Hello, and welcome to another weekly Year 5 update. We’re properly into the swing of things now, so I’m happy to report how well your children are responding to the increased expectations of Year 5. They will have earned a lie-in this weekend!

This week, your children have been up to the following:

• In literacy, we have been using our imaginations to create a beautiful description of an Australian landscape. Next week, we will be reading and thinking about poetry.
• In maths, we have either been working on our understanding of place value or addition and subtraction. Next week, some children will be moving onto multiplication and division.
• In geography, we looked Aboriginal art (interesting fact: the Aboriginal people don’t have a written language, so they record their stories through their artwork). Next week, we’ll be using Australian artefacts to find out more about the distant land.
• In science, we learned about satellites; both natural and artificial. Ask your children if they remember how many satellites there currently are orbiting Earth. You’ll never guess!
• In art, we designed our Christmas cards, ready for you to purchase later in the year. Ho ho ho!

PE

Please remember that PE is on Mondays and Fridays, so make sure your children are dressed appropriately on those days. Fridays are outdoor PE lessons, so please make sure your child comes to school with a spare pair of footwear.

Reading homework

This is just a quick message to explain our hopes and expectations for weekly reading homework. We consider reading homework to be a vital part of helping children to improve and develop their reading skills, but we also know that it can be a painful process, both for you to consistently make time for it, and for those children who have not necessarily found a love for reading yet. This can create a negative attitude towards reading, which is obviously something we all want to avoid.

Here, then, is some clear guidance on how to keep reading homework fresh and interesting, thereby hopefully helping to develop a passion for reading:

• There is no rule on what children should read at home. This includes but is not limited to books, magazines, comics, graphic novels, poetry books, encyclopaedias and non-fiction texts. It is also fine if a child wants to return to something they have already read. Any reading a child chooses should be encouraged and not disapproved of.
• The child doesn’t always have to be the one reading. Although we would encourage children to read to you predominantly, it absolutely counts on a reading record if you read to your child during the week. Listening to a more experienced reader can be extremely beneficial, and we encourage it.
• Audiobooks also count. Again, this isn’t perhaps something we would encourage every night, but listening to an audiobook counts towards your child’s reading record. You can find free audiobooks on sites such as Spotify, Librivox and Storynory.
• Your child might prefer reading online. Again, there are plenty of free ebooks and comics available online. However, I wanted to mention Microsoft’s Reading Coach as a potential option of interest. It ​is a free app that helps children with their reading skills through personalised planning and AI. The link is here.

We hope you have a lovely weekend, and we look forward to seeing your children bright and early on Monday morning.

The Year 5 team