Have a look at what we’ve been learning…
Alma
In Class 5, we have been exploring horror writing. To do this, we watched the clip called Alma on Literacy Shed and then explored how we can use sentence structure, figurative language and punctuation to create suspense. Some of the class wanted to share their writing. Have a read below:
Killhope Visit
Class 5 had the fantastic opportunity to go to Killhope to see the art installations that they had helped create over the year. They had the opportunity to go down the mine, explore the mine shop, view the art pieces and spend some time on the washer floor looking for their own minerals. Another huge thank you to Killhope for hosting us and giving us the opportunity.
Bake Sale
While some of us are on a residential, we decided to do some baking. We spent all morning weighing ingredients, creating our cakes and then decorating them with rainbow sprinkles. We had a lot of fun doing it! We then had a cake sale to make some money for charity.
Oriental Museum
Class 4 and 5 were lucky enough to go to the Oriental Museum this week. Although Class 5 have not been learning about the Egyptians recently, we had the opportunity to visit the museum to revise what we had learnt last year or the year before. We were able to see a real mummy and learn more about the Afterlife. We had a fabulous time. Thank you once again to the Oriental Museum for having us and being as brilliant as always!
PE with Jess
Over this half term, we have had the lovely opportunity to have a coach in to continue our unit of orienteering. We did lots of activities including creating our own orienteering course and creating objects from our scavenger hunts.
Georgia O’Keeffe
In Art, we have been studying the artwork of Georgia O’Keeffe. This week we got started on recreating one of her pictures using pastels. We did some fabulous work! See some examples below. Next lesson we will try to recreate the image using watercolour and see which we’ll prefer.
Sao Paulo & Durham City
In Geography, we have been researching two cities and comparing them. We chose one from the continent of South America in Brazil and our local city, Durham. Across the unit, we used lots of sources of information to understand what the cities are like, including articles about school and education, climate graphs and photographs taken from across the cities.
Environment Speeches
In class, we have been researching what our new King’s interests were. We found out he was passionate about the environment. We listened to one of his speeches from 1970 to see how he delivered a persuasive speech to make us do something about climate change. We then compared this to other people who had delivered a speech on the environment including Greta Thunberg and Prince William. Following this, we used metaphors, imagery and some powerful sentences and vocabulary to deliver our own persuasive speeches. We recorded these on the green screen and selected our own appropriate background images. Click here to watch some examples of our speeches.
Measuring Angles
We have been getting to grips with being able to measure using a protractor. To help us compare our answers with each other, Miss Coote placed masking tape all over the tables. We then went around and measured the masking tape angles and compared our answers. Some of us were really close! We began to think about how we can estimate angles too by labeling whether it was an acute, obtuse or reflex angle so we knew which numbers were more plausible and help increase our accuracy in measuring angles!
Work Selfie!
Our Class 5s have the opportunity to upload work they are particularly proud of. See an example of someone’s work from our RE lesson this week. They had to find out what Bar Mitzvah meant and produce an invitation that would explain what it is.
MP Visit
We were lucky to have our local Member of Parliament visit our school today. Over the week, Class 5 and 6 had come up with some very thoughtful questions to put to Mr Richard Holden who then spent some time trying to answer as many questions as he could. It gave us a great opportunity to learn a little more about parliament and the work of our MPs. Thank you for visiting us, Mr Holden!
Willow Weaving
This week we welcomed in Ruth and Joanne from Sylvan Skills. They spent time with the class creating bird feeders and making a structure which will be added to a giant squirrel structure which will be linked to Killhope Museum. We are all excited to see the finished product!
PE with Jess
This term, Class 5 have been working on Orienteering skills with a coach. This week they had to find items scattered around the playground, unscramble some tricky riddles to find a letter and then make that creature using the equipment that they had scavenged! Can you guess what animal they had to make?
Easter Egg Competition
We had fun this afternoon creating our own Easter Eggs! They will be judged and the winners will be revealed soon.
The Greatest Monarch
In history, we have been learning about the Tudor age and finding out what three of the monarchs from that era achieved. To finish our unit, we chose the monarch that we thought was the greatest based on what they had done in their time in power. We then created posters to show the facts of that king. See below for a lovely example of some of the work that has been produced.
