Year 5 - Friday 8th July 2022

Date: 8th Jul 2022 @ 2:53pm

Welcome to this week’s Year 5 class blog

This week in year 5

In Maths, the children have completed a number of assessments, including reasoning and their times tables check.  They have all worked so hard. I am very proud of the work they have put it.  We have also had time to work on adding decimal numbers up to 3 decimal places. We have looked at adding decimals when they have a different number of integers (the number in front of the decimal) e.g. 25.272 + 346.081 = and we have also practised adding when the number of decimal places is different e.g. 390.45 + 283.173 =.  The children have practised this in my different ways, including word problems.

In English we have again worked on some assessments but we have also managed to complete our novel Varjak Paw. The children seemed to have really enjoyed the book and for those avid readers there is a follow up book called Varjak Paw the Outlaw, the author is S. F. Said.  We have written lots of work using a variety of features to show everything we have learnt this year, including a set of contrasting descriptions of the different settings from the book.

In Science, the children researched insects and amphibians as part of their life cycles topic.  They had to find out the names of the creatures at the different stages, how they changed and whether they undertook full metamorphosis or partial metamorphosis. 

In RE we continued with our topic of stewardship.  The children were able to go outside and take photos and videos of our wonderful world and then wrote why it was precious to them.  We also read scripture about creation and discussed what this meant in terms of stewardship and our responsibility of looking after God's precious earth.

We had a special visitor this week in French. Mr Hennigan, who is Head of Modern Languages at All Hallows came to join us for the lesson. He was so impressed! He said, "The standard of French in Y5 is amazing! Their pronunciation is exceptionally good and their grammatical knowledge is very impressive!" Very well done to everyone who joined in wholeheartedly with the lesson. You did St Oswald's proud!

In PE many of you will have seen the children enjoying their tennis session. This was slightly shorter than usual due to the lovely parent's afternoon.  The children did however manage to practise their skills keeping the ball bouncing on their racket to improve control and force, they threw a ball to their partner who had to hit it back to them to catch, to improve aim and control power and finally we had a competition like last week where the children had to return a serve. 

We have had 2 afternoons of PSHE this week to conclude our topic on careers.  The children discussed the different careers they might like to take on in the future and whether these were realistic expectations with their skills and abilities. We looked at what they would need to work on to make these ideas and dreams a reality. We then went on to look at the importance of a range of jobs, the children ranked 17 careers in order of importance. Then I challenged them on the importance of each job, and they concluded that many jobs are important, and it really depends on the situation. I then shocked them by revealing the average wage of the different jobs and the children were able to discuss what wages they thought were unfair and unjust.  This sparked a discussion on choosing a job based on wages over interest, vocation and enjoyment.  We then went on to look at stereotypes in jobs, where these come from and how they, as future adults, can help to break these stereotypes. We had a discussion on job choices and training with link to university, college and apprenticeships and this all gave them food for thought.  They worked really well and debated the topics in a respectful and mature manner.

Home Practice all relates to this week's learning - These are the tasks to be completed.

Reading - You all have a Home Reading book for year 5 so reading every night for 15-20 mins is essential. You also have a Reading Journal/Diary that must be completed and signed. Some children had a break from reading over the holidays but please ensure this is made a priority now that we are back at school.  Practise is vital to improve in all areas of English.

You can change your reading book on any school day (book bags to be left on Mrs Mulgrew's desk)

Maths – please ask your child what their times tables target is and help them practise this in order for them to progress.

Spelling words are homophones part 2

alter altar farther father guessed guest heard herd passed past their there they're here hear

Sumdog challenges

PLEASE ENCOURAGE YOUR CHILDREN TO COMPLETE THE SUMDOG CHALLENGES, MANY CHILDREN ARE STILL NOT ACCESSING SUMDOG.

Please encourage your child to complete the Maths and Spelling Training.  As you know, we set weekly challenges that are linked to the learning that takes place in school.  As an extra feature, the maths and spelling training sections will provide a tailored challenge for your child to practise skills, facts and words they find difficult.  Once the diagnostic challenges have been completed Sumdog will set challenges to aid improvement and development in the appropriate areas for your child.  Once you have completed the class challenges, please use this feature for extra challenge in both maths and spelling.  Many children have still not completed the diagnostic section.

Times tables have been set to reflect class targets

Maths the children have been set activities relating to adding and subtracting decimals.

Spelling words homophones and near homophones.