict different parts of the story.