Orienteering
This half term, Class 5 have been lucky enough to do some orienteering with a coach. For the first week, they participated in some team building games and problem solving. In their second session, they had to find objects placed around the premises using a map and then use a key to decode a hidden word. In their latest session, Class 5 then had to make their own key and place their items on the map to see if another group could find them. They evaluated what they found difficult at the end so that they can improve upon this next time.
Francine Visit
To help us understand how Christians celebrate Lent, Francine has been coming in on a weekly basis to deliver lessons. This week we found out about how Jesus resisted temptation whilst in the desert. We then returned to our class and rewrote what happened whilst he was in the desert.
The Battle of Bosworth
In history this half term we are comparing three monarchs from the Tudor times. To help us understand how the era started, we took to the ‘battlefield’ to reenact the Battle of Bosworth which started the Tudor era. We then created a comic strip based on what happened in our history books and discussed whether we thought Henry VII was a strong monarch.
World Book Day
For World Book Day, we decorated a potato as our favourite book character. We spent the day doing different activities linked to the special day including an escape room inspired challenge and a World Book Day quiz!
Some of us even dressed up too!
How to Stop Global Warming
To finish off our Geography topic, we came up with ideas about what we can personally do, what the government could do and what the world could do to stop or slow down global warming. The children presented their ideas in colourful posters. See some examples of their work below:
JV – How to stop global warming
MSt – How to stop global warming
CP – How to stop global warming
AM – How to stop global warming
ZD – How to stop global warming
Sports Athletics
Class 5 had the opportunity to visit Bishop Barrington where they took part in a range of athletic activities from the javelin, long jump, vertical jump and then some track events, including relays. They all did really well and showed good sportsmanship.
Solubility Experiment
Class 5 and some members of Class 6 have been working hard each week to experiment on the properties of materials. This week, the class investigated whether sand, salt, sugar, bicarbonate soda and cocoa powder would dissolve using cold water. Firstly, they tested by adding 5ml of cold tap water to the substances and observing what happened. We found that the sugar started dissolving immediately. Afterwards, we added another 5ml of water before finally stirring the substances. We found out that, in these conditions, salt and sugar dissolved pretty easily. Sand did not dissolve at all and we thought that the cocoa powder may need warmer water to let it dissolve. We thought that perhaps this would make a great experiment in the future.
Our Class Assembly!
Class 5 have been working hard to create an informative assembly linked to Internet Safety Day (7th February 2023). They all did a fabulous job and the parents did fantastic at the end of assembly quiz too! Well done, Class 5 and thank you to all the parents and carers for watching their performance!
Sewing
This week, we were excited to have a visitor in school. We will be working with Richard Bliss, who is a textile artist, to create a quilt with all of our initials on it. We began stitching our initial today and we will be tie dying it ready to create a larger quilt!
Science – Materials
This half term, the rest of Year 5 are joining us in our science lessons. We started our Materials unit by revising the different properties of materials such as their hardness, whether they are permeable and their transparency. This will help us for future experiments we will be conducting.
Cinquain Poetry
This week, to get us settled back into school life, we have been working on cinquain poems. We discovered that a cinquain poem has five lines and a set syllable structure of 2, 4, 6, 8 and 2 syllables. We then picked a theme linked to our own interests and wrote and presented our poems. Click below to view our work:
Water Resistance
This week, we looked at water resistance. We created three shapes out of Playdoh – a cube, sphere and a cone. We then timed them to see which ones would reach the bottom of the cylinder the quickest. We predicted the cone would due to its streamlined shape.
Air Resistance
Today, in Science we were exploring the concept of air resistance. We had to design three parachutes, coming up with our own independent variable to change. We then timed them as they fell to find out whether the parachute we predicted beforehand based on our knowledge, would fall the slowest. We discovered that actually medium sized parachutes were the best parachute. We concluded that this size would create the greatest air resistance without being too heavy to cause gravity to have a greater hold of the parachute.
