This week, we began our new English unit based on Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem, The Jabberwocky. The children have enjoyed performing it and trying to make sense of the nonsense words, and even had a go at writing their own nonsense poem on Wednesday!
We also began our new Art unit, Mixed Media Land And City Scapes, and this week used black fineliners to draw what we saw outside.
Enjoy your extra-long weekend, and I’ll see you on Wednesday to begin our learning on the Coronation!
What a wonderful final week of term it has been in Year 5! The week got off to a cracking start with a beautiful (albeit extremely muddy!) walk through the fields, over the M25, to Bentley Heath and back. Everyone was particularly excited when we went into a horse field! On Tuesday night, Year 5 played an extremely important part in the KS2 Way of the Cross service at the church by narrating the stations for the Y6s to act out. They read so clearly, and supported the singing beautifully too.
In PE, we completed our Dancing Through the Decades unit with 70s disco moves on Wednesday and and attempt at the zombie dance from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video to round off the 80s! If you want to continue to try and learn it over the holidays, then here’s the tutorial:
We also created beautiful art to depict the crucifixion:
Your spellings for the holidays (to be tested on the first Friday back) are more homophones or near homophones:
cereal
serial
complement
compliment
principal
principle
stationary
stationery
wary
weary
Please log on to Spelling Shed to practise these.
Well done on another brilliant term! Have a wonderful break and a very happy Easter 🐰
On Wednesday, we were lucky enough to have a science lesson with Mr Friedlander from Dame Alice Owen School. He showed us how to extract DNA from kiwi fruits, which was fascinating!
We also took part in a fun music assembly led by the head of Potters Bar Music Centre, which focussed on rhythm and keeping in time.
In PE this week, we continued our Dances through the Decades unit with 50s and 60s dance moves. There was some brilliant dances and routines, with some fantastic twisting going on!
Here’s the tutorial we used to help us learn the moves. Have another practice at home!
This week’s home learning:
Maths
Mathletics assignments:
· Compare and order fractions less than 1
SPaG
Please complete the assignment set on spag.com:
· Grammar – Y4 (A)
Reading
5 tests on Readtheory OR a daily updating of your reading record.
Spelling
Log on to Spelling Shed using your EdShed login, and play a variety of games to practise this week’s spelling rule: Words that are homophones
guessed
guest
heard
herd
morning
mourning
past
passed
bridal
bridle
AS WE WILL BE DOING OUR LENTEN WALK ON MONDAY, PLEASE BRING IN SHOES SUITABLE FOR A POTENTIALLY MUDDY ROUTE.
This year’s British Science Week theme was Connections, so we spent the week exploring lots of different ways that things are connected in science. We spent much of Monday designing and engineering ‘vehicles’ using forces to send a message. Some pairs increased the air resistance of their vehicle; some engineered ziplines and ramps to take advantage of gravity; some created vehicles with wheels with as little friction as possible. There was so much invention and creativity involved, and we had a lot of fun testing them out!
This afternoon, the children had their final Science Week challenge: Set up a sequence of linked events so that initial movement leads to another then another. They displayed great teamwork and innovation!
We also welcomed parents into the school to hear about how they use science in their professions. Thank you to Naomi and Julia’s mum for speaking to us about mental health, to Christoph’s parents for their session about their jobs as vets, and to Mrs Wilson for showing us a range of reptiles and even a couple of dead tarantulas!
Please continue to practise last week’s spellings, and to revise the song words for The Way of the Cross (link to blog post with lyrics and youtube links can be found here).
Have a lovely weekend and a particularly happy Mothers’ Day! 💐
In anticipation of Science Week next week, we enjoyed a Science workshop yesterday, which involved lots of hands-on demonstrations of science at work. It’s got us all excited for lots more Science learning next week!
Home learning for this week is:
Maths
Mathletics assignments:
· Improper fractions to mixed numbers
· Mixed numbers to improper fractions
SPaG
Please complete the assignment set on spag.com:
· Terminology – Y3 (A)
Reading
5 tests on Readtheory OR a daily updating of your reading record.
Spelling
Log on to Spelling Shed using your EdShed login, and play a variety of games to practise this week’s spelling rule: Words that are homophones
Well done on all your World Book Day costumes yesterday! We had a wonderful day celebrating reading and our favourite books. In the morning, after kicking off the day with a whole-school assembly, we played Pass the Book, which hopefully enabled us to find a new book to read. After break, we took part in the BBC Live Lesson, which got us thinking about how we could shake up our favourite stories by redesigning the main characters and plot. In the afternoon, we continued a story called The Greatest Library in which the books come to life, and we ended the day illustrating in the style of Quentin Blake. Have a look at the photos!
Maths
Mathletics assignments:
· Shading Equivalent Fractions
· Equivalent Fractions Wall
SPaG
Please complete the assignment set on spag.com:
· Grammar – Y3 (A)
Reading
5 tests on Readtheory OR a daily updating of your reading record.
Spelling
Log on to Spelling Shed using your EdShed login, and play a variety of games to practise this week’s spelling rule: Words that are homophones or near homophones
Welcome back to a new half term and to the season of Lent. We marked the new liturgical season with Ash Wednesday Mass at the church, and we made Lenten promises that will help us to walk with Jesus on our pilgrimage to the cross.
We have had a busy week in the classroom; our new English unit based on the poem The Listeners by Walter de la Mare has allowed us to get the musical instruments out to create sounds effects when performing the poem, and in Maths we started our fractions learning. In PE, we began our Dance through the Decades unit with the Charleston, and in D&T we learnt how cam mechanisms work. Science has been a particular focus for this week; we started our unit about properties of materials, and conducted an investigation today to find out what materials are better thermal conductors or insulators.
This week’s home learning:
Maths
Mathletics assignments:
· Equivalent fractions
SPaG
Please complete the assignment set on spag.com:
· Direct speech punctuation (C)
Reading
5 tests on Readtheory OR a daily updating of your reading record.
Spelling
Log on to Spelling Shed using your EdShed login, and play a variety of games to practise this week’s spelling rule: Words containing ‘ough’
This week, the main excitement was on Tuesday when the choir members took part in the Young Voices concert at Wembley Arena. They were still buzzing from it for most of Wednesday, until the tiredness from the late night hit them! Well done choir!
Meanwhile, those back at school joined forces with the Y3s and Y4s to plan and construct bridges. Their structures were very impressive and they worked brilliantly in their teams.
Home learning:
Maths
Mathletics assignments:
· Divide with Remainders
SPaG
Please complete the assignment set on spag.com:
· Apostrophes & commas (B)
· Apostrophes & plurals (A)
Reading
5 tests on Readtheory OR a daily updating of your reading record.
Spelling
Log on to Spelling Shed using your EdShed login, and play a variety of games to practise this week’s spelling rule: Words where ‘ough’ makes an /or/ sound
This week in Maths, Y5 have been learning how to do short division; in English, the children have started writing narratives with a cyclical structure; in RE, the focus has been on the meaning of the Beatitudes; in Science, we were investigating friction by timing how long a car takes to come to a halt on different surfaces.
Here is this week’s home learning (due Wednesday 8th Feb):
Maths
Mathletics assignments:
· Divide by 10, 100 and 1,000
· Divide 4-digits by 1-digit
SPaG
Please complete the assignment set on spag.com:
· Apostrophes & commas (A)
· Direct speech punctuation (B)
Reading
5 tests on Readtheory OR a daily updating of your reading record.
Spelling
Log on to Spelling Shed using your EdShed login, and play a variety of games to practise this week’s spelling rule: Words where ‘ei’ can make an /ee/ sound
