Dear Parents/Carers,

Another week done, and one more to go before a we can all embrace a well-earned rest over the half term break. We commend the children for their energy, efforts and hard work up to this point – they have been a credit to you throughout the opening weeks of their time in Year 5.

As mentioned previously, this week’s Literacy lessons took on a SPaG focus. The children had a go at a conjunctions based crossword before putting these words into sentences of their own, and also discussed how the meaning of entire sentences can be changed just by the adding or misplacing of a comma – the most popular mishap coming in the sentence ‘Rachel takes inspiration from cooking her family and her dog.’ After much laughter, the children amended this to ‘Rachel takes inspiration from cooking, her family and her dog.’ From here, the children practised correctly punctuating the ends of sentences before casting their eyes over writing that needed punctuation at the start and in the middle. We follow this up around 3-4 times a week during our handwriting sessions, and will revisit this occasionally throughout the year. Next week, we will look to improve our use of speech marks, whilst also developing our range of reading comprehension techniques.

Maths has moved onto the topic of multiplying and dividing, beginning with the studying of multiples and common multiples. Questions such as ‘what do these terms mean?’ ‘What do they have to do with times tables?’ and ‘how can they help us in other areas of Maths?’ were raised and answered, before the children had a go at finding common multiples across various times tables. Next week, we will learn about factors and common factors, with an emphasis on how these are different to multiples.

Our afternoons have been full of the usual diverse range of topics. The classes have begun to put themselves in the role of architect, drawing out a design and floor plan of a house, a drawing which they will recreate in the coming weeks using Google Slides and Sketchup. In Science, we began to study living things and their habitats, with our attention this week focused on the process of pollination, and our Art lesson saw the children use the ideas of ‘retrofuturism’ and ‘futuristic drawing’ to take their ideas of what they anticipate the future to be and draw them out in their sketchpads.

The children also spent time creating some excellent information posters for their work on Black History Month. They were each given a notable person from the past alongside some facts about their life and achievements, and showed great maturity when talking about these people and why their accomplishments are still recognised today.

To finish, congratulations to those children who have been selected to be on the Eco-Council.

For those who missed out and are interested, there are still some application forms for the role of Digital Leader should your child wish to complete one.

Have a lovely weekend,

The Y5 Team