Year 5
Year 5 Curriculum Newsletter – Spring Term 2019
Dear all,
A very warm welcome back to Christ Church and Year 5! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are now ready for a very busy term ahead with lots of exciting activities planned.
Literacy
Our focus as a school this year is Literacy and we are changing the way we teach it across all Key Stages. The new way of teaching will focus on encouraging children to quickly generate unique ideas, talk about language and its effect on the reader alongside gaining the ability to discuss their ideas and judge which is the most appropriate/effective. This half term our focus will be on dialogue. Drama and spelling, punctuation and grammar workshops will also feature heavily over the course of the term and year.
Handwriting and Spelling – cursive handwriting practise take place 3 times a week and it is vital that you practise these skills outside of school where possible. I have removed all pen licenses and will reward children with these once they have proven to me that they can consistently join their writing correctly and their letters are proportionate to each other. Spelling tests will be conducted every Thursday: although spelling rules are taught and practised during school time, it is imperative that they are also practised at home. The first box of spellings are to be learned by the spelling group – the second box is the main class list (although I highly recommend revising the words in the first box too)!
Should anybody misplace their half-termly spelling sheet, they should let me know as soon as possible or look online – no excuses for not learning your spellings!
Numeracy
Year 5 will begin the year looking at multiplication and division, fractions, decimals and percentages. We shall also explore number sequences and identify patterns and relationships within numbers. Our lessons will seek to develop reasoning and problem solving.
Times tables will feature heavily throughout the year. Having a secure knowledge of these is fundamental to speeding up the calculation process and underpinning much of the work that goes on in class. I therefore encourage you to work with your child to practise and improve speed and recall as much as possible. A times table test will take place every Thursday.
This year, children will continue to complete their maths homework using the home learning and school assessment tool, IXL. This homework is weekly and based on what the pupils have been learning that week. The number of problems and skills to be practised will be set by myself, along with a minimum pass mark. It is expected that you supervise your child’s use of IXL, as completion of maths homework will be monitored.
Individual login and password details for IXL will be distributed at the start of the year. It is advised that you keep these somewhere safe, but please let me know if they are misplaced at any point!
Science
In Science, Year 5 will be learning about forces. We shall learn about gravity, and other forces such as friction, air resistance and water resistance. We will go to the Science Museum to support our understanding of this.
Computing
This term, the children will continue to try their hand at becoming game developers; using software to design and then create their own game. We have spent the past term learning all the skills required to program on Scratch so hopefully this half term our game can be made.
RE
During this half term, Year 5 will explore the topic ‘What does it mean to be a Jew?’ We will look at different festivals and celebrations in Judaism and their main beliefs.
Geography
This term, our topic will be ‘Rivers and Mountains’. We will investigate key aspects of rivers and the water cycle. We will compare and contrast rivers around the world. We will use maps, atlases and digital mapping to locate features studied. We will explore how rivers have been used by the people that live around them and how rivers are fundamental to the distribution of natural resources.
Art
We will be using a variety of techniques to explore the theme ‘People in Action’.
Music and French
Due to timetabling, this half term will be ‘blocked out’ and we will be focussing on teaching Art. Next half term, the children will be taught Music and French by specialist teachers.
PE
This half term, Year 5’s PE focus on a Tuesday is gymnastics and dance on a Thursday (both taught by Mrs Grabham).
Home Learning
If your child does not have access to online tools for learning at home, please let me know so that I can make provisions for this during the school week. I thank you in advance for your support in this.
Many thanks,
Miss Beard.