Year 5 Swans
Welcome to Swans
Class Teacher - Miss Dunn
LSP - Miss Jackson
email: class.swans@burnttree.sandwell.sch.uk
Our learning
Autumn Term
Maths
During the autumn term, we will begin by learning about Roman Numerals and place value of numbers up to 1,000,000. We will then move onto addition, subtraction, multiplication and division before ending the term looking at fractions. Throughout this time, we will continue to develop our arithmetic skills and times table knowledge. Please use Times Table Rock Stars at home to keep practising.
English
We will begin by using the poem ‘The Spider and the Fly" by Mary Howitt as a stimulus for writing in Year 5. We will write a poem of our own, a set of instructions and a piece of suspense writing. We will be continuing to develop our spelling, punctuation and grammar skills and applying this throughout all of our written work. Please use Spelling Shed and Education City to support your learning at home.
Reading
In reading, our text of the term is ‘Boy, by Roald Dahl. The children will be identifying and defining unfamiliar vocabulary to support their understanding of the text. This will be further developed by answering a range of VIPERS questions about the text.
We will also read a wide range of other texts throughout the term to ensure that the children are exposed to a wide range of authors and genres. Some of these will be chosen by the children based on their interests and talents.
Science
Our science topics this term will be 'Properties and Changing Materials'. The children will group materials based on their properties, use knowledge of the three states of matter to decide how mixtures may be separated and explore reversible and irreversible changes. Work in this topic also offers opportunities for children to plan an investigation, control variables and record their findings in a variety of ways.
History
In History, we will be learning about the Vikings. Children will be able to sequence events according to their significance. We will be investigating where they came from and why they invaded Britain and evaluating the impact of their achievements.
Geography
In Geography, we will be exploring where our energy comes from. We will learn about different sources of energy and be able to identify its benefits and drawbacks. In addition, we will gain an understanding of renewable and non-renewable energy.
Art
During Autumn, we will complete two units of artwork. The first will be inspired by retrofuturistic artwork from the 1950s and 1960s. Using this as inspiration, we will creat our own views of the future by creating a collagraph print and drawing on top of this textured background. Our second unit will use painting and mixed media to create self-portraits.
DT
In DT, we will explore a range of pop-up books and use these as inspiration to create our own. We will also be hard at work in the kitchen making biscuits.
Music
In Music, we will learn to sing with accuracy, fluency, control and expression. We will also create graphic scores in response to a stimulus. We will then investigate how musical can be used to represent colours in response to the Hindu 'Holi' festival.
PE
We will be learning the skills associated with badminton, learning different types of shots and serves, which will then be used to score and defend points in competitive games. Additionally, we will be learning the skills associated with handball. We will begin to play effectively in different positions and with increased power and strength.
Computing
During the autumn term, we will be learning about online safety. We will develop a clear understanding of appropriate online behaviour, understand the meaning of our digital footprint, understand the importance of a balance in screen time and identify risks of mobile devices broadcasting their location. We will then move on to look at how to use a spreadsheet for calculations, planning and investigate probability.
French
In Year 5's "French Monster Pets" unit, we will learn how to describe monsters using body part vocabulary while practising noun gender, article-noun agreement and adjective placement. We'll identify key facts using similar words between French and English (cognates) and write about their own 'Fantastic French Beast.' We will also work on French pronunciation, focusing on accents like é, è, and ç and learn how intonation changes when asking questions. In grammar, we’ll learn that adjectives must match the gender and number of the noun and how to connect sentences with words like "et" (and) and "mais" (but).
RE
Our Autumn R.E.unit poses the question 'what does it mean if Christians believe God is holy and loving?' We will learn about what Christians believe God is like and explore key texts from both the Old and New Testaments.
PSHE
We will begin the year by looking at 'Being Me in My World' where we will identify what is amazing about each of us and the way that our differences should be celebrated.
Look what we have been doing...
S.T.E.M
On 24th October, we had the amazing opportunity to participate in a fully funded STEM workshop! Throughout the day, we built and coded robots to complete a range of missions based on various themes. These challenges encouraged teamwork, problem-solving and creative thinking, while also helping to develop our coding and cyber skills. It was a fantastic experience that engaged all of us!
We began the year with an Art project based on the style 'Retrofuturism'.
We began by looking at examples of 'retrofuturistic' art. Then, we annotated a piece in this art style to gain an understanding of the artist's view of the future.
Next, we investigated a selection of 'space' images and identified how they were created. Then, we used four different drawing style to re-create an interesting section of one of the images.
After that, we used our imagination to decide what life for humans might be like in fifty years.
Next, we used a selection of textured materials to create a 'collagraph' template from which we would print a textured background on which to draw our vision of the future.
After that, we chose paint colours to apply to our collagraph template in order to create an interesting background.
We were really pleased with our colourful background prints, but the hard work didn't end there! Our final task was to draw our vision of the future on top of the colourful backgrounds we had created.
Viking Day, 19th September
We tried on a selection of Viking armour and found out it was incredibly heavy!
We wielded (replica) swords and axes and found out how intimidating a Viking raid would have been.
We tried on a selection of Viking clothing, lots of which were very itchtyQ!
We explored a variety of items which would have been placed in Viking graves, including jewellery and riches.
We practised our archaeology skills using metal detectors, sieves and brushes to locate and excavate items from sand. Then, we sorted these into Viking and non-Viking piles.
We translated messages written in runes, then we wrote our own names in runes. This proved tricky for some of us, as the Viking alphabet doesn't contain the same letters as the modern English alphabet.