Year Five

ENGLISH

We encourage children to build upon their existing knowledge to secure a good grasp of the English language. We aim to use a variety of stimulus to inspire writing across a range of genres and, by linking our writing to our topics and carefully selected texts, we try to make writing more meaningful. We provide children with the opportunity to discuss and talk through their ideas before putting pen to paper and encourage dialogue by using Talk Partners. Punctuation and grammar learnt in year 4 is secured and embedded before we also learn how to use a range of adverbials and embedded clauses, punctuating them with commas, brackets and dashes. Speech is revised as well as classification of word types.

Throughout the first term, we learnt about Harry Houdini, basing our pieces on the text 'The Houdini Box' by Brian Selznick. We then wrote a biography of Houdini and some formal and informal letters. Next, we read 'The Man Who Walked Between The Towers' by Mordicai Gerstein and wrote a biography of Philippe Petit. We even had a go at doing a tight rope walk ourselves in order to imagine what it was like!

The Houdini Box

The Houdini Box by Brian Selznick.

Holes by Louis Sachar

During the second half of the Autumn Term we based our writing on the novel 'Holes' by Louis Sachar. We learnt how to write letters in an informal style and used some persuasive techniques. Our non-fiction writing was a non-chronological report on the deadly 'yellow spotted lizard'!

Year 5 spellings for Autumn Term 1

PSHE

Personal Social and Health Education covers a wide range of topics in year 5. The year covers the following units: beginning and belonging; managing safety and risk; family and friends; personal safety; basic first aid; anti-bullying; diversity and communities; relationships and sex education; mental well-being; and healthy lifestyles. Aspects of staying safe online are discussed and learnt throughout the topics. Here are some examples of our learning to date...

MUSIC

We follow the Leicestershire Schools Music Scheme of work and have previously learnt about pulse, rhythm and pitch. This term, we are learning about music technology and structure. Learning about structure, we used Pharrell's 'Happy' to determine the various sections of a song e.g. introduction, verse, chorus, bridge etc. We then began to compose our own songs using Songmaker on Google Chrome Lab. We had great fun doing this and have created some wonderful pieces. Use the links below to have a listen!

https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/song/5437110162292736

https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/song/5600577724874752

https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/song/5167999530303488

https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/song/5739537834967040

Design and Techhnology

In D&T, we learned about bridges. We looked at different structures, chose the most stable designs which for us was a truss bridge. We first, made some from spaghetti and then used wood to make and evaluate our bridges.

History

This year, we studied about the Kingdom on Benin. We learnt about the location of the ancient empire, examined a range of primary sources and used clues to visualise what the Benin city might have been like. The pupils created a non-chronological report about the Kingdom and presented their findings to the class.