Year 5

Welcome to Year 5!

We know that year five will continue to be an inspiring and memorable journey for the children as they move through the school with new exciting topics and plenty of enrichment planned throughout the year. Each term we ensure that the children have opportunities to link their learning from previous previous year groups and apply their knowledge and skills to new curriculum opportunities and situations. The TAB Way underpins our ethos and we continue to focus on the children developing their independence for learning and reflecting on themselves as learners in preparation for year six and beyond.

In the autumn term, our topic is entitled ‘Raiders and Settlers’. The term begins with a history focus as the children study the Anglo-Saxons and their raid on Britain after the Romans fled back to Europe, building on the Roman learning in year 4. This is brought to life when we visit Butser Ancient Farm and live life in the role of a Saxon for the day! We then progress to the study of the vicious Vikings and how they settled in Britain prior to the battle of 1066.

Our English focus this term will be on the books ‘Arthur and the Golden Rope’, a graphic novel by Joe Todd-Stanton, and ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ by Brian Selznick, where the children have the opportunity to develop their talk skills as they discuss and debate the developments in the story and will develop their writing skills as well as embedding and applying key grammar and punctuation knowledge. Hugo lived his life raiding and stealing in order to succeed in a lifelong mission and this text is used as a stimulus for our design technology work on automata where the children will design, make and evaluate their own moving model.

Through our art curriculum, we will also look at the stunning pencil sketches in the story and imitate and innovate this style ourselves during our art lessons using our life drawing and illustration skills.

In R.E., we will focus on Hinduism and Islam recapping and building on the learning in previous year groups. In addition, at the end of this term will participate in a Christingle service at Offington Park Methodist church, with parents and carers sharing in this wonderful festive event.

In science, the children will train to become fully fledged young Jedi warriors, learning how to use the force as they discover the scientific concepts of gravity, air resistance and friction!

The spring term continues our exciting journey where the children become fully immersed into our science topic of space. The children will get to experience life beyond the stars first hand, with a visit to Chichester Planetarium.

In English, the children will focus on a number of texts including Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce (linking to our space theme) as well as the Highwayman poem by Alfred Noyes, where the children use their talk skills to debate the motivations of the characters in the poem. The children will also create a non-fiction text based on the history focus of the Mayans. The children will compare the Mayan civilisation to that of the Saxons and write their own informative leaflet.

The topic of the Mayans drives our learning in art and design technology, where the children will create their own Mayan masks as well as a traditional Mayan bookmark as the children learn various sewing techniques and apply these to their final piece. Our big celebration for this term is our Mayan exhibition where parents and carers are invited into school to see our wonderful cross-curricular learning and get a taste of what life was like for the Mayan people.

In the second half of the term, in geography the children conduct a local area fieldwork study and develop their geographical knowledge and skills in preparation for visiting Highdown Hill to note the wide contrast in landscapes around our local area.

As we head towards the end of the year, we focus on using our talk skills to discuss moral and social dilemmas as we look at the themes of climate change and the impact we, as humans, have on each other and our planet.

Children will begin the summer term with another geography focus as we compare climates around the world with a particular focus on North and South America. We consider climate change and the impact that human actions can have on our planet. During this unit, the children debate deforestation and write a persuasive speech that we perform aloud in our very own green screen room!

The possibility of what the future holds is visited in our computing learning where the children collaborate on the creation of their very own Lego robots!

In English, we also focus on a book called ‘Tribes’ which addresses themes of peer pressure and moral dilemmas. The children take part in creating their very own street art in the style of Banksy and Basquiat and our PSHE learning focuses on choices using the book as a means to raise interesting discussions and debates.

In science, we get active with plenty of investigations and hands-on activities related to reversible and irreversible changes. This new knowledge comes in handy when we then create our very own pasta salads in the cooking room.

Our enrichment for the term links to our RE learning where we continue to study Christianity and visit a local church to bring our learning to life. The children will get to see the features of the church and take part in many active learning opportunities while they are there.