Hello, and welcome to another Year 5 weekly update! It’s been our first full week back at school and your children have continued to hit the ground running. Year 5 is a big year and we have plenty to cover, but we are extremely happy so far.

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

• In literacy, we have been studying a number of Dreamtime Stories, which is a term that describes unique stories and beliefs owned and held by different Australian Aboriginal groups. Next week, we’ll be having a go at writing our own!
• In maths, we’ve been working hard on place value (essentially, how numbers are structured). Next week, some children will moving on to addition and subtraction.
• In our geography topic of Australia, we learned about Uluru (which, when you were younger, you might have known as Ayers Rock). Next week, we’ll be learning about what daily life is like for Australians and how it compares with ours.
• In music, Mr Burrows’ class was lucky enough to be visited by Mr Marples, who will be teaching the year group how to play the recorder this year. He will alternate between each class termly.
• In science, we learned how scientists discovered that Earth is a sphere and not flat. Next week, we’ll be finding out how long it takes for all the planets in our solar system to orbit the sun.

PE

This is a weekly reminder that PE is on Mondays and Fridays. Please make sure your children come to school in the correct kit on those days. Remember also that Friday PE is outdoors, so a spare pair of footwear would be useful.

Curriculum Sharing

Thanks to those of you who attended our Curriculum Sharing evening on Tuesday. We hope it proved useful. For those of you who couldn’t make it, the slides we presented from are available for you to download. Go to the Year 5 page on the website and look for the ‘Documents to Download’ section. You will also find a timetable for the week there.

Homework

We are now back into the full swing of homework – both regular reading signed in planners, and online TTRS and Spelling Shed – so please help to facilitate this for your children. If there are any problems with access, please do get in touch so that we can help.

Maths Made Clear

It was mentioned during the Curriculum Sharing evening that the school has produced a series of videos for parents, helping to demystify how children are taught maths in school. This project is particularly close to Mr Burrows’ heart, as he played a big part in producing them. Please do have a look here, as consistency in approach, both in school and at home, can really help to embed good learning habits.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will see your children bright and early on Monday morning.

The Year 5 team