Week 6 

This week in English, we worked hard to plan our own chapter to continue our Amazon rainforest adventure story based on Katherine Rundell's 'The Explorer'. We have started to write our chapters and have been editing as we go.

In maths, we continued to learn about adding and subtracting decimals with the same, and different, amount of decimal places. We have been practising our written addition and subtraction method.

We have also been thinking about the life cycles of different animals and what is similar and different about them. We worked in pairs to create our own PowerPoint presentations.

Week 5 

This week, we finished our sentence stacking for our class adventure story. Next week, we will be planning and writing our own chapter to continue the story. We have also enjoyed reading a chapter of Michael Morpurgo's 'Running Wild' during our shared reading sessions. A race was on to get our hands on a copy in the library so we could see what happened with the tsunami.

In maths, we finished our unit on position and direction and enjoyed learning about lines of symmetry and making mathematical reflections. We also started our new topic on decimals.

In other areas of the curriculum, we have been continuing to learn about databases and places of worship. We also thought about how humans use rivers in different ways. We worked in groups to discuss a way in which humans use the river- thinking about the positives and negatives of this usage. We then had to put forward an argument to Miss Pritchard about why we should be able to use her river. 

Week 4 

This week, we have been continuing to write our adventure story based on 'The Explorer' by Katherine Rundell. We also looked at Chapter 3 in more detail during our reading sessions and worked on our vocabulary, retrieval and inference skills.

In maths, we learnt about coordinates and how to translate shapes on a grid.

We also learnt about the different features of rivers and have been making our own double page spreads in geography and, in science, we learnt about how mammals reproduce.

We acted in role as the children from ‘The Explorer’ and had a go at making our own rafts just like they did (but a bit smaller). 

Week 3 

Toyota

This week, we went on a trip to Toyota and had a phenomenal time. Mandy and the team taught us so many new things and we had great fun trying out lots of fun activities. 
Mandy took us into the reception area and showed us different models of cars. We talked about how cars have changed over the past few years and this made us think about how different cars could be in the not-so-distant future and what other things Toyota could be making. We also learnt about how Toyota are looking at powering cars by hydrogen. We also looked at a model of the Toyota site and what goes on in each section of the building. We were pleased to hear about how Toyota think about the environment and the measures they have in place for protecting the local wildlife. 

After a juice and donut break (yum), he headed into the classroom and learnt about how cars are made. Mandy taught us about the history of Toyota and what life is like in Japan. We then worked as a team on a production line to create Lego cars. We were given a time target to beat and, each time, discussed how we could improve our efficiency and performance. We managed to build two cars in an average time of 2 minutes and 3 seconds! These were carefully checked by the team member in charge of quality control!
 

We enjoyed lunch in the canteen amongst the workers and stood on the glass bridge to get a true scale of the sheer size of the site. We could see a full mile! We then headed back to the classroom to talk about how to be responsible for managing our time efficiently and effectively. We were given a range of challenges to complete with the aim of completing as many as possible. We had do ensure we were “doing, not queuing”!
 

We finished our visit with a closing ceremony. We reflected on things we’d learnt and what it would be like to have a career in engineering. We were given a goody bag and Mandy advised us to go home and write in our book something we can do to improve at school and something we can do to improve at home. This could be things like put our shoes away, or get more sleep. She also advised us to jot down some things we are interested in and to write some jobs that we might be interested in. Then we can think about how the choices we make will help us to achieve our future careers.

Thank you so much, Toyota, for a wonderful day!

King Charles' Coronation

We have really enjoyed learning about what a coronation is and celebrating the event with the rest of the school. We enjoyed a non-uniform day where we dressed in red, white and blue and looked at all the entries for the Great Willington Coronation Bake Off. What amazing (and delicious) looking entries we had!

We enjoyed a picnic with our friends and family, and got to take some goodies to take home with us.

God save the King! 🤴🏽🏰🎉

Week 2 

Another great week, this week. We have continued to sentence stack our adventure story based on 'The Explorer' and have been learning more about angles, as well as 2D and 3D shapes.

We have continued to learn about flat file databases and we also discovered how to manage information safely online. We learnt about the major rivers of the world and used atlases to identify and label these on a world map.

Rock Steady visited us on Tuesday to talk to us about the music lessons they can offer us each Friday. We really enjoyed having the opportunity to sing and play the keyboard and drums.

Thursday was World Daily Mile day. We enjoyed doing our 15 minute run around the playground with the Year 2 children and helped to encourage each other. We also enjoyed an athletics session with Rosie and returned to our swimming lessons at Etwall. It has been a very sporty week.

We are looking forward to a week of celebrations next week as we head towards King Charles' Coronation.

Week 1

Welcome back to our new half term. This week, we have started our new topic about the Amazon. This topic will continue throughout the rest of our time in Year 5. This half term we will be thinking about rivers, with a focus on the Amazon River, and next half term we will be learning about rainforests, with a focus on the Amazon Rainforest. We have thought about what we know about rivers and used an atlas to map out some of the main rivers of the UK.

In English, we have been looking at the book 'The Explorer' by Katherine Rundell. This is our focus for both reading and writing at the moment. We made predictions about what we thought might happen during the adventure story and have begun to look at chapter 1 by using our vocabulary skills. We have also started to sentence stack our own adventure story.

In maths, we have begun a new unit on shape. We have been identifying and classifying three types of angles: acute, obtuse and reflex. We enjoyed a Go Noodle song about them (see below for the link). We have been learning how to use a protractor to read and draw our own angles.

In science, we have started our 'Living Things and their Habitats' unit. We learnt about the male and female parts of plants and what their function is in a plant's reproductive system. We then learnt about sexual and asexual production in plants.

We impressed our teachers and each other with our first Learning Log homework entries. Some excellent work has been produced and lots of stickers and house points have been awarded. Please see the slideshow below for examples of our work.