What an energetic and creative week it has been in Year 5! The children have shown real commitment to their learning, whether planning ambitious pieces of writing, tackling tricky fractions or throwing themselves into hands-on science.

English
This week in English, we have been planning an extended narrative. This will involve writing a chapter of our own version of Running on Empty, where AJ, our protagonist, competes in an inter-school running competition. We discussed what makes a good story and what could realistically go wrong during such an event.

Before writing, we carefully planned this section so that we knew what we were building towards from the very start of the narrative. We focused on how authors “plant seeds” early on to justify problems later in the story.

To really get ourselves into the mindset of a competitive race, we laced up our running shoes, persuaded Mr McAuley to join us, and headed out for a run over Chalk Hill. Many of us — including Mr Oxley — were exhausted by the end, but we noticed that even when we were physically tired, we were mentally very alert. This experience will certainly help bring authenticity to our writing.

Next week, we will begin writing up our extended narratives.

Maths
In Maths this week, we have been working on adding and subtracting fractions. Before attempting these calculations, we revisited the importance of checking that the denominators are the same. When they are not, we need to find equivalent fractions so that the fractions can be combined correctly.

Although the children first encountered this learning in Year 4, it has been fantastic to see Year 5 confidently applying knowledge from different areas to tackle these problems successfully.

We ended the week by celebrating Number Day. The children took part in the annual Countdown assembly before using a wide range of recent maths learning to design their own maths board games. Creativity was encouraged, but every game had to include maths questions to secure victory! These covered areas such as fractions, statistics, the four operations, shape and geometry, angles, time and Roman numerals.

Next week, we will extend this learning by converting between improper fractions and mixed numbers.

Thematic (Science)
This week’s thematic learning has focused on science and the states of matter. We began by recapping our Year 4 learning, revisiting the processes that cause materials to change state, such as evaporation, condensation, melting and freezing.

We then explored the idea that some changes are reversible — for example, melted ice can be frozen again, and sugar dissolved in water can be recovered by evaporating the liquid. In contrast, we also learnt about irreversible changes, such as cooking an egg or burning wood.

Next week, we will be moving into RE, where we will begin learning about Judaism.

Love to Learn

For our love to learn this week we are going to make you the teachers again.
Teach your adults how to add and subtract fractions and then see if they can solve these problems. Mark there work and write a WWW (what went well) and EBI (even better if) for them.

Dates to remember:

Tuesday 10th February - Safer internet day

Friday 13th February – Non-school uniform day

Friday 13th February - Chilton Fundraisers Winter Disco

Friday 13th February – Last day of term. School finishes at usual time