On this page, you can read about the staff working with your children, find out what topics are being covered and find useful information for supporting your child at home. These pages will be updated regularly. You will also find photographs of your children at work!
Welcome to your new class- we hope you had a lovely break and we are looking forward to a great first term with you all.
This text has been chosen to support our historical enquiry as it is set in Victorian times and it links with our historical substantive strand 'poverty'.
Jim Jarvis, his mother and his sisters live in a single room in a house in the poorest part of London. All alone in the world, Jim finds himself working for the evil ‘Grimy Nick’ on a coal barge. Forced to work all day for no pay and little food, Jim decides to escape once more living on the streets of London in terrible conditions until he is ‘rescued’ by a benevolent gentleman – Dr. Banardo.
If you enjoy listening to this story in class, or you enjoy historical texts, here is a book list of other texts linked with Victorian Britain.
Check the book corner for "Gaslight" by Eloise Williams and "Another Twist in the Tale" by Catherine Bruton.
We will be reading this text this term to link with our scientific enquiry based on the theme of space. Have a look at the blurb to see what you think!
If you enjoy books and stories about space, check out this book list for other great stories to read.
This term, our writing is centred on Charles Dickens and his book of Oliver Twist. We will be using extracts, as well as our history lessons, to learn about life in a Victorian workhouse. In English, we will be focusing on Oliver's life in the workhouse and how he escaped and met a new friend, Jack Dawkins, or the Artful Dodger as he is better known.
Using our new knowledge, we will be writing a diary entry from the perspective of a Victorian child who is living in the workhouse as well as writing a setting description. Next, we will role playing a conversation between Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger; this will help us to write a narrative, including speech, based on Oliver Twist meeting the Artful Dodger.
Our next outcome will be to learn more about Charles Dickens himself. Through research, we will be writing a biography based on his life.
In Term 2, we will be using a film clip based on a fictional planet called Pandora. We will be imagining that we are the first ever children to visit the planet and using this to create a VLOG, write a newspaper article, about our experience, and writing a non-chronological report about a creature from Pandora.
Within our writing, we will be focusing on using a variety of sentence openers and structures, to help build cohesion, and we will be adding additional details using parenthesis. Within our newspaper articles, we will also be looking at direct and indirect speech and how to punctuate this correctly.
Term 1 starts with the children learning place value of numbers up to one million. By the end of the Term, they will be able to read, write, order and compare numbers to at least a million and determine the value of each digit. Also included in this unit, we will be rounding any whole number up to 1 million to the nearest 10, 100, 1000, 10000 and 100000.
As the term continues, we will be moving onto addition and subtraction. In this unit, the children will be retrieving their knowledge of formal written methods of addition and subtraction, and combining this with their understanding of place value. They will be continuing to refine the skill of adding and subtracting mentally, using rounding to check answers and focusing on multi-step problems.
Our final unit for term one will be multiplying. In this unit, the children will be revisiting their Year 4 learning of short multiplication to recap multiplying numbers up to 4 digits by a 1 digit number using formal written methods.
In Term two, we will start learning about multiples, all factor pairs and common factors of two numbers. We then move onto prime numbers, where we will establish if a number up to 100 is a prime number.
Our next area of learning will be multiplying and dividing whole numbers and decimals by 10, 100 and 1000.
As we approach the middle of the term, we move onto fractions. In this unit, we will be learning to identify, name and write equivalent fractions and then recognising mixed numbers and improper fractions and converting them. To finish this unit, we will be comparing and ordering fractions.
To finish the term, we will be learning about Geometry. We start the unit by comparing and classifying triangles and quadrilaterals and then move on to identifying, describing and representing shapes following reflection and translation.
During Term 1, and into Term 2, we will be answering the two big questions,
To help us answer these questions, we will need to build on our knowledge from Year 3, when we learnt about forces (Friction) and magnets.
In Term 1, Year 5 will be studying a Historical enquiry, asking the Big Question
This unit of learning, focussed on The Victorians, will extend across the term and into the beginning of Term 2, encompassing topics including Monarchy, the British Empire, poverty and wealth, the Industrial Revolution, workhouses and much more!
This term will also include an exciting class trip, linked to our historical learning!