Year 5

WELCOME TO

 YEAR 5!

Spring 1 2020

For the Spring Term this year our learning has a Geography focus. Our key question is:

'Should we all be treated the same?'

Alongside this we will be exploring the following key concepts:

Equality, Choice, Rights, Fairness, Responsibility and Sustainability.

For our topic we will be working towards  the FairAware award throughout this term. Much of our work will involve learning about fair trade and chocolate. Then will be looking at economic activity including trade links in depth. We will use maps and atlases to help us learn and locate various European capitals and South and North American countries. After this we will compare life in the UK to other North/ South American countries. To help with this, we will be writing letters to children in another country! This will lead on to learning about biomes, rainforests and deforestation. This will include using graphs to record features such as temperature or rainfall across the world. 

In English, our first text that we will be exploring is 'The Un'Forgotten Coat' by Frank Cottrell Boyce.

We will use this book as a reading and writing stimulus and look at a variety of genres including diary entries, non-chronological reports and explanations. If any children have their own copy of the book it would really help if they are able to bring it into school with them. 

As before, we are continuing with Read Theory wherever possible in school and each child has their own log in which you can find in the front of their school reading diaries. This website can be accessed at home too and we would encourage all children to do this to boost ad consolidate their inference skills which we always focus on in class. 

 In Maths we begin by looking at Multiplication.This will include multiplying up to 4 digits by 1 or 2 digits using manipulatives to aid understanding and moving on to formal written methods. This will then lead on to division where we will begin to interpret reminders as fractions. Fractions will then be a focus where we will compare and order fractions, name equivalent fractions, recognise mixed numbers and improper fractions and multiply fractions. After this we move on to decimals focusing on numbers with up to 3 decimal places . We then begin work on percentages  and look at writing percentages as fractions and also as decimals. As always, we will problem solve with all of our maths topics.   

The Science unit that we study this half term is Forces. We will look at a variety of forces including gravity and air resistance.

In RE we are looking at 'Inspirational People' and how they have been inspirational in the world today.

All children will continue to study French and Music with Mrs Parnell. In music we are continuing to learn and use formal musical notation. In French we will begin to look at vocabulary that we use in the classroom for everyday objects, learning to ask for common things in response to a questions and recognise and respond to simper classroom commands.

In PSHE our focus will be 'Aiming High' where we will also consider our own personal attributes and just how far we have come since starting our lives at school. This also touches on how we learn, our aspirations and  begins to challenge stereotypical views when discussing some jobs. This links to our topic focus 'Should We All Be Treated The Same.'

In computing lessons the children will be studying algorithms and coding.

As always, is you have any expertise in any of our learning areas and would like to share this with us please let us know. If you have any questions about anything at all please contact us via class dojo where will do our best to answer them or we can then arrange a meeting with you to discuss these. 

Thank you for your on-going support. We look forward to a great 2020 with your children. 

Mrs Parnell and Mr Khan (The Year 5 Team)