Hobbits – Y5
Stronger Together!
Class teacher- Mrs Staples
Mr Douglas, Mrs Thornton, Mrs Smith and Mrs Moffitt also help us with our learning
Autumn 1
WWF
Our project work for the first two weeks was to learn all about our adopted animal – a tiger. We spent a long time learning all about tigers, where they live, what threats face them and how we can protect them.
We have created information posters in groups. We planned, designed and created these all by ourselves. We also sketched tiger faces, using a step by step guide. We then coloured these using colouring pencils, using different pressures to create different shades of the key colours.
English
In English, we have studied the novel ‘Goodnight, Mister Tom.’ We unpicked unfamiliar vocabulary and shared some of new words with the class, we also made connections to the text such as text to text and text to self. Following our analysis of the text, we watched the film and listened to the audio book to look at different interpretations of the text.
We learnt the opening extract using Talk4Writing and discussed the themes within the text. We talked about how the author has used non-standard English in the speech and how this helps the reader imagine the character. Following this, we got to know the two main characters, Mister Tom and William. Choosing different scenarios from the opening chapter, we thought about how the character would be feeling and what they would’ve been thinking, using P.E. to support our thoughts.
Our next challenge was to compare the text to another text. We read ‘Wave me goodbye’ and analysed this text as a class. We discussed the parallels to the storyline and characters and used our comparing and contrasting skills to further understand the characters we have met during our Reading Phase.
We moved onto our writing towards the end of the half term. Our outcome was to create a new opening extract in the style of Goodnight, Mister Tom. We created new characters, used the Descriptaurus to gather words and phrases and thought about the setting. We created a scaffolded version, helping Mrs Staples with her writing first and then creating our drafts. We then self and peer-reviewed our writing and then listened to feedback from the teacher using Seesaw and improved our writing further.
For our independent piece, we used what we have learnt throughout our journey and developed new characters. We have peer-reviewed our writing, supporting one another to ensure our writing was the best it could be. Finally, we published our writing in our Presentation books and some children wrote it up for the corridor display!
Maths
In Maths, we focused on our key skills in place value which involved a lot of learning around the value of each digit in a number. We also looked at ordering and comparing numbers which meant that we really had to apply our understanding of place value.
After that, we moved onto addition with a focus on using formal methods to solve addition problems with up to seven digit numbers. We even looked how we could add numbers with decimals. Again, we used our knowledge of place value to help us with our understanding.
Science
Our science topic this half term has been forces. The children have shown great enthusiasm for the topic and have enjoyed making predictions and testing out their theories with a number of pupil led investigations. Throughout the half term, they have worked in groups to explore the effects of gravity, air resistance and water resistance.
P.E.
This term, the children have been swimming. They are all becoming much more confident in the water and have been learning how to push and glide as well as practising their strokes.
Computing
Our Computing lessons have focussed on staying safe on the internet and coding. The children have been completing coding challenges in order to familiarise themselves with how to create algorithms and debugging code when there are any errors. We have also been concentrating on the vocabulary linked with computing so children can explain what they are doing.
History
Our overall enquiry is ‘Why was winning the Battle of Britain, in June 1940, so important?’ For this half term we have focussed on the question ‘How serious was the risk of invasion by Nazi Germany in 1940?’
We have used lots of different primary and secondary sources of information to help us answer this question. We have looked at maps, diaries, top secret documents, photographs and video footage. Using discussion skills, we talked about how reliable the information was and how we could interpret it in different ways.
To support our learning in History, we visited The Imperial War Museum North. During this visit, we looked at historical artefacts and evidence from WW2. We also spoke to Frank, a WW2 veteran who was a pilot in WW2. He spoke to us about his experiences and answered our questions.
After half term we will be writing up our answer to the question ‘How serious was the risk of invasion by Nazi Germany in 1940?’ before moving on to our next question ‘What did Hitler need if an invasion was to succeed?’
Geography
Our overall enquiry is ‘How is Climate Change affecting the world?’ For this half term we have focussed on the question ‘Why is Elhaji cleaning shoes on the streets on Banjul?’
We have been learning all about Elhaji, a little boy living in The Gambia, and how Climate Change is affecting his life. We have used lots of different photographs to make inferences about his lifestyle and why his life is so different compared to ours. We have also used maps to locate The Gambia and Banjul where Elhaji lives and works, but also Njau where his mother and sisters live and work.
