Have a look at what we’ve been learning…
Hedgehog Rap
As part of one of our end of year projects, two of our class wrote and performed their rap in the style of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air all in aid of raising awareness of how we can protect hedgehogs. Watch their amazing performance below:
KS2 Sports Day
We had a lovely time on Friday doing Sports Day activities. The whole class were supportive of each other and showed good sportsmanship. Well done, Year 5!
‘Finding’ Fractions of Numbers
Now that it is coming to the end of term, we are revising some of the trickier topics in Maths. Today we recapped finding fractions and percentages of numbers and using this information to increase and decrease numbers by those fractions too. To do this, we had to seek out questions spread around the classroom and library and their answers would give us a letter. The letters could then be arranged to create a sentence which spelled out a phrase!
I have a dream
Following Adam Bushnell’s visit a couple of weeks ago, Year 5 have been writing about equality. This week, we looked again at Martin Luther King Jr’s speech and thought about what issues the world faces in current times. The class then wrote their own speeches inspired by the famous ‘I have a dream’ speech. They then performed them in front of the green screen. Watch their videos here.
Kingswood Visit
Children from Year 5 and 6 had an action-packed weekend at Kingswood in Conisbrough. They completed activities including nightline, orienteering, archery, abseiling and raft building. Here is what some of our pupils thought about the weekend:
“I really enjoyed Kingswood. My favourite activity was the vertical play pen, you had to use team work and have trust in the people who were holding you. I also learned that you can achieve anything with teamwork.” Molly (Y6)
“I enjoyed my stay at Kingswood and I found out that team work is amazing and it takes you far in life. Some of the activities were easier than others but I found I enjoyed the difficult ones the most of all!” Emily A. (Y6)
Multi-Skills
Year 5 had a fabulous time at Parkside Academy on Friday participating in a Multi-Skills sessions. Parkside students led the groups in sessions of cricket, rounders, rugby and football. It was lovely to join in with pupils from St Stephen’s school too. A huge thank you to Parkside for organising the event! The children, as always, thoroughly enjoyed it!
Adam Bushnell
It’s always a pleasure to have Adam Bushnell, children’s author, in our school and today was no exception. He came in to talk about equality and discussed a range of topics such as disability, Martin Luther King Junior’s ‘I have a dream’ speech and Pride month. Adam gave us lots of ideas on how we can do some writing to promote and celebrate equality. We even got the chance to create troll traps in the wild life garden as a metaphor for keeping nasty comments at bay! We look forward to seeing some lovely pieces of writing based on what we learnt with him.
Giant Dragonfly!
Today, whilst outside, we came across the largest dragonfly we had ever seen!
Outdoor Adventures
This week, Year 5 finished their outdoor adventures with their own activity. Each group was given a designated place outside for them to create an activity for the rest of the teams to do, based on the activities that Miss Coote had set them previously. They had to make their own resources or ask for the equipment they needed. They did a fantastic job and we had a lovely afternoon trying them all out!
Parkside Takeover Day
In the last week of half term, we were lucky to take part in another Parkside Takeover Day! It was a fantastic day where we made ‘trains’ in Maths, designed eco-friendly houses in Geography, made our own jigsaws based on a Memphis geometric pattern, followed a dance routine, listened to some music, before becoming robots and following and creating algorithms in Computing! It was a fantastic day and we would like to thank the teachers of Parkside Academy for inviting us to join in!
Making Cam Mechanisms
This term, Year 5 have worked hard to create their own toy mechanism with a working cam. Year 5 investigated cam mechanisms to see how they work and with different shapes. They then created a strong structure using triangles to support the joins using a saw and a glue gun. We can’t wait to see the finished product!
Outdoor Adventures
This term, Year 5 are doing Outdoor Adventures for their PE unit. For the first two weeks, they were split into four groups and had to use team work and perseverance to find solutions to a range of problems which used visualisation skills, memory skills and following instructions using compass directions. The following weeks, they will then devise their own tasks for others to complete.
Violin
Two members of our class have been learning the violin this year. We were lucky to hear what they are currently working on in a mini performance for our class. They did extraordinary well to play so confidently in front of an audience. Well done!
Textiles
In Art this term, Year 5 have been working towards making a phone case. They could include their own fastenings and designs. They did a stunning job! See the pictures below for some examples of their work.
Easter Egg Competition
The Year 5s enjoyed our annual Easter Egg Competition. They worked independently to create their own marvellous entries. The eggs were judged and the results will appear on the newsletter.
The Highwayman
As part of English, Year 5 have been learning about The Highwayman. One of the things they have to do is recite a poem by heart. As it is such a long poem, the class split it into different stanzas and then organised their groups to read certain lines. They then recorded it over the top of a PowerPoint.
Red Nose Day
We loved dressing up as our superheroes this year for Comic Relief! Some of us came as our human heroes such as President Zelensky and Greta Thunberg. In the afternoon, we enjoyed playing the games ran by the School Council too!
