We hope you loved your Christmas cards! The attached "make do and mend" decorations had been carefully researched and designed to appeal to as many people as possible! The children learnt three different stitches in order to create them: running stitch, back stitch and blanket stitch. They also learnt how to sew on a button, so no excuses next time one falls off; they can repair it themselves!
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It can be hard to come back to school after a lovely Christmas break, however, Year 5 returned to an amazing surprise! To kick off our Earth and Space topic, we were visited by the Wonderdome (a portable planetarium)! We spent hours being able to discover our Solar System and were amazed by some of the facts. Did you know that there are over 200 moons in the Solar System? We are going to use this new learning to find out even more about our universe and beyond!
In maths we have been learning about cubed numbers. To investigate patterns and why they are called cubes, we used multilink to make cubes based on the calculations. It really helped us visualise what was happening when we cube numbers.
We decided to use our ICT skills to make calendars. We used Word and found images to represent each month of the year. We had to look at resizing and positioning images. Our calendars are going to look really effective!
Anti-Bullying week has been really busy for Year 5. We have really thought and reflected on what bullying is and the different forms of bullying. We also looked at the effect of bullying on the victim and how serious it can get. This fitted in really well with our work on World War 2 and the Holocaust. It made us think about how a little word and belief can become extreme.
On Thursday, Year 5 took over the hall to begin our new World War 2 focus. We are going to look at the events of Dunkirk and in particular Operation Dynamo, which is when hundreds of civilians sailed, rowed and tugged boats from England to France to rescue the British and allied forces, who had been trapped by the German forces. Dunkirk will be used to inspire our writing, history and even our science for the next couple of weeks.
Our opening began with listening to Churchill's speech. We pretended to be the civilians, waiting to depart for Dunkirk. We used our measuring and ratio skills in maths to map out the distance that it would have been to Dunkirk and worked out - using the distance and average mile per hour - how long it would have taken the men, women and children to get there. It has really excited us for our next bit of learning on Dunkirk. Pop back soon and see how we are getting on! As part of our informal letter writing task, we decided to have a little look at the sorts of 'slang' expressions they might have used in the 1940s. We found quite a few that made us giggle (like chrome dome). Some, were easier to match then others. Do you what it means when everything is 'tickety-boo'?
Our new EPIC writing activity is going to be to send a letter as an evacuee being sent to the country during the war. We decided to begin our learning with some drama and mind mapping of all the emotions we would have gone through on our journey to our new homes. We used our class text 'Letters From The Lighthouse' as inspiration, and also looked at Michael Morpurgo's 'Friend Or Foe' and the evacuation scene at the beginning of 'The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe'. It meant we could really get into character for when we were given the information about our new homes. Even though we knew it wasn't real, we still got extremely nervous waiting for our envelopes!
Our first music project is learning to perform 'Living on a Prayer' by Bon Jovi. We couldn't believe it when Miss Gallagher played if for us. We started by practising how to find the beat. This meant moving in lots of different ways. This will help us be able to tap out the beat with an instrument later. We are hoping to be able to perform it for school when we've finished. Watch this space....
On Tuesday it was 5CG's turn to become evacuees for the day at Cannon Hall. We really got into character and we wore some fantastic costumes! The weather was miserable which actually added to the story atmosphere of being evacuated to the country (and leaving home). Joanne, our host, brought us to the scullery and talked us through the tasks we would have to tackle as guests at Cannon Hall during the war. In 'Make Do and Mend' we looked at household artefacts from the 1940s. We found the irons to be very heavy and were very glad that nobody had the task of completing the ironing for the house! We found out that during the war even bath water was rationed. Do you know the depth of the water in an average bath during World War 2? In this activity we also learnt how to darn socks and make rugs from old rags. Most of us found the task quite therapeutic and imagined spending evenings by the coal fire fixing our clothes (its very different to how we actually spend our evenings). In 'Rationing' Joanne the cook showed us how little food was given to feed families during the war. It was interesting to find out how many meals a housewife could make out of just a little bit of meat. Not all the recipes sounded appetising though! We learnt how to make carrot cookies and were surprised at how delicious they were! In 'Send the Message' we learnt how to write greetings in morse code. We also looked at war artefacts and propaganda posters. Our final activity was 'Toys and Games'. We got to play the sorts of games children like us would have played during the war. There were some - like Jacks - we had never heard of before, but others - like monopoly - we had played lots of times. This linked with our history we had done previously when we learnt about 'contrasts and similarities over time'. We had such a brilliant day, despite the rain, but were glad that our experience ended after one day (unlike many evacuees). We've been inspired by our journey today that we are going to stay in character for our next writing project. Watch this space...
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Year 5 BlogMiss Levitt, Mrs Mundy, Mrs Tadajewski, make up the Year 5 team. |