We developed many of our skills over the half term, particularly reaching informed conclusions and categorising. One activity that we enjoyed was a detective activity. We were given lots of clues about Elhaji’s life to help us answer the question ‘Why is Elhaji cleaning shoes on the streets on Banjul?’ We had to put these into four categories and discuss how they helped us to understand the reasons why he wasn’t in school and why he was working. Using our knowledge of Climate Change, we quickly recognised that Drought was the main geographical cause of poverty for Elhaji’s family and therefore the reason he was working on the streets. We talked about drought and what it means and using the map discussed how it would affect the people who lived and worked in villages as they were mainly farmers, working around a river.
Next half term we will be travelling to Australia to investigate how Climate Change is affecting Olivia and her family.
RE
Our topic this half term was ‘Christianity – The Church.’ During this unit of work, we were aiming to answer the question ‘How do people decide what to believe?’
Firstly, we considered sources of authority. After finding a definition of authority, we looked at examples of both religious and non-religious authority. We then created an acrostic poem about authority.
Next, we read the Apostle’s Creed and identified the Christian beliefs and values within it. We also discussed how these beliefs and values might have an impact on a believer.
In addition to this, we learned that the Holy Trinity represents the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We also interpreted symbols of The Holy Trinity and then designed our own giving reasons for our creations.
Finally, we investigated what denominations are, and the differences between them. We researched a variety of denominations in the Christian faith and found facts about them. For example, Catholic, Methodist and Orthodox.
PSHE
Our topic this half term was ‘Being Me in My World’
As part of this topic, we discussed how we could face new challenges positively and set personal goals.
We then investigated our rights and responsibilities as a British Citizen and as a member of our school.
Next, we made choices about our own behaviour because we know how rewards and consequences feel.
In addition to this, we learned about how an individual’s behaviour can impact on a group.
To finish our topic, we learned about democracy and how having a voice benefits our school community.
Autumn 2
English
This half term we have continued with our WW2 theme, but we have read novels that have looked at the journey of children living in Nazi occupied countries such as Poland and Germany. We have read and analysed extracts from ‘The Silver Sword’ ‘When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit’ and ‘The Cats in Krasinski Square.’ We have used the point and evidence to answer inference questions around the texts and created video recommendations for The Cats in Krasinski Square. We learnt key scenes using Talk4Writing and discussed the characters and their qualities. We have written a description, using the Descriptaurus and choosing appropriate vocabulary to paint a picture in the reader’s mind.
Next half term we will be continuing to analyse these texts and making comparisons between them. Our final piece of writing will be a diary entry linked to an action scene. Following on from this, we will be immersing ourselves in narrative poetry, specially The Highway Man. This will link to our next History focus, in Spring Two.
History (UKS2)
This half term we have continued to study The Battle of Britain. Our focus has been ‘What did Hitler need if an invasion was to succeed?’ We refreshed our memories of the situation in Europe in June 1940 and made predictions about what we thought the outcome of battle would be, using the evidence we had already analysed. We looked at numerical and written evidence to conclude what Hitler would need to successfully invade and occupy Britain. We compared The Royal Navy and The Kriegsmarine as well as the RAF and the Luftwaffe and concluded that Hitler would need to strengthen his Kriegsmarine, but to also increase the number of aircrafts he had to be successful. Most of us thought that Hitler would have enough power, money and weaponry to successfully invade Britain and we were interested to find out how Hitler failed. Our next enquiry is ‘Why did Britain win the Battle of Britain?’
Geography (UKS2)
We have continued to investigate how Climate Change is affecting people all over the world. Our enquiry this half term was ‘Why can’t Olivia afford to insure her home?’ We found out that Olivia lives in Kinglake, Australia, an area that has been affected by heatwaves and subsequently bushfires. We looked at the environment that Olivia lived in and noticed that there was a lot of vegetation in the area, we also learnt about the events of Black Saturday in 2009 and compared climate data to see how Climate Change has caused an increase in the number of heatwaves and bushfires. We then wrote a persuasive letter to the insurance company to encourage them to reduce the high cost of insurance for Olivia. Next half term we will be investigating how climate change is affecting Britain and Greenland and we will be learning about what the world is doing to tackle the effects of Climate Change.
