Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back. We hope you had an enjoyable and restful half term.

Whilst much of the first week has been spent returning to the routines of the classroom, the children also went on a trip to Maidenhead Mosque where they learnt all about Islam, what happens in the different rooms in a mosque and why it is a special place for Muslims. A great learning experience which we are sure the children have shared with you!

In Literacy, the children have enjoyed the Jeremy Strong story ‘This Is NOT A Fairy Tale,’  and have been making predictions and creating a story map based on the main events of the tale. We have also been describing the main characters, Luke and Ramona, and thinking about how their personalities helped shape their respective appearances in the story. Next week we will be working on correctly punctuating speech before moving onto active and passive sentences, after which we will begin to plan an alternative version of the story.

Maths has seen us begin to tackle the second round of fractions. We have started by successfully multiplying unit and non-unit fractions by whole numbers whilst reminding ourselves of the importance of the numerator and denominator when using this operation., The children have also been revising converting improper fractions into mixed numbers, and had a go at multiplying mixed numbers by whole numbers. We will spend more time honing our skills in this area next week, before having a look at solving problems involving fractions of quantities and amounts.

The children have started their new Science unit – ‘Animals Including Humans-‘ this week, starting with a look at gestation periods in different animals. Hopefully you have all received the email about our upcoming puberty chats. Prior to this, you may wish to have a conversation with your child(ren) to prepare them for the content mentioned in the message. If you did not receive this communication, please let us know.

Science is not the only subject that has seen the children approach something new this week. Our new topic is the Ancient Mayans, and the classes learnt about which part of the world this civilisation existed in and practised naming the countries and cities of the time. In PE we have continued with the attack versus defence theme in basketball alongside starting our unit on netball, we have been considering the effectiveness of a weekly budget in PSHE, and there was also an interesting discussion on food miles in DT, which will lead to us making healthy muffins in a few weeks – more details to follow closer to the time.

To finish, a quick reminder that swimming for 5TA will continue next Wednesday.

Have a good weekend,

The Y5 Team