Thank you to everyone who donated to our Harvest collection and to those who came along to support us at our Harvest Assembly. We really appreciate your generosity and support!

English

This week in English, we have finished writing our explanation texts. We have learnt how astronauts eat and sleep in microgravity and have worked hard to include appropriate technical vocabulary and use commas accurately.

We then revisited our work to look for errors and make improvements. Sometimes, stepping away from a piece of writing for a little while makes it much easier to spot mistakes that we might have missed the first time around!

Finally, we began publishing our work into booklets entitled How to Live in Space, which we will finish on Monday.

We have also continued reading The Jamie Drake Equation, reaching Chapters 13–15.

Next week, we will begin writing an extended narrative in which we will create an alternative ending to The Jamie Drake Equation. We are looking forward to seeing where the children's imaginations take the story!

Maths

In Maths this week, we have been finding multiples and factors of numbers. We have also worked really hard on developing our mathematical vocabulary.

For example, if we are asked to find the product of 2 and 7, we simply need to multiply 2 by 7. However, if we are asked to find the sum of 2 and 7, we need to add them together. Knowing these mathematical terms helps us understand exactly what a question is asking us to do.

We learnt that multiples are the numbers we get when we multiply a number by whole numbers. For example, the multiples of 5 are 5, 10, 15, 20 and so on. We can find the third multiple of 5 by counting through the multiples or by calculating 3 × 5. Interestingly, the third multiple of 5 is also the fifth multiple of 3, because 3 × 5 = 5 × 3!

We also learnt that factors are numbers that divide exactly into another number. For example, the factors of 10 are 1, 2, 5 and 10. We explored a method called factor beetles to help us identify all the factors of a number. If you aren't familiar with a factor beetle, ask your Year 5 to draw one for the number 12!

Next week, we will use our knowledge of factors to identify prime numbers.

Science

In our Stargazers topic this week, we have been investigating gravity and asking the question: Do heavier things fall faster?

Our instincts often tell us that heavier objects fall faster. After all, a bowling ball would fall much faster than a feather! However, we learnt that Earth's gravity pulls objects towards the ground at the same rate, regardless of their mass.

So why does a feather fall more slowly than a bowling ball? The answer is air resistance! Air resistance affects a feather much more than a bowling ball, slowing its fall. If we remove the air completely, both objects fall at the same rate.

Take a look at the video below to see what happens when a feather and a bowling ball are dropped inside a vacuum chamber, where the air has been removed. It's a fantastic demonstration of just how surprising science can be!

Watch the feather and bowling ball experiment

Spelling

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

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

Love to Learn

This term in Art, we have been working hard on our landscape drawing skills, including using perspective to create depth in our pictures.

For your Love to Learn this week, find a picture of a landscape and have a go at drawing it yourself. Look carefully at the details, shapes and different features you can see, and see if you can use some of the skills you have learnt in Art to bring your drawing to life.

If you would like some inspiration, have a look at the picture below!

Dates to Remember

• 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.