Spring Term Update!
I'm sure everyone is looking forward to two weeks off as much as I am! We have had a fun, learning-filled term and the next one will be no exception! We have started some Jackie Morris-inspired poetry in English and will be finishing that off after the break before moving onto some biography writing inspired by 'Women in Science' by Rachel Ignotofsky. It will make for some excellent writing in the first half term! After we have finished our fractions topic, we will be moving onto our second multiplication and division topic which focuses on multiplying numbers with more than one digit together, shot division and dividing with remainders. In history, we are looking at the Benin Kingdom, a very exciting topic about an often overlooked African empire. We will look at when and how it formed, life in the Kingdom, the slave trade and the kingdom's fall. Our science will focus on megnetism looking at the magnetic field, magnetic materials and how a compass works. Finally, in RE, we will focus on incarnation and why Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah. I look forward to seeing you all after Christmas and hope you have a happy and well-rested break!
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Happy Friday everybody! We have had an exciting week in Birch Class. I was delighted to see some of your at parents' evenings this week and look forward to speaking to some of you next week.
In English, we have started writing our myths. Every child has created a hero, picked a god or goddess to help them and chosen a monster for their hero to defeat. While most have stayed with Greek mythology, using the creatures we've met in our current Class Novel (Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief), others have decided to write myths inspired by Norse, Japanese, Celtic and Native American cultures. They are well under way now! We are just about finished with our maths topic of multiplication and division and I am excited to move onto fractions next week! In geography, we continued to look at informal settlements and saw what life was like in them in different parts of the world including Brazil, India and Kenya. In science, we compared physical and chemical changes by looking at our similarities and differences. We continued our Islam topic in RE by creating informational posters about Eid ul-Adha, one of the most important dates in their calendar. In design and technology, they also continued their unit on pop up books with Mr Finch. This morning, they also got another Woodland School experience with Kael. In small groups, they worked to design and create a 3D map of the forest schools area using only what they could find in forest schools. Take a look at the pictures below to see some of the designs. We are back to school just in time for November!
This week we have been working on our fact files for the medieval monarchs we've learned about to go along with our board game about their successes and failures! In maths, we have just finished off our addition and subtraction topic and are moving on to multiplication and division next! We have started our new geography topic. This half term, we will be looking at informal settlements. On Monday, we looked at what an informal settlement is and some examples of them around the world. Also, in science, we have started our physical and chemical changes topic. Students got up to the front and demonstrated how particles move when they were melting, freezing, boiling and condensing. I look forward to a half term and practicals where we can see these changes in real life! In RE, we have started looking at the lives of Muslims in Britain. We started by taking a look at their core beliefs, specifically the five pillars of Islam with the help of Sara from a BBC video. You can find that video here https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/class-clips-video/religious-education-ks2-my-life-my-religion-what-is-islam/zbmrwty. Our spelling pattern this week was ible/able. The children will have been sent home with a list of words to learn for Monday's dictation as well as six of our statutory spelling words that we have incorporated into our spelling lessons this week (parliament, awkward, identity, neighbour, temperature and explanation). Please take some time to practice these words with the children if you can so they are ready for Monday! A final reminder to parents that the reading journals are checked twice a week (Monday and Friday) and there should be something for every day. Ideally, the child should be reading for twenty minutes a day. They could read to you, with you or just have a discussion with you after they've read. This should be recorded and signed in their reading journals. There are some tips and questions you can ask them to help with their reading comprehension. A big thank you to everyone who has been regularly writing in their child's reading journals. It has been super helpful for me to see their progress and frequency of reading! Have a lovely weekend everybody! A huge well done to all the pupils in Birch Class.