Poetry Week
This week, Class 5 have been looking into poetry by Valerie Bloom and Pie Corbett. We were fascinated how Bloom used language to make people read her poetry with a Jamaican accent which is where she is from and a lot of her poetry is inspired by. As part of our poetry week, we chose our favourite Bloom poem and performed it in front of the green screen. Click here to watch some of their videos.
Revision Cards
In class, to help us become more independent learners, we have been working on creating revision cards for spelling, punctuation and grammar. The children put in a lot of care and effort and wanted to show their work on the website. Some even came up with a mascot for their revision cards. They will be keeping them in their tray for later reference.
Visit to the Centre of Life
On Monday, Class 5 and 6 enjoyed a trip to the Centre of Life. They had a brilliant time exploring the different exhibitions with a focus on learning more about Space. They enjoyed a planetarium visit and a theatre show where they saw experiments involving different light. The classes were even brave enough to venture on the ice rink! It was a lovely day and both classes returned with plenty of facts to help them in their lessons. Thank you to the parents who supported us on the trip. Our class has been busy writing up their own recounts of the trip. Have a read of some of them below:
Nursery Rhyme Week
This week, Class 5 had a special project. We received a message from Little Bo Peep as we had lost her sheep! All week we have been writing news reports about the serious incident and the class were split into groups to undertake the role of news reader, interviewer, camera operator, editor and publisher! To watch their news stories that they have produced and filmed themselves, click here.
On Friday, we received a tip off that the sheep had been found around the grounds of our school. The children went investigating, labeling their coordinates so that Little Bo Peep could retrieve their sheep. They also received a set of clues from the police which they had to solve, as to who played a part in the disappearance!
Nursery Rhyme Costumes
It’s Nursery Rhyme week this week! Our classmates dressed up as a Nursery Rhyme character to celebrate it. A huge round of applause for our Incy Wincy Spider who came first place in the dress up competition with his original costume!
Work Selfie! Geography
This week, Class 5 have ended their Geography topic on the Americas by creating a presentation comparing one country in the Americas with our own country – the United Kingdom. The children spent time researching their countries and then created their presentations. They thought about how to present their facts creatively and they all produced some fantastic work!
Space
This week in Science, we have been finishing our Space unit which has included so many skills over the weeks and even a virtual visitor! In this lesson, the class made a moving solar system which explored how the moon orbited the Earth and how the Earth then orbited the sun! We used these to understand how the moon changes in shape every night too.
Handball tournament
Class 5 enjoyed participating in a whole school handball tournament. Throughout the day, they competed in their colour teams to win points for their House. We saw some brilliant team work!
Just So Stories
In English, Class 5 have been working hard to write bedtime stories in the way that Rudyard Kipling did. They used repetition and rhyming to make it their stories more enjoyable for a younger audience. They then created animations using PuppetPals and recorded their story over the top. Finally, to finish the unit, they revisited the Reception children to show their stories off.
Work Selfie
We have been working on traditional narratives over the last couple of weeks, working on our sentence structure and including relative clauses. We also have worked on the audience or reader of our work, including using rhyming and repetition to help engage them. We then read some of our work to our Reception children to see if it worked.
Here are some examples of work that the class wanted to share on the website:
Work Selfie!
Next week, we will be uploading some pieces of work that the class are particularly proud of. Each child will get an opportunity to select a piece of work which they have done that week which they would like to show off online.
Overlay Printing
This week, we used polystyrene to create an underwater design. We then painted the background and layered different pieces of paint on top to create a similar printing effect to that of Andy Warhol.
A Space Afternoon
This week, we had an afternoon of investigating the planets. We had a quiz round to find out who was the quickest team to fact find and we compared the planet’s diameter to those of different sized balls. We finally used toilet roll to work out how far the planets are from the sun. Each toilet roll sheet equated to 50 million kilometres! The week will finish with a talk by a space specialist based on rubbish and debris that can be found orbiting our planet.
Space
This week we got started on our Space topic in Science. We looked at the different vocabulary we would come across the unit and did a matching game with the words and definition.
School Council
Today, Class 5 voted for School Council. The candidates firstly prepared some wonderful speeches to present to the class and then the class held a democratic vote where they visited a ‘Polling Station’ and cast their anonymous votes. We are pleased to announce that two new School Council members were chosen and they will receive their badges soon!