Art
As part of art week, we have focused on techniques and skills linked to drawing. We sketched a portrait of a soldier, developing our line and shape skills. We also create a collage to mount the sketch onto and focussed on texture with this. As well as this we have created a blitz scene. We used oil pastels to create the background and used water to blend the colours together. We discussed the use of a dark blue or navy for the dark sky as this gives more depth to the scene, this is something that we learnt from Van Gogh who also used blues and navies to paint the sky in ‘Starry Night.’ We then added tracing paper spot lights and a skyline and aircrafts from black card.
DT
For the Christmas Fair, we have decided to decorate and package doughnuts! We have conducted research into Christmas style packaging as well as different doughnut decorating styles, such as a Santa jacket or a festive fox. We have also developed marketing posters and signs to encourage more people to buy and therefore this will lead to a larger profit.
RE
Our topic this half term was ‘Christianity – God.’ During this unit of work, we were aiming to answer the question ‘Why is it sometimes difficult to do the right thing?’
Firstly, we thought about how stories might contain important truths and messages for people to learn from. We read a variety of Aesop’s fables and discussed what a moral was and why it was important for stories to contain these morals. We then linked this to how Christians believe there are important messages in the stories in the Bible.
Next, we read the Creation story in Genesis in the Bible and explored why Adam and Eve disobeyed God. As well as understanding the events in the story, we had to also understand what it means to disobey somebody and understand why consequences are given. Around an image of Adam and Eve, in one coloured pencil, we asked questions to explore why they disobeyed God and in another coloured pencil, we wrote how they felt about the consequences of their actions.
In addition to this, we looked at the importance of forgiveness. We read The Parable of the Lost Son and recognised forgiveness in that story. We discussed how different it would’ve been if the son hadn’t had been forgiven by his father. We also linked the story to forgiveness in the book of Genesis in the Bible.
Finally, we looked at The Lord’s Prayer and discussed what is meant in each line and how Christians find it important. We then looked at The Ten Commandments and discussed how Christians might use them as a source of guidance. Using a diamond nine, we arranged the commandments in order of their importance according to our beliefs. As part of our challenge, we had to state which commandment we deemed to be most important and justify our reasons for this.
PSHE
Our topic this half term was ‘Celebrating Difference.’
As part of this topic, we were aware of our own culture and understand that sometimes cultural differences can sometimes cause conflict. We filled out a ‘Culture Wheel’ for ourselves which had the following categories included: family, food, clothes, celebrations, hobbies and music. We then shared these with each other as there are a variety of cultures in our classroom.
We then looked at racism. We had to understand what it is and be aware of our own attitudes towards people from different cultures. We watched a video clip of two siblings who had suffered from racism. We then answered some questions about the video clip and then looked at ‘Ribbon Against Racism’ designs on the internet. We then created our own ‘Ribbon Against Racism’ designs.
Next, we focussed on being able to say a range of strategies to manage our feelings in bullying situations. We were given a scenario of a girl called Carol and had to decide whether she was being bullied or not. On orange post it note, we wrote a way that either Carol or someone in her class could help solve this situation or make it better. On a yellow post it note, we wrote something that might make the situation worse. We then looked at explaining the difference between direct and indirect types of bullying. On our post it notes, we wrote whether it was direct or indirect types of bullying. We then created our own Snakes and Ladders games with a focus of a type of bullying.
To finish our topic, we watched a video clip of a group of children who lived in a village in Ghana. They juggled working on a cocoa plantation with going to school. They talked about how dangerous it is working on the plantation. We discussed whether it is right or not for these children to work on the plantation and then wrote a Haiku about it.
Maths
At the beginning of Autumn 2, we continued to look at subtraction, using formal written methods and have now moved onto Multiplication and division.
Recently the children have been looking at how to multiply and divide by 10 and 100. To do this the children used their knowledge of place value and moved the digits to the left or right. This included multiplying and dividing decimal numbers. We have also looked at formal written methods, including long multiplication and division working with up to four-digit numbers.
Science
Our science topic has been Earth and Space. The children have really researching and learning about our solar system and about how space affects the earth including the seasons and night and day. The children have compiled a lot of information and applied it to write explanations and create factual posters.
Computing
In computing, the children have been practicing their coding. They have been creating algorithms using variables and functions. They have also been challenging themselves by de-bugging code which is not quite correct.
P.E.
The children have continued to go swimming as part of their P.E. this term. All the children are very confident in the water with most of the class having swam at the deep end of the pool recently. The children have been working hard to improve their ultimate swimming distance and have also practiced how to stay safe in deep water.
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