Over the last couple of weeks in Year 5, we have been writing a persuasive letter from Ernest Shackleton to a prospective crew member. We have been looking at the writing skills needed to successfully persuade as well as learning how to use relative clauses to create complex sentences. In our science topic 'forces', we have looked at gravity, friction and air resistance. This week we investigated whether the surface area of a parachute had an impact on the air resistance and how quickly the parachute would fall. In maths, we have been multiplying and dividing numbers by 10, 100 and 1000 and continued to consolidate our understanding of the vocabulary linked to multiplication. 

Last week, we enjoyed welcoming a visitor to our school for our Anglo-Saxon day. The day helped to reinforce our learning about what life was like in Anglo-Saxon times. The children took part in many creative activities including: an archaeological dig, illumination writing, making medicines with herbs, candle making, making ink and writing with a quill. Thank you so much to the parent helpers who joined us for this wonderful day.

In maths, we have started our new topic, addition and subtraction. We have been learning how to estimate and approximate answers to calculations by using our understanding of rounding numbers.

We have completed our narrative writing inspired by the Lost Thing and have been really impressed with the imaginative endings the children have written.

In science, we have been learning about the phases of the moon - when you look up in the sky tonight, you should see a waning gibbous! 

Last week the children launched into our Earth and space science topic with some astronaut training!

This week, Year 5 have been refining our watercolour skills. We have built on our colour mixing work from a previous lesson by using various shades of green to show the effect that light has on trees. We did this by using lighter shades of green which we then changed subtly to darker shades to emphasise the position of the Sun. Additionally, we practised a variety of techniques when painting our trees such as “wet on wet” and scribbling with the objective of making our trees lifelike. We will use these methods when painting our final piece which will be a landscape of our school field. 

We all hope you enjoyed our assembly on Wednesday morning.  It was great to share our happy memories of our trip to the Isle of Wight with all of the parents and we are already excited about going to Marchants Hill in Year 6. During our English lessons this week, we have been learning about poems called kennings which contain words on each line that describe something or somebody – essentially an extended metaphor - for example:

Coffee drinker

Finger pointer

Homework giver

One of our favourite activities this week was to develop our watercolour skills - we learnt how to mix paints to give us a range of different colours.

Oh…the answer to the kenning poem is a teacher.

Year 5 were buzzing this week when the London Beekeepers Association paid us a visit to educate the children about the vital role bees play in our lives. We learned about the different types of bees and their roles within the hive, these being the drones, worker bees and the queen. We also were able to taste some real honey that the bees had created!