September
Welcome to Year 5 everyone! We have enjoyed starting the new school year off by exploring the wonderful poem 'People Need People' by Benjamin Zephaniah. Pupils have reflected on the poem's themes and considered who the people are that they need.
Following this, we have started to read our class novel 'Fire Fire' by Stuart Hill which begins with an exciting prologue describing a young boy called Tom struggling to survive during the Great Fire of London. This will play a key part in our topic called 'Disease, Democracy and Disaster' where we explore the ups and downs of the 17th century including the plague, English civil war and the Gunpowder Plot.
October
In our Science lessons, since the start of the academic year, we have been exploring and investigating dissolving. After defining what dissolving means, and how it can't be confused with melting or evaporating, we started to discuss what investigations, related to dissolving solids, we could carry out. In the end, most groups decided to investigate the affect that water temperature would have on the time that 1tsp of sugar would take to dissolve or if different liquids would change the time it took the sugar to dissolve.
Before we did this, we used measuring cylinders to practise reading scales and develop accuracy in our measurements. This linked to work we've been completing in maths where we have also looked at scales and intervals. Everyone loved using the scientific equipment!
November
November has been a very busy month! We started with a visit to Newcastle Cathedral where we learned about the building's history and were introduced to the 'Siege of Newcastle' in 1644. Year 5T took part in a little inventors workshop where they designed machines that could be powered by renewable sources of energy. On the 17th of November we all travelled to the wonderful Theatre Royal in Newcastle where we took part in the children's book show. Listening to John Agard perform his poetry, and receiving our own book of poems, made it a memorable day. Some pupils also took part in the Sports hall Athletics Competition where we finished a very respectful fourth place. More importantly those taking part had a great time and it was wonderful to see the children supporting and encouraging each other as well as friends they knew from other local schools.
December
December has been an exciting month. We have enjoyed learning about the Christmas story and watching various interpretations in the Early Years and KS1 productions. We have thoroughly enjoyed the festivities, and as always, the Christmas party went down a storm. We ALL enjoyed a festive boogie!
Despite all the excitement, the children managed to spare some time to think of others. We all took part in ‘Everyone can be Santa’’ and the Kindness Tree. This proved to be a huge success and demonstrated the kindness we all share at Jarrow Cross.
It hasn’t all been festive fun of course, as our 1600s topic drew to an end, the children wrote a biography about Samuel Pepys who played a huge role in our historical research. This genre allowed us to implement a range of writing techniques such as using a ‘relative clause’, headings, and quotations. The children are becoming wonderful authors.
January
Happy new year everyone! We are straight back to work with a new topic and a new book that both classes will be using to support their learning about Ancient Greece. Everyone seems keen to start reading these Ancient Greek tales which will support our work in English. Later this term we will be visiting the Hancock Museum as well as receiving a visit from 'The History Bloke' which pupils are very excited about. He always brings topic to life and he has been in Jarrow Cross many times in the last few years.
February
We've been on lots of trips already in Year 5 and as part of our Ancient Greek topic we visited the Hancock museum in Newcastle on the 13th February. It was standing room only on the Metro but using public transport is all part of the fun and learning experience! We all arrived in one piece and completed some research in the Ancient Greek gallery. As well as this pupils found some artwork on display that they had completed in Y4 and had some time exploring the other parts of the fabulous museum.
March
P is for poem, I like that Poem.
O is for oh, there's a Poem
E is for eh, that's good Poetry.
M is for mmmm, I like Poems!
This year's world Book Day was all about poetry here at Jarrow Cross, and Year 5 really embraced the opportunity to explore and perform some favourite poems. What a show they put on! We thoroughly enjoyed watching the children bring their poems to life with actions and expressive voices. As always, many of the children enjoyed dressing up in their literary costumes and the Year 5 staff got behind the Greek theme and joined the children in dressing up too!
After weeks of studying traditional Greek myths, the children were eager to write their own Ancient Greek stories in English. Equipped with imagination, the children wrote all about the gods, tragedies, mythical creatures and heroic characters. We have some wonderful authors here in year 5.
April
April was a short month for us here at school, with the Easter holidays, but we still managed to cram in lots of exciting activities. We began our new Explorers topic and started our gymnastics training with a familiar face as our coach.
In English, we began our new class novel, A Girl of Ink and Stars. The text instantly captured the children's interests and they have been working hard to make predictions, and explore new vocabulary.
It was Earth Day, this month, so as part of our geography topic the children were challenged with devising and conducting field work in the local area. Armed with clipboards and maps, we embarked on a journey that would take us down part of the River Don, where we explored the impact of human features on the natural features within that environment. The children behaved impeccably and lots of data was gathered. The children returned to school and presented their findings in their geography books, using graphs, images and descriptions of their findings.
May
The summer term is well underway and the children have loved the small glimpses of sunshine that have graced our playground. As always, it has been a busy month and the children have worked hard. Earlier this month the children took part in Skipping School, where we learnt different skipping styles and techniques. Everyone gave it their all and some children managed to engage their competitive side and take part in some skipping challenges. What a work out! Since then, the playground has been filled with skipping ropes and energetic jumping.
As part of Mental Health Week, we all got outside to move our bodies by participating in a 1 mile walk around the school grounds; the sun was shining and the children were smiling. Whilst the aim was to walk, some of our more competitive children decided to run it; we had some red sweaty faces by the end but they all thoroughly enjoyed an afternoon break from lessons.
Maths, this month has been tricky. The children have been converting decimals, fractions and percentages. Using equipment, we have made links between the three concepts and have solved some difficult problems.