First of all for your wonderful behaviour and attitude to learning in our First Aid training on Monday. You listened, leanred and ,hopefully, retained some of that knowledge so you could help out a person in need. Joe Rice, who taught us, was really impressed with the children's focus and attitude in his sessions. Well done also for keeping on track and getting your learning done while Ms SImpson has been away from school these last two days. I loved working with you this morning and was very impressed with your persuasive letters - I could see how hard you had been working on those. The next well done is for your choral performance of Martin Luthor King's 'I Have a Dream' speech in our Celebration Assembly. I know that the parents and carers were impressed by your confidence voices and clearly heartfelt speech. It was a lovely way to end the half term. In class this morning we learned to sing 'The Old Lych Way', it would be just wonderful if some of you would join us for the 'Honouring our Ancestors' event on Tuesday 1st November. I will put the words of the song here and a link to a Youtube Video if you'd like to practice a bit at home in preparation. The Old Lych Way - Chris Hoban They'll lift me up and lay me down (Lay me down, gently down) Till I reach consecrated ground (Along the old Lych Way) On six strong shoulders I will sway (Lay me down, gently down) Till six feet under I'll be laid (Along the old Lych Way) Requiem aeternam (Requiem aeternam) Dona eis requiem Along the old Lych Way From Bellever to Lydford town (Lay me down, gently down) Through Sandy Ford & Conies Down (Along the old Lych Way) At every mile a marking stone (Lay me down, gently down) So they can rest their weary bones (Along the old Lych Way) Requiem aeternam (Requiem aeternam) Dona eis requiem Along the old Lych Way At Lydford church I'll make my end (Lay me down, gently down) And I'll never cross the Dart again Along the old Lych Way A Christian man could do no less (Lay me down, gently down) Than ask his friends this last request (Along the old Lych Way) Oh, Requiem aeternam (Requiem aeternam) Dona eis requiem Along the old Lych Way They'll lift me up and lay me down (Lay me down, gently down) Till I reach consecrated ground Along the old Lych Way Along the old Lych Way Along the old Lych Way The Old Lych Way - YouTube What a busy couple of weeks we've had in Year 5! We've moved onto addition and subtraction in maths. We are working on our persuasive letters in English this week having learned about expanded noun phrases, types of clauses and modal verbs. In science, we have talked about and demonstrated several different methods of separating mixtures into pure substances. In history, we've now made it up to Henry VIII and next week we'll be looking at Elizabeth I before working on our final assessment. Most importantly though, we have had a very exciting week in RE. On Wednesday, we went up to the church in Chagford and Reverend Paul told us about God as holy and loving and how the way the church was built shows us that. The children also had the opportunity to draw and right about what they had learned about the church. Below, you'll see some pictures from our time there:
Happy Friday everybody! What a fantastic first full week we've had in Birch Class this week from re-enactments of battles to singing workshops. I have been so impressed with all the hard work the kids have been up to since we started and you can read all about it below. Last week, we did a piece of writing based on a story we read called "The Castle the King Built". The children realised that the message of the story was that every member of the community is essential to build a community not just the most important or powerful member like the king. They then wrote "The School Mr Finch Built" which produced some very funny results. Ask your kids about it and see what they came up with! We've started our place value topic this week and have looked at numbers all the way up to a million! The kids have been working really hard on this and I'm impressed with how quickly they've all started to pick it up! They were most excited about history, where we have started to look at some medieval monarchs. The first one we looked at was William I, also known as William the Conqueror. After examining the context of his conquest and why he had a claim to the throne in the first place as a Norman duke, we then went down to the amphitheatre. One student played Harold Godwinson, the short-lived English King, and another student played William. The rest of the children divided between them with the English side being slightly bigger as it is believed they had a slightly bigger army. I played the narrator and the children acted out the story as I told it: the advantageous position of the English army on top of a hill and the Norman's struggle to shoot arrows at them, the confusion caused by the rumour of William's death and his heroic appearance in front of his army at the last moment, the military trick that the Normans played by retreating to get the English to follow and how they surrounded them and defeated them. One student even got to act out the historically debated death of Harold Godwinson, who may or may not have been shot in the eye with an arrow. We also had a wonderful singing workshop on Thursday in preparation for the Whiddon Down Festival performance on Sunday. I hope to see a few of you there. It is bound to be a spectacular performance!
I hope everyone has a well-deserved rest over the long weekend and I can't wait to get back into it next week! It has been an interesting week in Birch Class and I am so proud of everyone for how hard they've been working and how they've conducted themselves in school!
Continuing our movie narrative writing, the class have been looking at how to improve their on writing using different sentence structures. They've looked at how to improve individual sentences and then practicing editing as they write, even improving Miss Simpson's handwriting and I've been mind blown by the developing skills! From strengthening verbs to adding more detail, it has been amazing! We've moved on from angles to shapes in our properties of shapes unit. So far we have recapped polygons, triangles and quadrilaterals and the children have been blazing through the work. It is very impressive! I am looking forward to moving onto measuring lengths and angles of shapes and 3D shapes next week. Our afternoons have been filled with lots of rehearsals this week as we get ever closer to our production of A Midsummer's Night Dream. I am delighted with how the show is coming together and how invested the children are in making it the best that they can be. They have been working so hard, particularly with the run throughs which can be quite intense but they have remained focused and enthusiastic and it hasn't gone unnoticed! I am so looking forward to having you all see it in just a few week's time! With one week until the half term, we've got an exciting week coming up! First of all, we have a new addition to Birch Class who has settled right in and been made to feel welcome. I am very proud of both Year 5 and 6 for helping with that. In English, we have moved on from Cracking Contraptions and will be working on narrative writing inspired by the short film, 'Paraphernalia'. We have so far looked at creating a mood through setting description and have discussed some 'Tier 2 Vocabulary' which can be seen in our pyramid below. Tier 2 Vocabulary are robust, high-frequency words that are encountered across different subjects and these words can often have multiple meanings depending on the context. Using the video below, ask the children to pinpoint where in the short film we discussed some of the words and how they're Tier 2 words rather than Tier 1 or Tier 3 words. There was an excellent discussion on it today! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIBlme0VC3A In maths, we have had a couple of lessons recapping and adding to our knowledge of angles. The children in Year 5 have done an excellent job at recalling their knowledge of acute angles, right angles and obtuse angles and how many degrees each of them can be. I have been particularly impressed with how they've been able to use this knowledge to measure angles and explain direction. We used the following image to help us in today's lesson. They picked a starting point and which direction they were facing and decided where they needed to get to. Everyone was able to create their own problem with this information and figure out how many degrees they needed to turn to get somewhere and in which direction (clockwise or anticlockwise). They also drew on their mathematical language from fractions to explain how turning 180 degrees in either direction led to the same place due to the distance being equivalent either way. I was very impressed! See if you can test their knowledge of angles using the image. In history last week, we read an abridged version of Martin Luther King Jr's 'I have a dream' speech. This was a discussion based lesson and I was very impressed with the insight that the children provided. Some children picked up on the metaphors like 'Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation' because it was more encouraging than without a metaphor. One children picked out this metaphor as being about hope and how it was King's way of saying that black people and their treatment had been in the dark and were being brought into the light. Other children noticed the reference to slavery at the beginning of the speech and pointed out that King's repeated use of 'One hundred years later...' (referring to it being one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation) was like saying that black people were still slaves in a way because of the segregation and inequality they faced in America then. Everyone had a lot to say about Martin Luther King Jr's references to white people in the speech, particularly when he says 'We cannot walk alone.' Year 5 and 6 recognised the importance of white people standing up for the rights of black people when they had none and how there wouldn't be equality until everyone stood together even after everything that has happened in history. We will be moving on to look at the march from Selma to Montgomery in the coming weeks before examining how the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s has impacted the world we live in today.
