Let’s work backwards for a change.

This afternoon has seen us playing cricket.  It has been hot too, which makes a big change.  What we find with cricket is that it can be intensely frustrating (especially because it requires skills which are difficult to learn), but that one good shot, or one good ball bowled during a session can make all the difference.  That was certainly the case this afternoon, and almost everyone got something out of that one great shot or delivery.  Several children found they were pretty good, perhaps contrary to what they had thought before the session.

This morning was Big Maths.  One group was working on decimals, and the other was taking those skills on to look at negative numbers (in the context of money).  One group used Excel to simulate a bank statement, complete with copied formulae to automatically adjust the balance, and red conditional formatting for the overdrafts.  They had a budget of £500 and bought many things – most of which I had never heard of.

Thursday saw some excellent Scratch coding – they are trying to recreate TTRS in Scratch, and then build the programs up so that they test all four operations, perhaps with a random element of what sort of question you get, and with a timer and a scoreboard.  Children are coming up with great ideas for further extensions – making each correct answer count as a goal into a net, and some code to set up a leaderboard.  Some are converting the maths game into a literacy or SPaG or general knowledge one.  Good stuff.

Literacy this week has seen the children working on two pictures.  Their creative task is to link the two pictures.  One is of a girl or woman on some kind of fantastical feline creature set in a colourful, bright, optimistic landscape.  The second is of a gloomy city or castle.  They need to write an extended piece to move the action from the first to the second.  We are working on building up sentences in steps from the very simple to the more complex.  One example so far was:

• Ethral walked down the mountain.
• Ethral ran quickly down the green, grassy slope.
• Ethral ran quickly down the green grassy mountainside.
• With the birds chirping loudly in the bushes beside her, Ethral sprinted quickly down the green grassy mountainside.

These will be finished into full assessable pieces next week.

Maths has mostly been about decimals or negative numbers this week.  You can practise at home with money (although perhaps not the negative numbers bit!).  Some of your children should have some understanding of credit and borrowing from their work this week.

We moved on in the topic session this week to look at the city of Sheffield.  This is a human geography unit, and the main idea is to compare some of the resourcing of a big city with that of our own locality.  It should be interesting, and there will certainly be some contrasts, as well as some history on the industrial evolution of ‘Steel City’.

As you have seen, we are planning the DT topic on structures.  This will involve the children building marble runs from cardboard, and considering the strength of different types of join and profile.  Tubes would be great if you can send some in.  Even the strong cardboard tubing that sometimes contains delivered items would be good, as well as kitchen packaging.

We will see you on Monday for the next exciting instalment of Year Five.

The Y5 Team