Your children have had an excellent week.

It was Theme Week and as you know this year’s theme was ‘Jobs and Careers’.

Practically this involved the normal curriculum being interrupted on Monday afternoon, Tuesday morning, and Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. Children were asked to opt for two job choices, and spent two sessions on each one, with a mix of Year Five and Year Six children and teachers. The options were Computer Scientist, Graphic Designer, Mechanic, Physiotherapist, Vet, Aircraft Technician, Sports Administrator and DJ/Music Producer. Happily we had fairly equal numbers across each job.

The children really threw themselves into this and I hope they had stories to tell of their activities. There will be various displays and discussions next week based on what they did.

We fully believe that in the primary school years we should offer children the broadest of experiences, and education in its widest sense. This week definitely achieved that – many thanks to the staff, the visitors who came in to support the activities, and to the children for their boundless enthusiasm.

Talking of which, I took a large group of Y5 and Y6 students to Shiplake College yesterday for a cricket tournament. Our cricket club is over-subscribed this year (32 most weeks!) so we could not take everyone and priority was given to Year Six students as it is their last chance. Mr Burrows and I were delighted with the performance of the three teams and the attitudes and spirit of the young players.

In Literacy this week we have been looking at playscripts, and learning about implicit and explicit use of language. This is the difference between ‘Michael and Mina watched the bird looking for food’ and ‘Michael and Mina marvelled as the owl swooped towards its unseen prey.‘ Implicit language has more imagery and demands more of the reader – what is the writer trying to say? Implicit language is also generally a lot more interesting.  Clearly younger children need to read (and write) fairly simple direct language, but by Year Five we expect more than the very obvious.  The mantra is Show don’t Tell.  Write with style!

Maths is back to decimals (after finishing off position and direction).  Again there is a focus on money and our Maths Made Clear videos may help you support your child at home.  Try the one for decimals and the Maths at Home one for a practical application.

There was no Science or Computing this week due to Theme Week activities.  Next week Computing will resume with a Scratch module building simple computer games.

Our topic work has moved on to a human geography module looking at resources (fossil fuels and renewables) and cities (with a case study of the City of Sheffield).  We will make comparisons with our own locality.

PE is focusing on athletics practice and rounders next week.

As you know, in addition to guided reading in small groups (at least twice a week) each teacher reads to the class from a novel at least once per week.  Usually these are novels the teacher particularly likes, and usually texts for which we can get (or have developed) related comprehension questions.  In Y5RL we have just finished a short book entitled The Boy who Rode the World which (while without great literary merit) has been superb for discussions on geography – it is a fictionalised account of a boy who cycles from London to Cape Town (although it is based on the true story of his father, who actually did it.)  There are two companion volumes featuring other parts of the journey.

We hope you have a great weekend and we will see you next week.

Y5 Team