classes

Click below for individual class pages

Dear All - Welcome to Year 5 23-24.

Art

To start the term we participated in Bessemer's annual art week. This years theme was 'Flower Power'. We took inspiration from Georgia O'Keeffe for our individual art pieces. We also looked at Kaffe Fassett and Takashi Murukami to inspire our collaborative pieces. 

Maths

We are continuing to build our knowledge of place value. We have understood place value up to 1 million. We have been partitioning up to 6-digit numbers and working with number lines of the same value.

English

In English we have been reading Julius Zebra, a story about a Zebra who gets captured in his home in Africa and taken to Rome to compete as a Gladiator for Emperor Hadrian himself!

We have been practising writing direct speech. We have been building on our knowledge of subordinate clauses from year 4 and challenging ourselves to use them in our writing. We have written a formal letter of complaint from Septimus to Emperor Hadrian, ensuring we include formal language and modal verbs!

Guided Reading

We read more of our story – Julius Zebra, then acted out the steps of becoming a gladiator, from pledging our oaths to the ‘Familia Gladiatoria’, practising our gladiator stances, to reciting and re-creating the ancient art of poking, all whilst never taking our eyes off of our opponents! Great Gladiator apprentices we all made!

History

Our topic this half term is Roman Britain. We will be learning about the Romans and their impact on Britain and historical legacy.

So far we have used our mapping skills to map the expansion of the Roman Empire. We used the old maps paired with modern day maps to identify which modern day countries were part of the Roman Empire.

We have investigated and become acquainted with many of the Roman Gods. We used our new knowledge to make a 'Top Trump' card game.

Chemistry

Our topic is 'Properties and Changes of Materials'. We have been identifying the properties of different materials and linking that to our previous knowledge - such as understanding whether something is a conductor of electricity based on its properties.

We investigated thermal conductors by carrying out an experiment  using various different cups containing boiling water. We measured how quickly the temperature of the water decreased over a period of time. We then chose the data of one of the cups to display on a line graph.

P.E.

In P.E. this term we are focusing on multi skills. We are improving our agility, balance and co-ordination to then apply in game settings such as basketball, football and tag rugby.

Music

We have the incredible opportunity this term to participate in the Young Voices Concert 2024 at the O2 Arena! For the next 10 weeks we will be practising the songs for the concert with Duncan. 

Spanish

This term we are revising phonics and asking and answering questions about our pets.

Museum Of London Docklands Trip 

A really lovely trip today to the Docklands Museum Of London - for a wander around the galleries looking at the Docks during the Victorian era and a workshop with a chance to handle Victorian Artefacts.Among other things we learned that a "gazunder' is not a giant teacup! Well done to all the children for impeccable behaviour in the Museum and on the transport there and back- and a big thanks to the parent helpers. 

In Art and design -as part of our Victorian Topic we have designed and made our own version of a William Morris printed repeat design. The children looked at his work noticing the symmetry and nature inspired motifs to design and make two of their own poly board printing blocks, which they used to print their own versions.

Spring 1 

Our Spring 1 Topic has a Geography focus - and is about London- why it is where it is - how it has changed over the centuries and what activities take place there.

In Yr5, this Half Term's Science Topic is Forces. We began by looking at Galileo's challenge to Aristotle, who believed that phenomena could be worked out by logic alone. Gallileo disagreed and said that, whilst logic was important observation and experimentation were crucial in order for an hypothesis to become a theory.

We tested Gallileo's theory of Gravity (the force, which stops us from floating away from the Earth's surface) by dropping tomatoes of different weights from a height  and filming in 'slo-mo' to see which landed first. 

There was hardly any difference between the timing, which surprised us, we then spent the next two lessons looking at the impact of height and air-resistance on falling objects- which Gallileo concluded were the factors which created the slight difference seen in the timing of the drops.  

We looked at the work of London born artist Patrick Caufield – noting his focus on ‘outline’ and use of bold, often complementary colours. We painted London Skylines based on his style, creating a smooth paint texture by outlining the shapes with a thin brush and using a thicker brush to infill. We made sure that we painted the lighter tones first and though about colour combinations.

London Eye Trip 24 

This half term our topic is London. In English we have been reading the London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd as well as learning about the physical and Human Geography of the River Thames from its source in the Cotswold Hills to its mouth in the Thames Estuary. This is always a good excuse for a trip to the London Eye - to try and work out for ourselves how Salim did manage to disappear whilst 'riding the Eye'. Thank you to all parents who came along to support us, it didn't rain and the view was probably quiet close to 25 miles in all directions.

Spring 2 - Geography Topic - North America 

We have been really busy again this term- please see below for pictures of some of the activities we have been up to. 

In English we started the term by looking at different genres of traditional stories- we sorted story openings into myths, fables, fairy stories, legends and folk tales. After a week of looking at Traditional Mexican Folk Tales, we read Adelita - the Mexican Cinderella - we worked in groups to think about the story from different characters point of view - hot seating in role- planning and re-writing from a different perspective.

Our Topic this term is North America - we began by making sure that we know the position of the continents and oceans - we drew these in pairs onto balloons and included - key lines of Longitude and Latitude.

In Science, we have spent this half term looking at the lifecycles of plants and animals. So as to understand the lifecycle of a flowering plant we dissected a daffodil to identify and label the parts involved in the production of seeds.

We made our own Mexican Day Of the Dead Masks from clay - learning how to securely attach pieces of clay to each other using slip and score.

In Maths this half term we have focused on the links between - fractions, decimals and percentages, we ended this topic with an investigation looking at amounts of key ingredients needed for each class for our Mexican Food Day. 

World Book Day - 

In English we have been writing information about Healthy Eating - Our Mexican food day connects this to our topic. With our understanding of the Mexican Climate - arid in the North and Tropical in the South we discussed the types of crops grown there and how they are used in the cuisine. We made a range of healthy Mexican dishes - salsa, guacamole, and quesadilla - using corn tortilla and had a tasting session using our own homemade tortilla in the afternoon.

We began the term with 3 days of DT working on our Future City Project - designing buildings for a city on Mars. We researched Mars and learned about the site specific conditions, which would impact our designs as well as thinking about the things we wanted for our new city and the things we did not want to import from Earth - such as pollution and poor quality housing. We also learned lots of useful DT practical skills - such as attaching using flaps and glue guns - stabilising and creating curves and some of us used electricity in our designs to create moving parts and lighting. 

We were lucky to have the architect Lorna Edwards, come and judge the entries - she was really impressed with quality of the work.

This half term our Science topic is Space - we began by learning about the position of the planets in our solar system and the time they took to turn on their own axes as well around the sun. We then made some videos using the 'I Can Animate' App- look out for Mar's elliptical orbit.