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Year 5

Welcome back Year Five! 

We hope you have all had a lovely and restful Christmas and New year.  We have a really busy second half of the year with lots of learning to take place.  The Autumn term went so quickly and the children worked hard and gained lots of new knowledge. This was rounded off perfectly with a trip to Peterborough Cathedral where we participated in their “Searching for Saxons” day. The children were able to show off their knowledge of all things Anglo-Saxon as well gain new insight into Anglo-Saxon Peterborough. 

This term, we will complete our “Leaving a Legacy” topic. We started investigating the Industrial Revolution in Britain. We will learn how this was a significant turning point in British history, a period of very rapid change which transformed the way most people in Britain lived. We will learn about key inventors and inventions in this period and revisit other key historical figures such as Queen Victoria.  We will also investigate what life was like for poor people during this era.  

When we return after the half-term break, our topic will be “Many Worlds One Planet”. Within this Geography topic Year Five will focus on Antarctica. This has always been a very popular topic with the previous Year Five children enjoying finding out about this extreme environment and the fearless and curious explorers and scientists who have made the dangerous journey far south to explore this fascinating and mysterious continent.  

English Writing and Reading lessons will also be linked to our topics. We will finish reading the excellent novel The Vanishing Trick by the author Jenni Spangler which is a historical adventure novel with a magical twist following the hero, an orphan called Leander, and the mysterious Madam Pinchbeck.  We will be basing our writing on this novel this half term and will plan and write our own story about one of the other many children in the novel paying attention to developing the characters and setting. We will be reading the novel in whole-class reading sessions as well as independently and in pairs.  

Spelling will be taught in short daily sessions working on the key Year 5 spelling objectives as well as first revising key areas from previous years.  

Maths will follow the Year Five curriculum as well as extra arithmetic sessions where methods are taught and revised separately with regular assessment. A big focus for Year Five this term is fractions where we will be learning how to multiply with fractions. The children will move onto the long multiplication method for multiplying up to a 4-digit number by a 2-digit number as well as learning the short division method.   

Science and computing will be taught as separate weekly lessons. Design and Technology and Art will be covered in two five-weekly blocks. Our Art topic will be a painting and mixed-media topic looking at portraits and self-portraits. Our Design and technology topic will be about investigating and building bridges and we will link this to our Industrial Revolution topic.  

Our PE day is still Thursday so send your child to school in full PE kit including trainers on Thursdays.  

Homework 

There is an expectation that children will read at home daily either with an adult or independently. At the moment children are reading in school but not necessarily with an adult. Reading logs are to be completed daily and handed in every Monday.   

Spelling homework will be sent home every Monday as a list of spellings to be tested in school on the Friday. Please ask if you wish to know how your child has got on with these tests. We would also like to thank you for supporting your child learning these spellings last term as we have seen many children getting high scores and the whole class has scored 100% twice! There will also be a half-termly test of common exception words which we are constantly learning in class. 

All children have their login details for TT Rockstars. They should continue to improve their rapid recall of multiplication facts using this. We will be awarding certificates to those who we can see are interacting well with TT Rockstars as fast recall of multiplication facts is integral for all the maths work we will be doing this term.  We check in on how the children are doing on TT Rockstars every Monday. There is an expectation that every child completes the six Garage sessions set every week. 

Please ensure children come to school each day with a water bottle so they keep hydrated. They are welcome to refill this throughout the day.  

We will, as always, work our hardest to ensure that the children have a happy, productive and successful Year 5 which we are sure they will.  

Please come to speak to Mrs Bailey or Mrs Culleton if you have any queries or concerns or you can email any queries to schooloffice@sacredheart.peterborough.sch.uk.  These can then be forwarded to us and we can reply/ make a phone call if needed. 

 

Thank you for your support, 

Mrs Bailey, Mrs Culleton and Ms Fernandes.