Alma
This half term, we have been concentrating on writing suspense stories and used Alma to help inspire us. After two weeks of building up our writing using figurative language, onomatopoeia and short, snappy sentences, we wrote a short story based on the video clip. We then recorded audio over the top of screenshots from the video. Have a listen to some of our stories here.
Paper Airplane Investigation
This half term, Year 5 are working scientifically. They will be creating their own experiments where they need to think about their experimental variables that they can change to see if it would have an impact. Last week, they planned an investigation into the flight of a paper airplane. They thought of different factors that could affect the flight of a paper airplane and then set up their own experiment to investigate it. They had fun creating the airplanes and then measuring how far they could fly! We discussed the impact of aerodynamics, gravity and air resistance on the plane which might affect how far they could travel.
The Battle of Bosworth
To investigate who Henry VII was as part of our ‘Who was the greatest monarch in Tudor times?’ enquiry question, we went out and became Henry VII to reenact the Battle of Bosworth. We found out how Henry managed to beat Richard III, even when the odds were stacked against him! We then found out what he did during his reign and debated whether we thought he was a good monarch.
World Book Day
It has been lovely to celebrate World Book Day this year. A huge thank you to all those costumes that have been made and the effort that the parents and children have gone to to create their outfits!
Sports Hall Athletics Competition
Year 5 and 6 have taken part in the Primary Sports Hall Athletics competition. The pupils completed a mixture of track and field events, including relays, chest push, speed bounce and standing long jump.
Their results will be compared to the 10 other Durham Primary Schools taking part.
Parkside Takeover Day
To help our Year 5’s get some experience of secondary school, Parkside arranged a day of lessons to show the kind of things they would be doing if they went to secondary school. Ava from Year 5 wrote up what the class had done and interviewed some class mates to find out what they thought of the secondary school experience!
” This week, Year 5 children participated in a Parkside Takeover day with multiple other schools. As well as this, they took part in classes such as English, German, Geography, RE and History.
For English, Jon-Joseph stated, ‘I thought the teacher on Teams made the lessons quite fun because we got to invent our own sweets. And I liked the fact it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,”.
Robyn said, “German was interesting! I actually have never learned German or any language than English from Europe. We learned that a lot of words in German are similar to English and we learned ‘gut’ means ‘good’ and ‘ich’ means ‘I’”
Ginny said on the Geography lesson, “I found it really fun to find out about global warming and how we can stop it. We made a poster about causes, effects and responses. We got to write sentences about how it affects the world.’
For the RE lesson, Phoebe said, ‘I found it very fun because we learnt how much a human is worth from their personalities. We also labelled them on what they’ve done and given to the community and what they thought of other people. For instance, we had to choose between the Queen and Boris Johnson. I chose the Queen because she’s been here for longer and helped us more and she’s more valuable.’
Finally for the History lesson, Lilly said, ‘I was quite interested in pirates. I was quite terrified of the idea of Black Beard. We had to write a diary entry as a sailor on his ship. I liked doing the diary entry. I learnt that a pirate’s goal was to get the gold and share it with Queen Anne but the pirated weren’t so nice. They kept it to themselves!
Internet Safety Day 2022
On Tuesday 8th February, it was Internet Safety Day. We discussed our bad experiences on online gaming with other gamers and how we could turn these into positive experiences. We discussed how we can use the block or report button on those people who we don’t find are being positive while gaming. We then came up with our own mascots for gaming and five pieces of advice that we would recommend people followed while using online games.
Solubility
This week in Science, Year 5 investigated the solubility of different materials. They were given hot chocolate, bicarbonate soda, salt and sugar to investigate. They were quite surprised that the hot chocolate didn’t dissolve as effectively as we would have thought and then suggested that for future experiments, we could investigate raising the temperature and seeing what effect this had.
Advertisements
Over the last two weeks we have been working on explanations in class. We have designed our own invention and explained how it works. To finish our unit, we then used the computers and iPads to put together our own adverts. We combined the use of PowerPoint, Pivot Stick Animation and Green Screen to create our own wonderful adverts. Watch our videos here. Please note: Due to some technical errors, more videos to be uploaded on Monday!
Electric Insulators v Conductors
This week, Year 5 experimented on materials to see if they work as insulators (do not let electricity pass through the material) or conductors (do let electricity pass through the material). We found out that metals seemed to let electricity pass whereas woods and plastics did not.
Investigating Materials
In Science, we investigated the properties of materials including if they were transparent, permeable or magnetic. We had to use a range of equipment to investigate the properties.
Comparing UK with the Americas
We finished our Geography unit by selecting a country from North or South America and comparing it the United Kingdom. We presented our ideas in our books. Have a look at some of our work below!
