End of Spring 2 - Ancient Civilisations and Modern Space Science!

Yr5 have packed a lot into this term! Our History topic was on the ancient Maya - discussing how the Maya people lived, worked, ate, and communicated, as well as comparing this to what was happening in Britain at the same time. We even became familiar with a common game they used to play - ‘Pok-a-Tok’ - a ballgame where only hips, shoulders and elbows can be used to pass and score! From this learning, we wrote some brilliant diary entries from the perspective of the main character in our class book, ‘Oh Maya Gods’ by Maz Evans.

Art this term led us to design and create hieroglyphic tiles using the Mayan alphabet. To do this we looked at and experimented with bold relief to really make them come to life. Now we had our ancient Maya tiles, we just needed to report on this fascinating excavation! Y5 wrote some newspaper reports on discovering these ancient artefacts in Mexico using direct and indirect speech.

As if all this weren’t enough, we also ventured down to Winchester Science Museum where the children floated through space in the Planetarium and took part in a ‘Laser Mission’ during our Discovery Space workshop to link with our science. Finally, Book Week introduced us to James Carter, a poet who taught us all about how to draft, edit and perform poetry. Using what we were taught, we wrote our own poems where we told our loved ones all the gifts that ‘if we could, we would’ give to them! We have had so much fun and we look forward to what Summer Term brings!

Have a fantastic Easter!

End of Spring 1!

Wow! This term has FLOWN by. Year 5 have thoroughly enjoyed their topic on Mountains, having learned exactly how Fold Mountains are formed, why there are conflicting opinions on which mountain is the tallest, and why mountains are so effective at supplying a safe, clean water source. The class put on their investigative hats and upon being given evidence, were tasked with the job of working out what the 'treasures of untold value' were in Birmingham, 1898!

Clean water sources through the use of reservoirs in Welsh mountains! Test them and ask why this was so important during this time!

Using their Geography learning, Y5 then wrote some brilliant narrative pieces - creating their own chapter from our guided reading book 'Running on the Roof of the World' by Jess Butterworth, using rich description of mountainous settings as well as the 5 senses. Following on from this, they then chose and conducted their own research on a famous mountain explorer and wrote a biography on them, using lots of Year 5 spelling, grammar and punctuation. 

Further connecting with our mountain topic, we also carried out some market research with Year 1 and 2 in order to find what it is that makes stuffed animals so appealing to them. Using our findings, we have begun to stitch our own cuddly mountain animals for our DT topic, keeping in mind all the things that would make a child want to pick it up off the shop shelf!

We have managed to fill our 6 short weeks up with so many exciting activities and learning - we even got to tuck into some Oreos for one of our Space Science lessons (after we created the Lunar Phases out of the cream, of course!)

I hope you have a restful break and we look forward to continuing our learning after the half term...