WELCOME TO YEAR 5 MAPLE CLASS
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!
September 2024
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.
Term 1- Street Child
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.
Term 1 - What the dickens?
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.
Term 1
Place Value, Addition & Subtraction
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.
Term 1 - Forces
During Term 1, we will be answering the two big questions,
What is a force? How do they help us?
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.
