Year 5

Year 5

September

What a great start to Year 5. We were introduced to our brilliant and brand new topic for everyone of The 1600s.

We started this topic off with the story behind why we celebrate Guy Fawkes in this term and used our historical enquiry skills to investigate the causes and consequences of the attempt to blow up parliament.

We started an amazing book called, Fire, Fire by Stuart Hill. We meet Tom who becomes a pageboy to Samuel Pepys and we learn how the great fire of London started and spread.

October

We continued reading our novel of Fire, Fire by Stuart Hill and it's getting very exciting. We have explored how an author can make a reader feel and react by the use of their authorial intent. As a reader, understanding the author's purpose helps you evaluate bias and more thoroughly understand the content.

During our English lessons, we have also answered some comprehension questions and we continue to explore how to answer in depth with the strategy of using PEE ( Point - what you are saying, Evidence - quotes from the book which support your point made, and Explanation - say how your evidence supports your point.)

In our maths lessons, we are learning about Roman Numerals and negative numbers. ( We hope we don't see any negative numbers in the temperature anytime soon!!)

Our topic lessons are history based and relate to the escapades of a certain scoundrel known as Guy Fawkes. We learnt some gory facts, such as the way that some people were executed back in the 1600s and that Guy Fawkes appears to have been tortured before he confessed to trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

November

Well storm Arwen didn't stop some of the year 5 children from performing some Christmas Carols at the Jarrow Christmas lights switch on, we just did it a few days later! Well done, to everyone who attended and thank you for giving up your time to come along.

Our computing this half term is looking at how to use vectors complete some intricate drawings.

December

Phew, what a busy term we've had. We finally got to finish the book Fire, Fire by Stuart Hill and thank goodness that we discovered that Tom managed to find Pip again and that Master Pepys was so relieved to have his pageboy back safe.

In our history lessons we've been finishing off learning about the causes and consequences of the English Civil War. We know how to use primary and secondary sources to discover some of the facts and that written accounts of battles can have a bias towards the side you support.

January

A very happy new year to everybody and welcome to another new topic for this year. Our topic for this term is Explorers and we will look at the life and exploits of explorers from the past as the present such as Christopher Columbus, who was the first person from Europe to make contact with the people from the Americas and opened up exploration of the area from Europe. We will also learn about the travels of Ibn Battuta and how his amazing travels as a medieval Muslim traveller who wrote one of the world's most famous travel logs, the Riḥlah. This great work describes the people, places, and cultures he encountered in his journeys along some 75,000 miles (120,000 km) across and beyond the Islamic world.

Before moving on to more modern day travellers, we will celebrate the exploits of Amelia Earhart and will link this to International Women's day on March 8th.

In PE we are now doing swimming and will explore team games.

February

Multiplication is one of our maths topics and we are learning how to multiply a 4-digit number by a 2-digit number.

March

A great start to March with a trip to the Foundation of Light for World Book Day. Lots of us got dressed up as an explorer to celebrate this day. We also met a Sunderland Footballer called Bailey Wright.

What a busy month! We had our 2nd trip of the month and it's only the 8th March! On this day we went orienteering in Cornthwaite Park in Whitburn. We were all given a map of the park and we learnt that we had to orientate our map so it pointed North; That helped us to understand how the map represented the park. We had a key to show us what was grass and what was buildings and seats, etc. On the maps were some small circles and we had to find that place in the park. When we were in the right place, we found a small plaque with a letter which we had to run back with to base to check we had found the correct spot. It was such fun and everybody was brilliant. Well done, Year 5!