Welcome to Year 5 @ West Wick

 

We are so excited to get to know you all and we are looking forward to investigating our new learning enquiry together.

 

Term 1 & 2 Overview of learning

Our first Learning Enquiry is “Why is it important to look after our world?” During this topic, we will be investigating mini enquiry questions which include “How can we be more sustainable?” “Why do we need to be sustainable?” “Why are the rainforests important?” “If we damage the world, what is the impact?” “How were the Mayans sustainable?” There are many exciting opportunities throughout this learning enquiry including the Climate Justice Art project by Christian Aid and Oxfam. The children will be creating beautiful and emotive pieces of artwork to share the message surrounding their learning on climate justice that will be shared in a gallery.

English

As a school, we have decided to start our English learning by focussing on the same text “There’s only one you” by Katherine Heling and Deborah Hembrook which celebrates uniqueness. Each class has been given a body part to delve into and Year 5 have got the Eyes! During this unit of work, we will be looking at poetry surrounding what our eyes let us do; looking at differences between our eyes through the book “Eyes that kiss in the corners”; the anatomy of the eye and we will also learn about Louis Braille and his amazing invention that enabled people with little or no sight to be able to read. After this we will be exploring a suspense story called The Old Mill and identifying the tension techniques used.  We are also starting our class text “The Boy in the Tower” by Polly Ho Yen in our Reading Lessons which has lots of prevalent themes that are also related to our learning enquiry.

 

Maths

In Maths this term we will be focussing on place value, decimal fractions, money, using negative numbers and short multiplication and division. We will also have daily fluency practise where we can improve our times table knowledge to support us with our learning.

 

Science

Our science focus this term is “Why is it important to look after our world?” which ties in really nicely with our learning enquiry. We will be exploring different life cycles including animals, flowering and non-flowering plants and we will also be looking at animal classification systems.

 

RE

Our learning this term is about the concept of Creation along with the more scientific concept of Cosmology and the Big Bang Theory. It is a fascinating unit which the children really will find interesting. It involves debate and discussion which enhances their oracy skills and lets the children ask questions about how our world was created.

PE

Our PE lessons are on a Monday and Thursday. Please come to school in PE kit on these days. We will be looking at Badminton from our Complete PE curriculum and focussing on Agility and Co-ordination in our Real PE Lessons.

 

Music

This term our Music focus is on South and West African Music. To start with the children will learn a call and response song called “Shosoloza”, traditionally sung by men of the Bantu people who lived in Zimbabwe and travelled to South Africa to work in diamond and gold mines.

 

Art

In Art, we will first be looking at the Artist René Magritte, a Belgian artist, who famously created “The False Mirror” painting in 1928. Then we will be exploring the celebrated artist Henri Rousseau and his famous painting “Surprise”. We will be learning about different types of mediums and experiment with composition and tone.

   

Computing

In computing, we are looking at different types of Search Engines. This will help to support the children when they use the internet to research different curriculum subjects. We will also cover the topic of E-safety and what it means to have access to the internet.

 

Our learning review meetings will be held after school on Tuesday 15th October and Thursday 17th October.

Friday 18th October is a training day for staff and the school will be closed for pupils.

Term 2 starts on Monday 4th November.