Year 5

 ENGLISH

Inspired by the adventures in our reading books, alongside the poem ‘A Dreadful Menace’ we will be focusing on making use of a range descriptive language in our poetry work and fiction writing where we will write our own daring adventure stories.  For our non-fiction work, we will learn about the features of journalistic writing and write a diary recount of the adventures of polar explorers.

Alongside our reading work, we will be exploring a wide range of Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary taken from the texts.  We will play with vocabulary to aid our understanding and extend our understanding through finding synonyms and antonyms, analysing prefixes, suffixes and root words, investigating shades of meaning as well as using words correctly within and across a range of contexts.

MATHS

This half term, our learning will continue to focus on place value where we will recap on Roman Numerals and learn about using numbers up to one million.  We will also learn about addition and subtraction, including using mental methods and start learning about multiplication and division.

 SCIENCE

Our Science this half-term focuses on forces.  We will be planning and carrying out a range of investigations into forces, investigation what happens when forces are balanced or unbalanced.  We will also explore the effects of air resistance, water resistance and friction on moving objects.

GEOGRAPHY

Linked to our reading about Ernest Shackleton, we will recap our prior learning about the world’s weather and climate and then learn about the ‘Extreme Environments’ of the polar desert and tundra biomes.

 RE

This half term our focus is the Jewish religion, exploring the question ‘Why is the Torah so important to Jewish people?’  We will be learning about what the Torah is, why it is so important as well as other important practices within the Jewish religion.

 PE

Children will have two PE sessions each week – please make sure your child wears their PE kit to school every Monday and Tuesday.  Please make sure your child has their school PE kit on, including a school jumper.  For safety reasons, all watches and jewellery must be removed for PE lessons. If your child wears earrings, they must be able to remove them independently or cover them with medical tape.  Please send medical tape in with your child if needed.  Alternatively, it may be easier to leave earrings at home on PE days.

 COMPUTING

The children will continue to learn about online safety through our new resource, ‘Gooseberry Planet’.  This half term, they will be learning about the digital footprint and how to deal with junk email.  Within our creative computing curriculum, we will be learning to use selection with Microbits.

MUSIC

This term we will be learning to listen to, appraising and responding to music as part of Charanga Music as we learn about Melody and Harmony.  We will learn to sing and perform different songs, using instruments to accompany the music.

DT

We will be investigating and analysing a range of different shelters to find out what are the key features necessary for an effective shelter.  We will explore frame structures, testing out different materials and structures before working in groups to design a sturdy, waterproof shelter.

  PSHE

During this half term, the children will be learning about different aspects of life using LifeWise PSHE.  We will explore how to be the best learners we can be, about the food nutrition, including learning about junk food and caffeine.

MFL

This term we will continue learning with ‘Rigolo’ French.  This half-term our focus will be on food with the topic ‘Le Cirque’  We will learn about countries around the world where French is spoken.  We will recap on colours and use this knowledge to identify and describe different items of clothing.

HOME LEARNING

In year 5, children still need to read lots! All children are expected to read at home most nights for 15 – 20 minutes either to themselves or with an adult. This could be their school Accelerated Reader book, listening to a story read by someone else or sharing a favourite book. All are equally valuable. Talking about what they have read is also vital to help develop comprehension skills. This is particularly beneficial to the children when completing their Accelerated Reader quizzes.  All children have a reading record book in which parents, carers or the children themselves can record what they have read or make any comments.

In addition, children all have access to Times Tables Rockstars – we have a weekly times tables check in class, so please encourage your child to keep practising their times tables – five or ten minutes a day is likely to be more beneficial than an hour once a week.