On Thursday, Year 5’s science lessons enabled the children to show how well they can design, carry out and record an experiment independently of their teachers. Everyone knew the importance of looking back and thinking about all of their learning so far in Year 5 so that they could bring together different ideas. The children were tasked with identifying which type of tape was the stickiest – Sellotape, masking tape or duct tape. The exercise also allowed the children to show how well they can organise their learning together as part of a team of 3 or 4. The teachers were really impressed with the different scientific approaches taken by the children in tackling the same experiment and the time and care they put into recording and analysing their results.

Puppet making in Year 5 will be a big feature of our learning over the next couple of weeks! To get us going on this task, we first of all honed our stitching skills and learnt how to complete a running stitch, back stitch and whip stitch - it was more challenging than most of us thought it would be. Then we moved on to creating our puppet's head, including beads for eyes and wool for hair. Our final puppets will all represent a character from our core text Macbeth, so look out for loads of mini Macbeths, Lady Macbeths, Banquos, Malcolms and some witches soon.

World Book Day provided Year 5 with the opportunity to celebrate some of our favourite books and their authors.  There was lots of excitement and discussion throughout the day and we hope that all of the children across the school are inspired to enjoy reading even more.  

Over the course of this half-term, the children in Year 5 have been working to master a range of balances in their PE lessons. These have included individual and partner balances. They have been focusing on showing their strength by engaging their core and holding for 5 seconds. This week, the children paired up to create a sequence of 4 balances out of the selection we have been learning. This was a mixture of individual and partner balances where the children focused on their timing and synchronisation which they then performed as part of a sequence, in groups, to the rest of the class. The children had great fun evaluating each other's routines.

This week in science, Year 5 have been investigating how to separate mixtures.  We worked together to choose different approaches and use different types of equipment to separate a mixture of flour and oats (a sieve worked well), paper clips and sand (a magnet was useful) and finally sand and water.  For the last one we used filter paper as the fibres that make up the paper have holes which are so small, only the water can pass through and the sand gets left behind. 

Year 5 have been inspired by the artistic work of Andy Goldsworthy to use some of the natural materials they could find in our beautiful school environment to create their own natural collage.  We also learnt that art of this nature is ephemeral – it will not last forever so appreciate it while you can before it is gone!