9/5/25 

These past couple of weeks we have gotten stuck into all the new learning for the summer term. We finished off our area and perimeter topics in maths and tried to find the area of compound shapes as well as find the missing measurements to work out the perimeter. We have now moved onto revising our learning about equivalent fractions and decimals and next week we will begin to start understanding how percentages can also be applied to this learning.  In English, we finished off our poetry topic by writing a class performance poem. Each group worked well to make their poem have rhythm and rhyme as well as include verbs and repetition to make a great performance poem. 

In Science, we started our topic of changing materials. We conducted a small experiment to see whether different materials were insoluble or soluble and tried to use key scientific vocabulary to explain our findings. We will be using this knowledge to understand reversible and irreversible changes and complete another investigation to support our understanding. In Art, we have made research pages on the artist Darrell Wakelem, who is a cardboard sculptor. We tried to be more imaginative with our presentation in our books and made use of slicing and joining pages together to present our work in a unique way. We will use this artist as inspiration for when we make our own models! 

                                             

21/3/25 

This week we had our year 5/6 trip to Pitt Rivers and Natural History Museum in Oxford as part of our learning about the ancient Maya. We got to take part in a workshop where we explored different artefacts from the Mayan civilisation and had to try and guess what they were. We were able to use our previous learning in history to understand each item. We also got to look around the Natural History Museum. We saw lots of interesting things from all different parts of life. We particularly enjoyed looking at the dinosaur skeletons and trying to picture how these huge animals would have once walked on Earth. 

On Friday we had a maths day. We started off by completing a maths escape room where we needed to try and solve lots of difficult maths challenges to get into a box. All the clues linked together but took a lot of brain power to solve. Only two groups managed to finish the whole task! In class, we also completed a theme park maths task. We needed to use area to work out how to map out and design our very own theme park as well as stick to our budget of £500,000. With each roller coaster costing £25,000 we had to think carefully about how to spend the money whilst also making it an enjoyable theme park experience. Everything from rollercoaters to toilets and trees had to be paid for! Everyone thought of some really interesting ideas and each one was unique. 

                 

7/3/25 

World Book Day (and week!) 

This week we have done all things reading and book-related. We started the week with a book day assembly and a class reader swap where we welcomed Miss Hamilton into year 5 to read a story. On Tuesday year 5 took part in a workshop for NSPCC. We learnt what the charity does to help young people and the phone line we could ring when needed. On Thursday we all dressed up as different characters from our favourite books. It was great to see everyone put in so much effort. For our early morning task we drew the front cover of the book we came dressed as and tried to guess the characters of each student. After break, we had another class reader swap where Mrs Nicholas came to read us a story. In between all of this, we also completed some competitive book day challenges and quizzes! We finished the week with another busy day as we had our mystery secret reader come to read some of a story, it was great to the reaction of a particular student who had no idea his mum was the secret reader. We have also used some origami skills to make a creative bookmark as well as take part in a drama workshop based on the story of 'George's marvellous medicine'. 

In between all of this we also had our trip to Sheldon! Year 5 really enjoyed the day and was good to compare to their trip at Harden a month ago. They got to take home some art they created as well as take part in various science experiments and a basketball PE lesson. 

                                        

7/2/25 

We have had another great week that has been busy from the start! We have rounded off our multiplication and division topics in maths after learning lots of tricky methods. We have tried to apply the skills of long multiplication and using the bus stop method with remainders to more worded reasoning problems. This meant we had to read the question carefully to ensure we understood the meaning. In history, we have continued our learning about the ancient Maya. We have learnt about the occupations that Maya people have today as well as learning about the buildings of Chichen Itza and how these were used (sometimes for some very gruesome events!). We have also started making collages in art that represents these buildings during the time of the ancient Maya, in deep jungle! We are using lots of colour and have chosen different sky colours for the background so they all look unique. We have also drawn them from different angles to create more of a 3D look. 

Up and Under have also been with us each Thursday to teach key teamwork and PE skills as well as more PSHE and science-based learning in the classroom. This week we learnt about mental health and how to recognise when our mental health is not at its best, as well as ways in which we can support our own positive mental health. This fit perfectly with our previous PSHE lesson in class and links to the themes of this week as it is 'Childrens mental health week'. 

As requested from parents evening conversations, the year 5 weekly spellings will now be added to the home learning section on the 'Kites' section of the website, as well as students taking paper copies home each week. 

