Year 5

Welcome to Owl Class – Miss Waterhouse

Keep checking our class page to keep up-to-date on the exciting, active and diverse range of activities we take part in to help us excel at school. Homework tasks, along with spelling lists, will be uploaded each week under the 'Homework' tab below. Scroll down to see our latest learning in class.

English - 14. 02. 2019

This week, the class have been putting the final touches to their reports, describing the fictional planet (and wildlife) of 'Pandora'. Being upper key stage 2, the children have had creative freedom on the layout of their texts. We have primarily focused on using scientific vocabulary, relative clauses, parenthesis and a varying range of sentence structures. 

'Rachel' at EBHS - 05. 02. 2019

Last week, Year 5 had the opportunity to see a free performance about Rachel, a holocaust survivor who is still alive today. This performance was delivered by a professional drama company, and it sparked lots of rich discussion about World War Two when we got back in the classroom. It was a thought-provoking and delicately performed piece. 

Science - 15. 01. 2019

Our current topic in Science is 'Materials'. In this lesson, we were given a tray of various solids and liquids, and in groups we were challenged to separate as many of them as we could. We were given magnets, filter paper, sieves, colanders and even a hair dryer! We predicted that the salt could be separated from the water using filtration, but as it was fully dissolved, this was ineffective. This led to some excellent discussion on how the hair dryer could be used instead to separate the water and the salt using a process called evaporation. 

13. 12. 2018 - Recommended Book List

This term, we have been using a range of extracts from high-quality texts in our guided reading sessions. After having a chat with the class, it was clear that many of them wanted to carry on reading the books, even though the extracts had finished. Below are list of books we have used this term: any of them would make an excellent Christmas present!

The Island at the End of Everything – Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Cogheart – Peter Bunzl

Moonlocket – Peter Bunzl

Beetle Boy – M.G Leonard

Roof Toppers- Katherine Rundell

Goodnight Mister Tom – Michelle Magorian

Who Let the Gods Out? – Maz Evans

Carrie’s War – Nina Bawden

Pax – Sara Pennypacker

The Bubble Boy – Stewart Foster

Good Dog McTavish – Meg Rosoff

13. 11. 2018 – Circuits

Today in class, we have been investigating the effect of different voltages when making a circuit with a light bulb. Each small group had the equipment to make a complete circuit, which lit up the light bulb when using a 1.5V cell. However, when we used the 9V cell, our predictions were proved incorrect and we came to some surprising conclusions...

01. 11. 2018 – Wild Maths

I have found a website filled with high-quality, interactive games created by the University of Cambridge which have been made to improve reasoning and problem solving skills. Please encourage your child to try a few by clicking on the link below. ‘Got it’ is a particular favourite of mine!

30. 10. 2018 – Show Don’t Tell

In our English lessons, we have been working hard to learn new ways of making our writing more mature. One of the techniques that works well is ‘show don’t tell’, where instead of spoon-feeding the reader the emotions of a character, you describe their facial expressions and body language instead. For example, if they were overjoyed, you could say they ‘were bouncing down the corridor, with a huge grin going from ear to ear.’

Below are some examples from the children using this clever technique.

24. 09. 2018 – Place Value

In our maths lessons, we are very fortunate to have boxes crammed full of brand-new resources which help us to understand different topics in mathematics. At the start of the year, we used these resources to make 5, 6 and 7-digit numbers. This helped to reinforce the value of each digit in the various columns. Have a look at the photos below to see our learning in action.