Year 5 Learning Update – Autumn 2

What an amazing half term the children have had! It has been jampacked with our North America learning and some children have completely blown us away by learning the 50 states of the USA off by heart too! The children have fully immersed themselves in all aspects of their learning, from Maths to English, to PE, Science and DT. We are really proud of everything that they have achieved in the last seven weeks. 

Maths

We have covered multiple topics this half term in Maths but we have been especially proud of the children’s work on area and perimeter. Knowing the difference between the two is tricky enough but the children have mastered this! Then, from working with rectangles, to compound shapes and then from working with labelled shapes, to shapes with unlabelled sides, the children’s mathematical knowledge has improved tenfold and they have succeeded in cracking many challenges. Here are some examples of excellent Maths work on area and perimeter which is beautifully presented too. 

 

English 

The children have been absolutely exceptional in English too. We begun the half term with a poetry unit (unconnected to North America). We spent lots of time exploring The Highwayman poem in English and Book Club before reading the Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson. The children then used this book to inspire their own poem, applying all their lense work from the previous sentence stacking lessons. Here are two examples of superb poems!

After this poetry unit, the children then spent time looking at the structure and language in a travel brochure. We looked at how to persuade someone to visit England (with no mention of the rain, of course!) before writing our own travel brochure for Mexico! Here are some beautiful examples – we word processed the neat copies today!

 

Design Technology

The children have absolutely loved design technology this half term! They have spent time researching the different tribes of North America before designing a weaving pattern that could be used by a particular tribe. The tieing of knots and the tricky weaving was very fiddly at times but have a look at the stunning designs created! We are so impressed with the children’s creativity!

 

Art

The last piece of learning we would like to share with you is art! Although we haven’t quite finished the final independent piece (a map of their own country), we had to celebrate the children’s creativity in their naive artwork. The children have studied various artists this half term and then replicated these styles – using coloured pencils and fine liner – before drawing their own maps independently. Here a few sketchbook examples for you to see. 

 

All that leaves us to say is Merry Christmas from the Year 5 team! We have had a wonderful half term with your children and were particularly proud of their performance at our Carols Around the Tree service. Thank you also for all your donations to our Christmas secret mission – hopefully you will enjoy seeing our video very soon. See you in January 2022!