What an exciting week it has been in Year 5! The children have really begun to bring together the skills they have been learning and are starting to think much more like Year 5 writers, mathematicians and scientists.

English 

This week we read The Jamie Drake Equation up to Chapter 7
This week in English, we have been designing our own alien planets and developing our setting descriptions. We began by applying the figurative language skills we learnt last week to describe settings. We then focused on carefully choosing our language and vocabulary to create the exact mood we wanted our planet to have. Is it a peaceful paradise, a dangerous hellscape or perhaps an underwater civilisation?

The children have started to think much more like Year 5 writers, bringing together lots of different writing skills, including expanded noun phrases, prepositions and figurative language, to create settings with a clear atmosphere and mood. It has been fantastic to see just how creative they have been with their alien worlds!

Next week, we will be working on writing informally and in role as different characters.

Maths
In Maths this week, we have been working on rounding numbers to the nearest 10 and 100. We spent lots of time discussing how to identify multiples of 100 and discovered that some numbers, such as 7,000, can be multiples of 10, 100 and 1,000!

We then moved on to working more with negative numbers (not ‘minus numbers’!). The children have been building on their understanding of the number line and thinking carefully about how numbers behave when we move below zero.

Next week, we will be working with decimal numbers.

Thematic
This week, we finally got stuck into our new thematic topic, Stargazers, where we are exploring the fascinating world of space. We learnt that all objects have a gravitational pull and that this pulling force is what keeps objects in orbit around the Sun.

We also discovered that the Earth does not orbit the Sun in a perfect circle. Instead, its orbit is elliptical. We then explored how the Earth’s movement around the Sun contributes to the changes we experience throughout the year.

We also travelled back in time to discover how people once believed that the Earth was at the centre of the solar system. This is known as the geocentric model. We then learnt how Galileo challenged this idea and provided evidence for the heliocentric model, which places the Sun at the centre of our solar system.

Next week, we will be learning more about the other planets in our solar system and exploring why Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet.

Spelling
accommodate, accompany, according, persuade, opportunity, marvellous, rhythm, rhyme, queue, dictionary

Challenge words:
apocalypse, celestial, perihelion, aphelion, extraterrestrial

Love to Learn
For this week’s Love to Learn, we would like you to find out more about one of the following aspects of space that we will not be exploring in as much detail in class.

You could create a poster, find some fascinating facts, draw a picture or present your learning in any other way you choose. You could even investigate more than one!

• Black holes

• Tau Ceti

• The Milky Way

• The Kuiper Belt

We are looking forward to seeing what you discover!

Dates to Remember

• 23rd September – Year 5 swimming begins. Swimming will take place every Wednesday until the end of term.

• 25th September – Chilton Fundraisers Family Quiz. More details will follow from the Chilton Fundraisers.

• 8th October – Harvest Festival for Years 5 and 6 at 2.45pm.

• 23rd October – Halloween Disco. All children come to school in fancy dress. Years 1, 2 and 3: 2pm–3pm. Years 4, 5 and 6: 3.15pm–4.15pm.

• 23rd October – Final day of term.