Year 5 2024 - 2025

Autumn Term

Hello and welcome to our Year 5 class page - here you will find everything you need to know about what your child is learning at school. My name is Mr Campbell, and I will be your child’s teacher this year assisted by highly skilled Mrs Rickett and Mrs Finch.

Topic

During this term, we will be learning all about our early settlers, the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings.

Alongside developing key historical skills such as chronology and source evaluation, we will be enriching our curriculum through designing, creating and evaluating our own Viking longboats in Forest School.  Undoubtedly, the children will enjoy our cross-curricular approach to this topic as we establish which paints and colours would have been used for decorating our own Saxon-inspired illuminated letters and how the language introduced by the Vikings is still very evident today in the names of our town, cities and counties.  We will also be exploring how Viking myths and legends have been passed down from generation to generation and will use our computing skills to develop our own Viking inspired books.

English

In English, we will be building on the skills we have developed in Year 4 with a real focus on edit and improving the basics.  We will strive to become more consistent in our use of full stops, commas and capital letters, whilst securing our understanding of different sentence types.  In writing, we will be following two texts throughout the term (Beowulf and Arthur and the Golden Rope).  Through our work on Beowulf, we will be using our narrative skills and imagination to write a further adventure for the mythical Nordic warrior, inventing our own monsters and incorporating motives and viewpoints for them.   Whilst our work on Arthur and the Golden Rope will see us build on the setting and character descriptions composed in the first half term to further secure our narrative writing skills and create our own Nordic poetry.  

We will be having a big push on oracy this term.  We believe that in developing our speaking and listening skills and expanding our vocabulary, we will have a better understanding of a wider range of quality literature which will support us with a wide range of transferrable, lifelong skills.  You will see attached below the texts that we will be reading as a class this year (these are separate to our English driver texts noted above).  The texts have been carefully selected to provide your child with age-appropriate literature which can be accessed by all and cover a wide range of subjects which we believe will enrich your child's learning experience whilst in Year 5.   Furthermore, you will find attached a below a document which we will be using to expand our vocabulary understanding this year.  This vocabulary is progressive and builds on what your child has learned in previous year groups.  It is important that by the end of Year 5 that your child has been exposed to this new vocabulary regularly, across a range of different contexts, developing a secure understanding.

Maths

During Autumn term, there will be a big emphasis on arithmetic.  As this cohort of children have recently sat their MTC multiplication check, I am looking forward to working with them on developing some key concepts which require a solid foundation knowledge of times tables.  Initially, the children will be exploring the place value of numbers up to, and beyond, one million.  They will be reading, writing, and interpreting the value of increasingly large numbers and this will take a level of resilience as the children grapple with expanded place value charts.  The children will move on when they are secure to develop their understanding of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in the lead up to Advent and Christmas.  As is always the case, regular assessment checks will be made, and interventions will be put in place for any child who is struggling with gaps in their knowledge. Keep an eye out in your child's planner for any activities which we feel you can support your child with at home in order to help them progress.

Religious Education

In RE this term, we will start the year by learning about the meaning of our school Mission Statement - Love Jesus, Love Learning, Love Life - alongside developing our understanding of Creation.  We will then move onto reflecting on the life of one of our most important prophets, Moses.  We will recap on our prior learning about his childhood in Egypt before identifying what we can learn as Christians from his courage and belief in setting the Israelite people free and learning of how God delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai when he felt as if all hope may be lost.

To end the term, we will be thinking of people who are inspirational to us and linking them to the heroic work and beliefs of Saint Vincent De Paul as well as exploring the season of Advent and what it means to us as Roman Catholics, preparing for the birth of our Lord.  

Homework

At home, there are many ways in which you can support your child with their learning this year. Each week, Google Classroom will have details of reinforcement activities that can be completed in Home Learning books or online through the Atom Learning homework portal. There are also the Spelling Shed and Times Table Rockstars apps that the children are warmly invited to use as regularly as possible.

Children should also continue to read every night and to have their reading logged in their reading record each time.  It is imperative that pupils read aloud regardless of their book band level (even if they are free readers) as we strive to improve inference, deduction, intonation, and basic oracy skills.  Reading makes the curriculum accessible, and I cannot stress enough the importance of your child reading daily at home. 

Children's planners will note when your child has read in school with an adult as well as times when your child has partaken in a Guided Reading group session and sometimes next steps will be suggested for you to best support your child at home.  All parents and carers are asked to sign page 4 in your child's planner which sets out our homework expectations for the year.

Your child will have weekly spellings which are pertinent to their needs and curriculum expectations which will be written in their planners of a Friday (and also uploaded onto Google Classroom weekly should your child be absent).  Children will have a week of learning their spellings in school and at home before a spelling assessment the following Friday.

PE Days

Tuesday morning with Mr Campbell/Mrs Rickett (Tag Rugby)

Friday afternoon with Mr Campbell/Mrs Rickett (Yoga)

Please make sure that your child comes to school in their PE kits on these days.

Music

In Year 5, the children have the wonderful opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument.  These sessions will be led by our violin tutor Miss Sherwood from Edsential Musical Routes.  Her expertise is second to none and we now have several Year 6 children who have opted to continue violin tuition this year.

Pupils will receive their instruments within the first two weeks of term and violin lessons will take place of a Thursday afternoon.  It is therefore vital that the children remember to bring their instrument into school with them every Thursday unless stated otherwise.

To keep the violins tuned and well looked after, please ensure that they are kept in a safe space which isn't too hot (like near a radiator) or somewhere that is too cold (for example the boot of a car in the winter months).

Forest School

Unless stated otherwise, our Forest School dates for this year are as follows:

19th September 2024

14th November 2024

23rd January 2025

13th March 2025

8th May 2025

Please ensure that your child comes to school on these days dressed accordingly to the weather forecast in old clothes which you don’t mind getting dirty.  During the winter months, it will be imperative that the children are wrapped up with multiple layers and wear boots/old shoes.  See the LOTC tab above for more details on what to wear and to keep up to date on what your child has been getting up to working beyond the classroom.

Open invitation

You are always welcome to chat with myself after school, or to make an appointment at the school office, if you any questions you would like me to answer.  Together everyone achieves more, so open communication is imperative, and I am looking forward to working alongside you to support your child in making lots of progress this year.

Thank you,

Mr Campbell

Year 5 Teacher & Deputy Headteacher