Year 5 - Autumn 1

Welcome back 

WELCOME BACK! 

We hope you  had a fabulous Summer holiday, and are ready to tackle the first term of the year!! 

This half term our topic is 'Is anybody Out There', this will be mostly a science based unit with some geographical learning and is aimed at developing the children's knowledge of outer space and space exploration. We will revisit some prior learning and develop our knowledge of the movement of the planets in our solar system around the sun. We will explore how space travel has impacted life and scientific discoveries. Children will develop their oracy skills and debate whether sending animals into space was safe/fair/necessary...

If you haven't already, please do read through the knowledge organiser with your child – this will help them to understand some of the key information for this term, acknowledge their future learning, build upon prior learning, whilst developing new knowledge and skills. 

Our English focus is a digital literacy unit which involves the children using their oracy skills and narrative skills to retell and write about the adventure of a space monkey in 'Trailblazer in Space'. This will open the children's minds to the possibilities which have taken place in Science and space exploration. It will also link in to our science topic as we learn about the solar system.  This is an excellent topic to start our year off and is sure to fire up our children's imagination, develop their oracy and inspire their writing skills. We will also be making links to the children's prior learning from Year 2 and Year 3  where they have previously learnt about space, the environments and light and shadows. 

Within the class activities we will be focussed on building the children's oracy by encouraging each child to find their voice whether that is through debating, explaining, reasoning, working in teams or individually. We will encourage the children to develop their knowledge of subject specific vocabulary whilst also developing an awareness of body language, eye contact and voice intonation. 

In Maths, we will be developing our knowledge of place value, addition and subtraction. The children will be challenging themselves as we use their knowledge to solve problems and work independently to check their learning using the skills they have been using in class.

This half term the children will need to bring their full P.E kit on a WEDNESDAY for their PE sessions.

Weekly reminders:

• This half term, P.E. takes place on WEDNESDAY. Please ensure the children have a kit in school on this day although it is helpful if they remain in school throughout the week in case we need to reschedule and for after school clubs.
• English and Maths homework will be set via Century on Mondays and will be available for a week.
• Spellings are tested on Friday.
• Quick Maths test is on Friday.
• Each day, your child should come to school and come home with their reading book and a library book. They can change these in school as soon as they have been read. Please do encourage them to read regularly and listen to them to read out loud wherever possible.
• Children should also be maintaining their speed and accuracy with their times tables knowledge - Times Tables Rockstars is available for this purpose.

We are looking forward to an exciting half-term together.  As always, if you have any questions or concerns at any time, please do not hesitate to contact myself or Mrs Abbass.

Mrs Whitehurst & Mrs Abbass