31/1/25 

This week, Year 5 has definitely shown why they are so amazing.  They have concentrated really hard in all their lessons and tackled some very tricky learning, whilst we have also had some important visitors in school. Everyone in Kites was so polite and welcoming and were able to show off all of their learning in Y5 so far. However, the highlight for all of Kites class this week was definitely our visit to Hardenhuish school for our taster day. We had the opportunity to experience science, DT and PE lessons. We all loved using the rock climbing wall and were amazed at how big the school campus was compared to By Brook! In our DT lesson we were able to paint wooden stags that had been cut using the machine in the classroom. They all looked amazing and every one had their own unique design. We had the opportunity to ask some old By Brook students some questions about their secondary school experience so far and meet some of the teachers. We were lucky to have a lovely sunny day and really enjoyed our time there. 

               

10/1/25 

We have had a great start to 2025. We had our first session with up and under with their impact project. Unfortunately, we had to do our PE session inside due to all the snow and ice, but we still had fun playing games in the classroom. We then also discussed screen time and the negative impacts of having too much. We were shocked at some of the statistics! We were also lucky enough to have our forest school session on a snowy day, so we got to play in the snow, make little snowmen and have marshmallows around a warm fire. In maths, we created some posters to recap our learning from last term and then had to try and teach other members of the class about different topics. This got us thinking about not only how to answer questions, but how to be able to explain the learning and methods to other people. 

                     

6/12/24 

This week we have focused on lots of writing in English. We finished off our hot writes based on 'The arrival' in which we had to try and write a story about 'What happened next?'. Everyone got to be really imaginative about this and wrote some great stories. We then also wrote a hot write based on an old John Lewis advert that the whole school watched. We all enjoyed the video and year 5 wrote some great descriptions! In maths, we have been continuing to develop our fraction skills and trying to convert fractions to have the same denominator so we can decide which may be greater or smaller. We will continue this up until Christmas and hopefully will become more confident as we learn more. In computing, we have finished off a fun topic of video and film. We created storyboards and learnt about camera angles and skills to make a short video of our choice using the Ipads. The final results turned out really well and it is evident that each group used different skills that we had discussed. 

 

On Friday we finished off the week with our annual Santa run. Students ran around the two fields in their Santa hats (even in the cold!) and earned themselves a warm hot chocolate and brownie at the end of it. Thank you to the parent helpers and any parents that came to watch. 

              

 

29/11/24

In maths this week we have tackled some very tricky fraction work. We have learnt how to simplify and find equivalent fractions as well as how to convert mixed and improper fractions. In English we are finishing off our 'The arrival' themed writing and today had the opportunity to look at the whole of the rest of the book to see what happens. We have also been watching the video to go along with it which adds to the atmosphere and imagination due to the creepy sounds it has. This has helped us prepare for our hot writes next week, where we will be writing 'What happens next?'. 

We really enjoyed the start of our science topic. We have looked at the distance of the planets compared to the sun and used toilet roll to show just how far Neptune is. We discovered that Neptune is 156 toilet roll squares away from the sun! (1 Toilet roll square is equivalent to 50 million miles!). Today we tried to imagine what 7 billion miles looks like, and we were shocked to see just how big that number is! 

  

 

15/11/24

This week we have had lots going on and lots of events to take part in. On Monday, we wore odd socks for anti-bullying to symbolise the differences we all have. In the afternoon we also spent time making stained-glass style collages of poppies for remembrance day. WE had a long discussion after break about why/what we remember during this day and why it is important to have a minutes silence to show respect. On Tuesday we spent the afternoon focusing on anti-bullying, discussing the different types of bullying and why the theme for anti-bullying week is 'choose respect'. 

The highlight of this week for year 5 has definitely been the opportunity to finally present their science boards to the rest of the school after weeks of hard work. Year 5 made their science boards from old cardboard and worked hard on them to turn them into bright, neatly presented interactive boards that displayed all their science learning for their topic of reactive metals. Every year group in the school had an opportunity to look at the boards and year 5 even got to present to staff members in school and school governors. We had lots of positive feedback and lots of nice comments on the voting slips. Well done to group 2 for winning in year 5! 

                     

 

8/11/24 

First week back after half-term and we have got stuck straight in with lots of learning. We are continuing our multiplication and division topic in maths and moved onto learning about prime numbers and square numbers. We used our knowledge of multiples and factors to apply to this new learning and could see how all these topics in maths link together. In English we are continuing with looking at 'The Arrival' by Shaun Tan, however we are now learning how to write some really interesting narratives. On Thursday year 5 wrote their cold writes and thought of some really imaginative stories based on the weird world of 'The Arrival'. We have also finished off making our science boards for the science fair. This has been a big project but year 5 have made some very professional looking boards and are very excited about present them to the rest of the school next week! 

