Year 5 Gallery & Work 21/22

Year 5 have been looking at the theme of Mental Health Awareness this week, Loneliness. We have discussed why someone might feel lonely, what situations this would create, and how we could help someone in those situations. We learnt how important it is to help others when needed, and how much of a positive impact this can have on our day to day lives.

Last week in school, we were privileged enough to take part in a workshop, allowing us to build our own Maya Temple. This required careful listening and construction skills, as well as specific groups of wood to be latched together in the correct order! We had an incredible time building this structure and learnt some amazing facts along the way.   

During our first week back after the Easter break, Year 5 have wasted no time in diving into our new topic, the Mayans! The students started this new focus by researching the key dates and events throughout the history of the Mayan civilisation and recording them on their own personalised timeline. There were some fantastic designs on show and some extremely interesting facts that were found!

We have also begun designing our very own Mayan Masks. These were a central part of the Mayan culture and were used for, as the Mayan’s believed, both the afterlife and the living events. We focused on the different patterns, colours and specific symmetry of various designs.

During P.E this week, we have been incorporating many different skills into Handball and benchball. We went over the proper techniques required for throwing and catching, as well communication during game scenarios. During Handball you are not allowed to move with the ball, so these skills were key in order to be successful. Year 5 also learnt simple instructions such as ‘moving into space’ and ‘making yourself available to receive the ball’.

In the build up to Easter, we had a special visit from the team from Youth for Christ this week. We learnt all about the Easter story and the struggles that Jesus Christ went through for us. As part of this, we were able to discuss friendship, bravery and ask any questions that we had on this subject.

As we come towards the end of our Spring Term topic of Mountains and Rivers, we have been using Atlases to identify the major rivers in the world. We identified their source and their mouth, as well as the variety of different countries each one passes through. We were then able to locate each one’s specific location on a world map. Once we had done this, we investigated further and found out additional information about each river, which highlighted they are all extremely different!

This week in school was British Science Week and our Year 5 focus was based on recycling and what kind of impact it can have on our planet as a whole. As a year group, we have discussed what recycling involves, why it is so important to do and what we can do ourselves to ensure the best possible future for our planet! We each made informative posters with our own unique design and included key facts about recycling. We also took part in a study determining how many of us have re-usable water bottles at home or in school, and how many of us still use plastic. We were able to incorporate our Maths skills with this task, creating a tally and bar chart to show our results!  

During our first week back we have been focusing our efforts in class around our school novel for the week, ‘Cicada’ by Shaun Tan. We have discussed many of the different messages that this book brings and created our own Cicada templates from this. We have also been working hard on sketching and designing the home of Cicada (a thick woodland forest), using oil pastels to create a more well-rounded texture. Year 5 have loved world book day as a whole, with some amazing costumes on display!

We have used oil pastels to create beautiful art work of the Himalayan Mountains. Feeling inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe, we focused on bold colours to capture our unique styles and showcase our own interpretations.

This week in school we have been discussing the very important issue of mental health as well as some of the best ways to be dealing with it. We completed a worksheet in groups which allowed us to identify the things that help make us happy, proud and feel safe. This helped us to open up about our feelings on the subject and share ideas with each other.

As part of our continuing topic work, we have been working hard on researching different mountains around the world. We researched their height, location and different facts relating to each one. From this, we were able to compare the mountains and identify any differences between them. We found that their location in the world often had an impact their height, depending on what mountain range they were a part of!

This term, we have been enjoying getting into the routine of visiting our school library on a weekly basis. It is a fantastic privilege to have a resource like this available to us in our school and we have been taking full advantage! Each week we are able to choose a new book and listen to a class story in this fantastic setting!

This week, as part of our topic focus Mountains and rivers, we have been developing our sketching techniques using different mountain ranges as a focus. We have been inspired by the work of Georgia O’Keefe, who specialises in painting and sketching different landscapes. We have learnt to take into consideration proportion, foreground and background when doing this.

We have worked so incredibly hard the past week to write our diary entries! We took inspiration from our class novel The Abominables and wrote it from the point of view of the main character. We used emotive language and powerful vocabulary to really capture the feelings of the young girl, Agatha.  ‘I have decided I would love a pet yeti!’ Lily said

We have been continuing our Georgie O’Keefe inspired art project by focusing on one of her most famous paintings of the Himalayas. To progress on last week’s work, we have been developing our sketching skills by drawing to scale. Next week we will be mixing colours! We are so excited to see our final outcome by the end of half term.

To bring our Year group display to life, we have been creating our very own mountain! We have used a combination of tissue paper, glue and paint to create a textured effect. ‘It will look super cool having a board with a 3D element’ Logan said.

During our first two weeks of Spring term, we are building up to writing a Diary Entry as our first main piece of writing. We have been learning about different expansive sentence types to use, as well as emotive language to include. We have also been looking into forming our sentences in different orders, practising rearranging the clauses we use!