We have a very exciting week coming up. More rehearsals for A Midsummer's Night Dream will be taking place and it's amazing to see how the show is coming together, especially with all the hard work from Year 5 and 6 who are taking the lead for most of the play. We will also be having our Jubilee celebration on Friday afternoon. If your child has not yet come home with an invitation, they will do today. I don't know about everyone else but I'm very excited about the tea party! As we reach the halfway point of our penultimate half term, let's take a look at what Birch and Maple class have been up to.
In the mornings, we have started writing the descriptions of our cracking contraptions. The children have come up with some genius ideas! We have an automatic dog-walker, an outfit picker, an animal translator and an automatic fire feeder! Before working independently, we've also worked together to write a description of my Invite-o-matic, a party host's dream! We have had some very strong noun phrases created this week which will do nicely in our final drafts! In maths, we're starting to wrap up our decimals topic. We've focused on adding and subtracting decimals for the last two weeks and our final few lessons will focus on multiplying and dividing decimals by 10, 100 and 1,000. Next week, we'll be moving onto our unit on shapes! Not to mention, during our quickfire times table tests, all of Birch Class have shown massive improvement with nearly half the class moving onto harder levels! This week, the afternoons have been a little bit different than usual. We started cricket lessons with Andy who is teaching both classes how to play. This is of particular importance to the children going to the cricket competition next week! We've also had Lydia and Crispin in several days this week to help us learn lines for our upcoming production of A Midsummer's Night Dream. They even taught us a song, Chagford's version of the Greatest Show! In science last week, we looked at fossils and how they help us understand evolution and this week we explored the different animal kingdoms. We've had an interesting two weeks in history two where we've looked at two times civil rights activists went to the Supreme Court to end segregation in 1950s America. Last week, we saw Oliver Brown take on the Board of Education and win the fight against the segregation of schools. This week, Year 5 and 6 heard the story of Rosa Parks and how her actions led to the de-segregation of buses in America as being illegal and unconstitutional. Though it will be a short half term, it will be a very exciting one!
In English, we will start by writing about "Cracking Contraptions!" Using inspiration from the great inventors - Wallace and Gromit! - the children in Birch Class will learn how to write an instructional and informative piece about a cracking contraption of their own! We will examine the structure, verb choice, technical vocabulary and passive voice before starting out piece. We continue our decimals topic in maths, now looking at how to add and subtract them. The children will build on their knowledge from our addition and subtraction topic to help them. Some of their multiplication and division knowledge will be needed as we look at multiplying and dividing decimals by powers of ten (10, 100 and 1000) before we move onto our unit on shapes later in the half term. Our afternoons are just as exciting as we look at the civil rights movement in History. We started by discussing inequality throughout history and then focusing on life in America in the 1950s. This knowledge will help us look into the lives of Oliver Brown and his case against the Board of Education, Rosa Parks and her civil disobedience and Martin Luther King Jr's dream. This topic will take us to one week after the half term and we will end by seeing how the civil rights movement impacts the world today. When we put our metaphorical lab coats on for science, we will be studying how humans and animals change over time. We started by focusing on evolution where the children in Year 5 and 6 learned how and why evolution happens and about the man behind evolution's discovery, Charles Darwin! We even looked at a case study about the evolution of giraffes so feel free to ask them what they know about that! RE looks at the importance of faith in a number of religions including ones we've studied this year and a few knew ones. We will look at one religion a week, talk about their faiths and later compare some of them to see how they overlap and why faith plays a key role for the believers. And don't forget students will be taking part in a whole school performance of A Midsummer's Night Dream where Year 5 and 6 will play key roles. We are excited to start workshopping this week! |
AuthorWelcome to the class blog for Year 5 - Birch Class at Chagford Primary School Archives
November 2023
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