Year 5 & 6 Christmas Party
We had a lovely time celebrating Christmas with our annual party. We played lots of games including musical statues, bumps and chairs and even pass the parcel which involved a lot of dares! Merry Christmas, Year 5.
Man on the Moon
We have been working on the John Lewis advert ‘Man on the Moon’ in English. We got into partners to think about the video from the perspective of Lily and the Man on the Moon before writing up a dual narrative. We wrote some impressive pieces. Have a read of some below:
MS and CS
PD and RM
ES and RKM
JW and AS
How does shape affect water resistance?
Today, we experimented with water resistance. We made three shapes: a cube, cone and a sphere, and timed them for how long it took them to drop to the bottom of the cylinder. We predicted the cone would drop the quickest as it was a streamlined and therefore less water resistance would happen. However, our results told us the sphere was the quickest! We wondered whether our investigation was truly a fair test and how we could improve upon it in the future.
Valerie Bloom Poem Recital
Year 5 have really enjoyed learning about poems by Valerie Bloom. We decided to try reading out her work as it is designed to be spoken. We spent some time practising and then we performed the poems in front of the green screen. We learnt how to put our own background on and then edit it ourselves. Have a watch of our performances here.
Weight v Mass
In Science, Year 5 found out that scientists understand weight and mass differently to how we use it in every day life. We learnt that our mass does not change no matter what planet we are on, whereas our weight does. We found out that to measure weight we need to use a Newton metre, whereas we need to use scales to measure our mass. We found out that on Earth there is a close relationship between the number of newtons something weighs and the weight of the mass. Did you know that that we would be lighter if we weighed ourselves on the moon as there is less gravity whereas we would be heavier on Jupiter as it is larger and has a greater gravitational pull?
Valerie Bloom
Today, Year 5 looked at the work of Jamaican poet, Valerie Bloom. They had to read through the poems and look for features that they spotted. They also had to work out what the words said as Valerie Bloom likes to write in the Jamaican accent. Tomorrow, the children will be performing some of the poems that they have looked at today in front of the green screen.
Pie Corbett
In English, the children looked into the work of Pie Corbett, an English poet. They presented what they noticed about the poem on a sheet of sugar paper to show what they had learnt. Next week, the children will do the same with a Jamaican poem to see how the style is different.
Kensuke’s Kingdom
We have been working on understanding character and showing how a character feels rather than telling. To do this, we did some drama this week where we became the characters to think about what they would say and how they would react in the same situation as Michael’s family from the book Kensuke’s Kingdom.
Goodbye, Mrs Marshall
Sadly, we said goodbye to Mrs Marshall, our teaching assistant in Year 5. She has helped many of our children over the years and we wish her good luck in her new job!
Biscuit Baking
This last half term, Year 5 have been busy designing and researching biscuits. They had to design a biscuit which would be appropriate to sell at a KS2 Halloween Disco. This week, they completed the unit by baking their biscuits. They became chefs and experimented by adding in their own ingredients to create flavour. Finally, they decorated their biscuits in a Halloween theme before tasting them for their evaluation.
Halloween
Year 5 looked amazing in all of their outfits today to celebrate Halloween. They had a full day of Halloween activities, including being ‘locked in’ our computer room and having to try to escape from it by finding and answering the clues! We hope Year 5 have a relaxing holiday and enjoy the Halloween festivities over the half term.
Year 5 & 6 Autumn Walk
Year 5 and 6 took part in their wet Autumn Walk on Wednesday. The two classes walked a loop passing Mayfield farm and Fawn Lees. Before visiting the stepping stones and Holyrood Lane for some conker picking.
Drama
This week, we have been looking at the features of realistic speech. Like Rudyard Kipling, we created tension between two animals and created our own conversations. Some of us were then brave enough to deliver these conversations in front of the class. Well done, Year 5.
Weardale Adventure Centre
Year 5 loved their trip to the Weardale Adventure Centre. They were so brave in taking to the tree tops to do some high rope activities and a team building challenge with crates. They also went on a river adventure, where they swam in the river, floated down some of the river rapids and completing a trust fall! We are so proud of some of them conquering their fear of heights too and giving all activities a go! Well done, Year 5!
What is our favourite biscuit?
We started our Design and Technology unit this week by researching what Year 5’s favourite biscuit is. We did a survey of the class and then created a graph to conclude our findings. We will use this information to create our own biscuits in a few weeks time!
Space Definitions
We kick started our new science topic by watching a real live streaming of an astronaut working on the International Space Station. We then worked in groups to match definitions to our new science vocabulary.
Word Class Sorting
Today, Year 5 did some revision into the different word banks such as nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, determiners etc. They matched the word to the correct word class in groups and then went on to do a colouring game to sort some more words independently.
Team Building
To get the term started, Year 5 got involved in a range of team building activities. This included the children creating a spider web of wool before racing to untangle themselves. They also created an obstacle course before navigating it with a partner while blind folded!
