Well that is Week 5 done – it was great to meet you all this week and update you on your child’s progress.

Literacy was focused on getting the biographies finished.  Although several of the chosen subjects seemed a little young to be having a biography written about them, the end results were OK.  It is a slightly difficult genre (from a literary point of view), because most potted biographies are in the form of very short paragraphs with headings and sub-headings.  Having said that, those are important skills in themselves, and demonstrating their use is part of the Y5 curriculum.

Yesterday we had a visit from Science Oxford…about maths.  It was called Marvellous Maths and consisted of various activities to demonstrate some of the wonder of number.  That old chestnut – trying to get grains of rice on a chessboard (doubling the number on each square) soon got completely out of hand, with huge boxes of Rice Krispies velcroed to the board (by about square 18 or something).  Apparently it would take 400 years to grow enough rice to fill all 64 squares.  There was also a probability demonstration based on the chances of particular dice scores, card picks, and seven dwarf choices (yes really…Bashful won!).  It was great, and a good use of an hour.

Maths this week saw the back of percentages and decimals, and one group made it on to area and perimeter (of rectangles).  All maths groups will cover the whole Y5 curriculum (of course) but we like the way the groupings enable us to go at slightly different speeds, depending on the ways different children work best.  The groups also enable us to differentiate the levels of support.  Area and Perimeter are great topics for home too – either just from identifying shapes at home and discussing area (the space inside the shape) and perimeter (the distance around it), or from some complicated DIY project.  Your child should at least be able to help you measure up things!

PSHE today focused on emotional changes that the children might be experiencing or might have heard of from others.  The discussions were pretty sensible and mature, helped by some with older siblings or relatives.  We also used some of the characters from the class reader(s) as  neutral examples.

This afternoon’s tennis was glorious in the Spring-like sunshine.  We were practising serving – it went surprisingly well and there was lots of pride in being able to hit a ball from overhead.

Hoping the weather stays fine for you this weekend.

Y5 Team