Fair Furlong Primary School

YEAR 5 : Dudley and Beethoven

Term 1
This term Year 5 have been answering the question, 'How different would life be if you lived in Mexico?' we have compared social, political and economic differences between Mexico and the UK, as well as nutrition, lifestyle and sports. We have also looked at constructing Mayan temples and combined our maths, art and design technology skills to recreate our own temples using clay.

In Writing lessons we have looked at non chronological reports and historical story writing. We have used the texts Hero Twins and The Rain Player as a stimulus to recreate our own stories around a clash of the `Mayan Gods. We created two explanation texts this term. One based on our knowledge and research of Mayans and titled 'Who are the Mayans?' and the second used on our science learning Lifecycles, which focussed on 'How does a tadpole become a frog?'

We have been working hard in maths to extend our knowledge of place value and decimals ad began to convert decimal fractions and applying our learning in a real word context to both money and units of measure.

Term 2
This term we have enjoyed our learning of the Vikings and Anglo Saxons. We have learned how England came to be and has gone on to become Great Britain. We used our knowledge of the Vikings, as well as our learning in food that is processed, reared, caught and grown to create a Viking Stew known then as a Skause. The Children really enjoyed tasting a variety of vegetables raw and then preparing and cooking them to taste later that day. We have also spent a lot of time reviewing and securing our knowledge of Multiplication and Division and using this within an algorithm to tackle long multiplication and short division problems. We are continuing to work through and deepen our skills with reasoning and problem solving.

Term 3

This term year five have investigating the Victorian period in order to answer the question Would you prefer school now, or then?’ In order to explore the Victorians, we did a deep dive into researching not only school and education, but home life, family dynamics and the impact of the industrial revolution. We investigated crime fiction set in the Victorian period and wrote a suspense story based around a Sherlock Holmes style case. In math’s we have been working on calculating area and perimeter and ended this term with applying multiplying and dividing by 10, 100, 1000 with converting units of measure. In science we have been looking at forces: air/water resistance, friction and gravity to lead us onto our space unit next term.

Term 4

This term year five have had a deep dive into space to answer the question ‘why don’t we see the moon all of the time?’ To get really excited about space, the explorer dome came to visit, introducing us to the planets, nebulae and stars. We really enjoyed looking at the consolations. Leading to research in science about the solar system, orbiting the sun and the lunar cycle.

In literacy we have been writing recounts and non-chronological reports. For our recount we focused on the Apollo 13 mission, and the astronauts return home. We have been doing loads of research into the planets in order to write a non-chronological report, organising our research into categories.

For math’s we have been working on fractions, adding, multiplying and converting improper fractions into mixed numbers.

Term 5

What have we been learning?

This term year five have been working on their problem solving and imagination skills.

In literacy we have been reading the ‘Nowhere Emporium’ by Ross MacKenzie. We have been following the journey of the first chapter, and using it to develop our own story.

In science we have been answering the question ‘Can we purify the sea?’. To answer this, we have been looking at solutions, and whether we can separate salt from water. We have also looked at chemical reactions and the products they make. We have learned to differentiate between reversible and irreversible changes and can identify examples of these.

In math’s we have been working on angles and shapes. We have been using protractors to measure acute, obtuse and reflex angles, and using this knowledge to estimate angles.

In DT we have been working with pulleys and gears, and creating a toy with a pulley or gear system that we would find in the nowhere emporium.