Our Year 5 Class       

A very warm welcome to our Year 5 class page. In Year 5  we look forward to the challenges and responsibilities of being in the upper juniors. During the year the children continue to develop their independent learning, research and team work skills. 

Our Year 5 Class 2024-2025

Class Information

Who's who?

Mrs Monaghan - Year 5 Class Teacher

Mrs Bent - HLTA 

Miss German - Teaching Assistant

 Things to remember:

• Please remember that homework is due in by WEDNESDAY each week.
• PE lessons for Summer 2 will be on a Monday (indoor) and Friday (outdoor). Please remember to write your child's name on all of their uniform and sports kits to avoid confusion.
• Reading is encouraged both in school but also at home. Reading for enjoyment is as important as reading to learn. It is important that the children read a range of books/comics/newspapers at home and develop their comprehension skills and vocabulary. This will help consolidate the reading work we will be doing in class. In Year 5, we feel it is important for the children to develop a love of reading as this gives their 'imagination wings'.
• We will be following the RWI spelling scheme this year and supplementing this with Spelling Shed. The children will be encouraged to use this at home as well as in school. The children will also be bringing home a list of the key words that they are currently working on. Please practise these at home(little and often).
• It is important that the children still continue to practise their times tables regularly at home. TTRockstars is a fantastic tool for this as well as 'Hit the Button'.

This Half Term: Summer 2 (June – July 2025)

English

We will start by doing some sticky learning around descriptive writing. We will then be looking carefully at the poem 'The Malfeasance' by Alan Bold. We will look at the shape of the poem, imaginatively create images of the creature and write our own versions. After this we will move onto performance poetry. The children will be creating and performing poems in groups. This will help to develop their speaking and listening skills. We will end our English journey in Year 5 by creating a presentation and sharing it with the rest of the class. The preparation for this presentation will be a homework project over a few weeks. 

Throughout the term we will develop our comprehension skills and think carefully about our reading VIPERS (vocabulary, infer, predict, explain, retrieve, sequence or summarise) It is important that the children read a range of books/comics/newspapers at home and develop their comprehension skills and vocabulary. This will help consolidate the reading work we will be doing in class. In Year 5, we feel it is important for the children to develop a love of reading as this gives their 'imagination wings'.

In our spelling lessons we will focus on the following spelling rules:

· silent letters

· words that are adverbs of time

· challenge words

We will be having a big push on our key words this half term ready for our assessment the week before May half-term. We will be doing lots of sticky learning around our grammar consolidating our understanding of:

· adverbials and pronouns

· determiners and apostrophes

· tenses

· apostrophes

We will also have a different grammar focus each week. For this half term these will be:

· revisiting tenses

· looking carefully at missing punctuation in sentences

· semi colons and introducing colons

· formal language

Maths  

This half term we will be focusing on 'Decimals'. During this unit the children will:

• Adding and subtracting decimals
• compliments to 1

We will then move onto 'Measure - perimeter and area'

• Perimeter of rectangles
• Perimeter of rectilinear shapes
• Perimeter of polygons
• Area of rectangles
• Area of compound shapes
• Estimate area
• drawing line graphs
• reading and interpreting line graphs
• reading and interpreting tables
• reading an interpreting tables and two-way tables

It is crucial that the children continue to practise their fraction, decimal and percentage work at home. we will also be doing this in our sticky learning morning activities.     

All of these activities will give the children the opportunity to develop their reasoning and problem solving skills. We will also continue with our daily reasoning questions with our partner and counting activities. These help the children to develop their mathematical thinking.

At home, it would fantastic if you could keep some of the children's previously learning 'bubbling':

• times tables
• written methods for addition and subtraction
• converting improper fractions to mixed numbers and visa versa
• adding and subtracting fractions greater than 1 with different denominators.