We have also researched the key features of a mountain; labelling a mountain range and writing and a definition of each feature.

We have started a new art project linked to our Mountains and Rivers topic by studying the artist Georgia O’Keeffe whose vibrant paintings have inspired us. We have been practising our sketching techniques by drawing lines to create a mountain scene which will be the base to our artwork.  

We have spent time this week writing a character description based on our class novel, Viking Boy. We explored which powerful verbs and expanded noun phrases would bring our character to life and help our audience to create a picture in their minds.

During R.E this term we have been focusing on our topic of Sikhism. We have been learning about what Sikhs believe as well as Gurdwara. We have been learning about all the different features of a Gurdwara and discussing these in detail during lesson time.

This week, we have started preparation for Christmas by preparing our Christmas card designs! We have been learning about the different pivots and linkages that will be a part of this and how to incorporate them into our overall ideas.

We have been working extremely hard in maths and learning all about factors and common factors. We have been using strategies and methods to help us do this efficiently. ‘It’s been really fun learning how to create factor trees!’ Callum said.

As part of our Year 5 art project, we have started looking into the work of Vincent Van Gogh. We found key facts about his life and work while observing a variety of his pieces of Art work. ‘I like how he has used the brush to create swirling patterns for the sky and ocean’ Amelia said.

Wonderful Writing

In English lessons, we have been writing a recount based on our class novel The Viking Boy. We wrote from the point of view of the Chief Viking. We explored different sentence types for effect. ‘I didn’t realise how short sentences could make writing sound so good!’ Millie said.

we have been working hard on our sentence structure, building up to writing a character description based on an extract from a book called ‘The Viking Boy’. We have been learning to add relative clauses and prepositions to increase the detail in our sentences, as well changing the clause structures to create cohesion!

In Year 5, we have been focusing on what kindness means to us and how kindness can be shown in different ways. We created mind maps and then looked at different scenarios. This allowed us to discuss how we can have a positive impact on someone’s day by doing something so small!

We wanted to show our appreciation to all those who risked their them in black and white as Lacie said, ‘I think it will look really effective if the image isn’t in colour’ We used vibrant red colours to make the poppy eye catching. ‘This is a really nice way to show we remember the soldiers,’ Amelia said.

For our last P.E session we had a visitor called Mr Birch come and teach us all about how to plan and create our own physical game or activity. He taught us all about the different movements needed for each type of activity and how to devise games based on this. Over the next coming week, it is our job to prepare and design our game in class, ready to show Mr Birch and apply It together!

Over the last few weeks we have been working hard on creating our own Dragon Information Text. We were inspired by our class novel ‘How to Train Your Dragon’, using this to explore new and formal vocabulary to add as much detail as possible. The results were amazing and we had so much fun bringing our Dragon to life!

We have been incredibly busy in Year 5 this past week! In PE we have been playing tag rugby and developing our skills. We have been throwing and catching, passing and learning how to dodge and avoid opponents. It has been great fun being out on the field!

Following our Viking topic, we have created our own longships. We used IPads and laptops to research designs to give us inspiration and then used a template to complete our design.

In PSHE, we have focused on how to respond to difficult situations that we may face in school. It was a good opportunity for us to discuss how we would react and what we would do if we were ever in that scenario.

Finally, as part of Black History Month, we have been learning about Martin Luther King. We made fact files about his life, created portraits of him and even made our own ‘I had a dream’ thought bubbles.

We have also written a detailed setting description based on our class novel ‘How to Train Your Dragon’, which in turn links to our Viking topic! We used powerful adjectives and descriptive language to paint a picture of the inside of the dragon’s cave.

As part of our Viking topic, over the past week in Year 5 we have been designing and creating our own Viking shields! We have discussed how each shield was tailor made to fit the size of each warrior and how each one had specific markings. We have tried to emulate that in our designs!

This week we have started our new topic - Raiders and Invaders! We began our week by creating a timeline of key events and decorated them in a Viking style.

In geography, we have been using maps, atlases and our own research to locate the Anglo Saxon’s invasion. We plotted the 7 kingdoms that Britain had been divided into.

As part of our DT project, we began to design our own Viking shields. We were inspired by traditional images we found through our research and we will be making the shields in the next 2 weeks!

As part of our PSHE topic, we have been looking at the strategies to handle conflict and ways we can resolve any disagreements. We had some brilliant discussions and created some beautifully presented work!

We spent time talking about positive words and kind phrases which we can say to one another. This helped us deepen our understanding of what a good friend is. We took these messages and created friendship bracelets to hand out to each other. We had lots of fun being creative.

We love to read in Year 5 and have each selected a book from our class library. We will be having regular class book swaps and discussing our favourite books and sharing our recommendations weekly.