This week we were also very lucky to be joined by Kirsty Way, a double mini trampoline European champion. She delivered an assembly and discussed her inspirations, motivations and key skills about her sport. We got to see her medals and watch videos of her competing. She also showed us that sport is not always about winning and showed us videos of the many falls she went through during practice. Each class then had the opportunity to complete a circuit, having to do each exercise for one minute!

 

18/10/24 

This week has been a busy one, and we have done lots of different, fun activities in year 5. On Monday we visited the Wiltshire and Swindon history centre near Monkton Park to learn more about our local area, linking to our population topic in geography. We got to look at old journals and maps that provided more information about the people and layout of Yatton Keynell dating all the way back to the late 1700s. 

This week we have also moved onto the multiplication topic in maths. We have started looking at multiples and factors and have learnt how to find the lowest common multiples/factors of two or more numbers. In English we have learnt how to use expanded noun phrases, emotive language and description to make our writing more interesting. We have written a diary entry based on our book 'The arrival'. As a wordless book we have lots of opportunities to use our imagination and be creative in our writing. 

On Thursday we completed our science investigation. We had different metals such as copper, zinc and iron and tested the reactivity with different liquids. One group decided to choose one liquid (diet coke) and test how different metals react in the same liquid. We had to think of the control, dependent and independent variables to make sure our investigation was fair. We will be checking these each day up until half term to record any changes in our results tables. 

       

       

11/10/24 

This week we have been celebrating mental health week. We started the week with a worship with Mrs Henshall about the importance of keeping our minds healthy and doing positive things both for ourselves and each other. In class, we watched a live lesson and completed some small activities, such as being able to identify emotions and writing about the different things we can do to keep our minds and bodies healthy. On Thursday we all wore something yellow to represent the charity. 

We have started planning and organising our science experiments to test different reactive metals. Year 5 have done well with making some results tables and writing out their methods, equipment list and predictions. Next week we will start to complete our experiment, so please bring in any resources that may be needed next Thursday. 

We also celebrated Harvest this week. Year 5 worked as a team to write an acrostic poem whilst the rest of the class made big letters to spell harvest, each including different images that they thought best represented this time of year. Thank you all for the donations and for all parents who come to watch the harvest service. 

 

4/10/24 

This week we have started to look at addition in maths. We learnt different mental strategies and learnt that sometimes we don't need to use column methods if we know different patterns and how to separate numbers. We then played a game using column addition, adding up to 5-digit numbers and whoever had the biggest number in the end won! In Geography we have been learning about population and have really focused on Yatton Keynell as our starting point, we have learnt lots of new facts. Did you know that in the 2021 cencus there were more females in Yatton Keynell than males! We used this data to look at how population has changed and why this might be. 

On Thursday morning we were lucky enough to have two PCSOs come in to talk to us about anti social behaviour. We learnt about what this means and what to do if we see this happening. Year 5 and 6 had lots of questions and it was a great opportunity to hear from people that work in our community. 

                             

27/9/24 

This week we have been completing some really tricky maths questions and trying to round numbers within 1 million to the nearest 10,100, 1000 and 10,000. This has been really hard but everyone in year 5 has given it a really good go and is starting to feel more confident completing problems with such big numbers! In English, we have continued looking at 'The arrival' the students have lots of theories of what could be happening, and each page is presenting new ideas that change the story completely. We have written diary entry introductions as if we were the man leaving his family and year 5 have started to use some really interesting vocabulary to make their writing show different emotions. 

On Thursday we had European languages day as organised by Miss Boddy. This was a great day and we had lots of lovely visitors come to talk about their own language/country. Year 5 even got to taste some finnish treats! We made posters of our chosen countries and got to ask lots of questions to our visitors. Thank you so much to everyone who came in. We really appreciate it!  

                                             

13/9/24 

What a busy couple of weeks back! Year 5 have settled in well to the routines and learning that we do in Kites. We have got stuck straight in with learning about our book 'The arrival' in English. This book has no words, so we have to use our imagination and some inference skills to decide what is happening. We have started to look at emotive language and how we can make our writing more interesting using a range of vocabulary choices. 

In maths, we have tackled some hard learning, expanding on Y4 place value knowledge, we have begun to look at much bigger numbers going all the way up to 1 million! Year 5 have really started to get the hang of this and ejoyed using the outside area to find some hidden numbers to multiply by 10,100,1000 and 10,000. 

In art, we started by making a colour wheel in our sketchbooks. We talked about different colour categories such as cold, hot, secondary and primary colours and used water colours to try and accurately match a coloured pencil. These all look amazing and is a great first page to have in our sketchbooks. We have also really enjoyed computing, we have discussed the importance of having passwords that are strong so our information is not accessible to others. We have also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of online communication.