Science

This half term, our Science topic is named ‘Types of Change’. During this topic the children will learn:

• How can we make a meal from a mixture? They will make booklets labelled ʻMaterials dictionaryʼ and write definitions for terms relating to separating mixtures and types of change. In groups, children predict how many drops of water it will take to dissolve granulated sweetener, icing sugar and caster sugar. They test their predictions and record the results.
• to observe their solutions from the previous lesson and predict what would happen if water was added once more. They will add water and place their solutions in the same spot to be revisited later. They repeat their investigation on solubility with cinnamon rather than sugar and observe the differences. Each group is given a bag containing sugar, cinnamon and dried fruit. They list how they would separate the mixture by order of ingredients and techniques.
• to describe the properties of an ice cube. In pairs, they are given a cup of hot water with a lid and a piece of wax. They observe what happens to the wax when it is placed on the lid as an example of a reversible change. They are then are given a variety of materials and predict which ones will melt on top of hot water and which ones wonʼt. They test their predictions and conduct further research to then share with the class. Each group is given a jelly sweet to add to hot water as they consider the difference between the melting stage and the dissolving stage. 
• that burning is an irreversible change and they discuss new materials made from burning and when burning might be useful. They will make a biscuit mix and test what happens when they are put in the oven, observing them every five minutes, as another example of irreversible change.
• in groups, to observe the effects of mixing vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. Children discuss various acids that are used in the kitchen, and are given a variety of materials such as a stop watch, cylinder, tape measure, beakers, bicarbonate of soda, water and acids to use to test the reaction rates of bicarbonate of soda and acid. They will choose a question that can be answered with a fair test and then plan and carry out their investigation.
• to read and revise their ʻMaterials dictionariesʼ and discuss any revisions. Children are asked to create a meal using given ingredients, mixtures and heat. They record their recipes in groups, making note of types of changes involved.

Computing

Our topic for this half term is Programming - Micro:bit. During this topic the children will:

• be tinkering with BBC Micro:bit
• programming an animation
• recognising coding structures
• creating a program for a specific task 

HEARTSMART/PATHS

We will also continue with our PATHS lessons this half term. These lessons support the children in developing their social emotional skills.

We will be looking at the Heart Smart principle 'No Way Through isn't True!' 

We will be learning:

• that there is always a way through difficult situations.
• that success is not always what you see.
• the importance of hope
• reflecting on who we are.

Music

Mel, from Wigan Music Service will come into Year 5 on a Thursday afternoon to teach the children music. The focus will be 'Practice/Performance' They will also be practising their ukalele skills in preparation for our Summer Music Concert on Thursday 26th June.

History

Our topic for this half term is 'The Stone Age to Iron Age.' We will be discussing and learning about the following key questions:

• KQ1 - Is it true to say that Stone Age man was just a simple hunter gatherer only interested in food and shelter?
• KQ2 - How much did life change when man learnt to farm?
• KQ3 - What can we learn about life in the Stone Age from a study of Skara Brae?
• KQ4 - Why is it so difficult to work out why Stonehenge was built?
• KQ5 - How much did life really change during the Iron Age and how could we possibly know.

We will also be creating our own cave paintings.

French

This half-term Mrs Bent will be focusing on the topic 'Meet my French family' with the children. They will be learning to:

• recognise and use phrases to say if they have a brother or sister.
• be able to name different family members on a family tree.
• build descriptive sentences into a short paragraph.
• be able to understand and express simple opinions.
• plan and prepare a short presentation about their family. 

D.T

Our unit this half term is 'Cooking and Nutrition - developing a recipe'

• To understand how ingredients are reared and processed.
• To make adaptations to design a recipe.
• To evaluate nutritional content.
• To practise food preparation skills.
• Designing labels.
• Making bolognese

RE

Our key question this half term is 'What matters most to Humanists and Christians?' Throughout the unit the children will be thinking about the following questions:

• Rules: Do we need them? Who breaks them?
• Who is a Humanist? What codes for living do non-religious people use?
• What values matter most to Christians? How does it show?
• How do Humanists and Christians know how to act? What do they base their decisions on?
• What do Humanists and Christians have to tell us about what matters most to them?

PE

Our units this half term are cricket and football.

• Physical: deep and close catching, underarm and overarm bowling, long and short barrier, batting
• Social: collaboration, communication, respect
• Emotional: honesty, perseverance, determination
• Thinking: observation, provide feedback, select and apply skills, tactics, assessing

• Physical: run, dribble, pass, receive, track
• Social: communication, respect, co-operation
• Emotional: honesty, perseverance, independence, self-regulation, dertermination
• Thinking: identify, creativity, make decisions, select and apply skills and tactics