What a wonderful week! Despite the dreadful weather, Year 5 traipsed down to Pegwell Bay for our termly bird watching data collection with Birdwise East Kent. The children showed such resilience and positivity! We will be going again in Term 3. 

English 

This week, we have been continuing with our ‘How to live in space’ books. We have learnt how to use technical vocabulary to make us sound like experts, to control our formality of the text and also to use semi colons to link information together.   

Next week, we will put our final version of our books together; they are going on display in our shared area between our classrooms! We will then plan and begin to write our own space themed extended narrative about an alien and an astronaut. We will learn how to use characterisation to tell the reader more about our characters and also revisit our skills of describing characters and setting. 

Maths 

This week, we continued to learn to convert between units of measure, with a focus on volume and capacity. We learnt the difference between these and then talked about their uses in real life. After that, we learnt how to convert between different metric units of measure, with the challenge of finding approximate conversions for imperial and metric, for example litres to pints. We ended the week on solving problems involving volume and capacity.    

Next week, we will enter our final week of learning about units of measure by focusing on mass. We will be learning about everyday objects and which measurement (grams, kilograms and tonnes) would be most suitable to use to measure them. We will then learn how to convert between them and also how to find approximate conversions when learning about imperial units of measure for mass. We will end the week by solving problems involving mass.  

Thematic 

This week, we learnt about the Moon. We found out about its orbit around the Earth and how this affects our tides. We also learnt about how we know about the Moon by finding out about the Moon landings. We ended the week by giving our opinions on this big question: What else is out there? 

Next week, we will be completed our learning on space by taking part in a Big Fat Quiz! It will helps us retrieve what we have learnt this term and also help us to clarify anything we are unsure about. We will also prepare our Year 5 contributions to the Chilton Christmas fayre. We will end the week with a debate to thrash out if we really need to know about space or not! 

Spelling 

In your child’s reading record, there is a sticker with the words they are learning. We call these ‘red words’ and they are tricky or impossible to sound out using phonics. Some children have been given some challenging space themed words to also learn. Thank you in advance for your support with this. 

Love to Learn 

This week, we would like you to find examples of imperial units of measure at home or out and about. Take photos or draw what you find and we will share these with the class.  

Christmas party: on 17th December, Year 5 will be having their Christmas party. On this day, they can wear their party clothes. Please remember, they will still be going outside for lunch and play time so clothes must be appropriate for chilly weather! For the party, we are asking for donations of food and drink. Mr Oxley and Miss Isaac will provide drinks. If possible, we would love donations of these items from each housepoint team:

Vikings: savoury party food such as sausage rolls, cheese straws

Saxons: fruit and vegetables

Normans: crisps and nibbles 

Roman: sweet party foods, such as biscuits, sweets

Our scooter park is open daily at lunchtime.   Year 5 - Thursdays.   To take part, children will need to bring their scooter from home, along with a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads. 

 

Important dates 

10th December – No swimming this week. Year 5 will have PE as usual 

10th December – Christmas Fair 3.15pm-4.15pm 

15th December – No PE this week 

15th December – Year 1 Nativity at 9am in hall 

16th December – Year 3 and 4 Church Performance at 10am and Year 5 and 6 Church Performance at 2pm, both at St Laurence Church 

17th December – Year 3, 4, 5, and 6 Christmas Party Day – children to wear Party Clothes to school 

17th December – Christmas Dinner Day 

18th December – Christmas Jumper Day 

18th December – Final day at school; school finishes at 2pm and there will be no after school club