Angels - Year 5

Autumn 1

Welcome back everyone, we hope that you’ve had a wonderful Summer break and made lovely memories with your friends and families in the sunshine (when we’ve had it). If you would like to, please read on to find out about all of the exciting things we have planned for the first half term of the new academic year.

During Autumn 1, the main area of maths that we are going to be looking at is Place Value. We are going to be spending time looking at Place Value up to 1 million (Y5) and 10 million (Y6) before moving on to looking at how to successfully partition numbers, finishing off with rounding numbers to the required degree of accuracy. For the remainder of the half-term, we will be looking at the four operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Our maths is taught through a mastery approach, giving the children time to explore the concept being taught using concrete resources before moving on to pictorial and then more abstract concepts (CPA approach). We will continue to encourage the children to practise their number recall through weekly 99 Club challenges and TT Rockstars battles as well as daily Flashback4's to encourage retention. We will continue with regular arithmetic practise- the purpose of this is to expose the children to a range of calculations and to help with the retrieval and retention of key number facts.

Our topic title for this half term will be ‘Lest we Forget’, which is a topic focusing around World War Two. In this topic, we will be delving the key events that led up to World War 2. We will also be digging into Operation Dynamo; finding out what that operation entailed, as well as empathising with people who were involved. We will be thinking about what evacuation would have been like during the war, and considering the importance of food rationing. We will also spend time thinking about The Blitz, which will allow a cross-curricular art opportunity where we will be creating a ‘Blitz scene’ using silhouette art.

Our English for this half term will be based on the book ‘Young, Gifted and Black’ by Jomia Wilson. In this unit, children will be following a small step approach looking closely at vocabulary, structural and language features before showcasing their learning by writing their final outcome: to write a series of diary entries about significant events in Matthew Henson’s life. The children will be exploring key events in his life, before applying their learning in writing a structurally-sound diary entry, encouraging empathy and ‘relatable’ anecdotes from these events.

In Whole Class Reading, we will continue to explore a range of texts and genres and we will continue to practise applying the key reading skills. In addition to this, we will be continuing to develop our love for reading by sharing our Class Read at the end of each day.

In RE this half term, we will be thinking about the question ' What does it mean for Christians to believe God is holy and loving?’ In this unit, the children will continue to build on their learning in years 3 and 4 where they focussed on learning about what a Gospel is, as well as identifying stories it may contain. Children will also build on their knowledge of God as a trinity, and reflect on why knowing God is such a personal experience as well as how He is portrayed to His believers.

In Science, we will be looking at the Year 6 unit focusing on ‘Forces’. By the end of the unit, children will be able to describe what the different forces are that act on objects, before studying in more detail what gravity is and its effect on an object; what is air, water resistance and what impact does that have on an object’s speed, before looking at impacts of friction.

Our PE for this half-term is going to be circuit training. This Circuit Training unit will allow pupils to focus on a range of different types of exercise and sporting values. Children will learn about the effects of different types of exercise and will take part in upper body, lower body and core muscle exercises. They will focus on sporting abilities such as being a good sportsperson, taking part in respectful competition, working as a team and playing to each other’s strengths. In addition to this, children will have a chance to plan their own circuit of exercises to develop someone’s all round fitness and will evaluate their own progress each lesson and throughout the unit.

For our music lessons, we will be using the Charanga unit based around ‘Music and Technology’. This helps children to appraise the music they listen to and identify instruments/rhythms used within it. After the appraisal, children are then tasked with composing their own music to perform individually or in small groups. They will begin by using body percussion and their voices to respond to different types of music, before delving into their compositions.

In our computing unit this half term, we will be focusing on Online Safety. During this unit, children demonstrate a clear understanding of what the SMART rules are and how they should be applied to using technology safely and respectfully.

Finally, in PSHCE, year 5 will be focusing on the Jigsaw unit, ‘Being me in my own world’. In this unit Year 5s will be thinking about how to face challenges in a positive way, before investigating possible challenges that may face within their schools, their local communities and their countries. They also will be considering how they can make behavioural choices, and the impact of behaving a particular way within their communities. For Year 6, they will be thinking about their goals and aspirations for next year, as well as any worries and concerns they may have. They will be learning about universal rights of theirs, before considering as well how their behaviour impacts on their communities.