Welcome to Miss Hitchen's Year 5 Blog!
W/B 6th July 2015
This week we have completed a fantastic piece of writing based upon the story by Michael Morpurgo - The Ghost of Grania O'Malley.
We watched a short video clip of the author reading the first few pages of the story. We noticed that Michal Morpurgo included a good balance of short, snappy sentences and long, descriptive sentences. An interview with Michael Morpurgo told us that the best way to write a story is to build as much tension in to your writing as possible. We set to work looking at the different characters we had come across in the opening chapter of the story - Jessie and The Pirate Queen. Together we brain stormed what the characters could be like and what adventure they could go on. Children then worked in small groups to come up with their very own plots. Year 5 began to practise using shorter, snappy sentences to build tension whilst having a good balance of longer, descriptive sentences so that the reader still gained enough information about the character. Once these sentences had been perfected, Year 5 wrote their own stories about Jessie and The Pirate Queen, making sure all of the Year 5 end of year expectations were on show in their writing. These stories will be displayed in our new Year 6 classroom in September!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 29th June 2015
We had a fabulous time at Lancashire County Cricket Club. Have a look at the wonderful things we got up to!
W/B 22nd June 2015
Reminders: Monday 29th June - Trip to Lancashire County Cricket Club. Please ensure your child is in school on time as we will be leaving straight away! All children must wear full school uniform (including sensible school shoes!) and bring a healthy packed lunch with them.
Saturday 4th July: Summer Fair
Thursday 9th July: School disco - For more information please see flyer below.
This week has been National Sports Week and we have had lots of fun. We began the week by solving a tricky Maths problem set by Mrs Holcroft. Mrs Holcroft had been left in charge of ordering refreshments for Sports Day, however, Tesco had a huge sale on in store and Mrs Holcroft was struggling to calculate the best deal. Year 5 set to work straight away. Year 5 noticed that some of the boxes gave more items than others and that the prices were different. With out talk partners we predicted which offer was the best using our mental methods. We then discussed which formal strategies we could use to calculate an accurate answer. Year 5 came up with lots of different methods which was wonderful to see. The final challenge was for the children to explain their calculations to Mrs Holcroft to help her to understand as well. I was so amazed with the children's use of mathematical vocabulary!
On Wednesday we had great fun participating in Sports Day. All of the children looked fabulous. Thank you to all parents for making a special effort to ensure your child had the correct colour PE Kit and footwear. Well done to Ella Hall's dad for coming second in the Parents race!
We ended the week with a lovely creative write session. We pretended to be commentators at a sporting event. We watched a video of Olympic runners, first without audio and then with audio. We began a shared write session and discussed how longer and more descriptive sentences are used at the start, moving towards much shorter and snappy sentences during the event. We have some great writers in Y5. I can't wait to read all of them over the weekend!
Have a lovely weekend.
Miss Hitchen
W/B 15th June 2015
Reminders: Wednesday 24th June - Sports Day - 1.30pm start!
Monday 29th June - Trip to Lancashire County Cricket Club
This week began in a very interesting way! Bubbles the clown came to visit! He was very sad as people were not enjoying his performances anymore as his bubble machines were not working very well. Year 5 set to work and planned an investigation to help Bubbles. Year 5 decided that if they could make the biggest bubbles ever to be seen, then people would definitely want to watch Bubbles' shows again. In small group we planned a fair test investigation. We discussed which variables needed to be kept the same and which needed to be changed. Year 5 enjoyed predicting which bubble mixture would produce the biggest bubble. Some children even went as far to predict the bigger the bubble wand the bigger the bubble it will produce although it could depend upon what material the wand is made out of! We had great fun experimenting. At the end of the week we drew up our conclusions and wrote a letter back to Bubbles to explain our findings.
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 8th June 2015
Reminders: Please can you sign and return your child's trip letter to Lancashire County Cricket Club ASAP.
Sports Day is just around the corner. Please can you ensure your child has a full P.E kit in school, with the correct colour t-shirt for their team. Thank you!
Another fabulous week has been had in Year 5! This week we have continued with our work on fractions. We began the week learning all about how to multiply fractions. We had a special visitor in our class called Shrek, who was very hungry. Year 5 helped Shrek to find out the quantity of food he had eaten, by multiplying different fractions of a variety of foods. Year 5 are gaining in confidence with this topic and are now able to apply their knowledge to solve tricky problems. Why not ask your child to model how to add, subtract and multiply fractions for you?
We have continued to read 'Beowulf' during our English sessions, which the children can not get enough of. Each morning I am greeted by numerous children asking if we can continue with the book which is amazing! Our love for reading has certainly grew this year! This week the children set to work on planning their own myth, set during the Viking period. The children have thought of some fantastic characters to include. We ended the week by writing our opening to the myth. We used a brand new sentence type called 'Imagine 3' which helped the children to really create an image of their setting in the readers mind.
As part of our science topic, Life Cycles, we began to look at the cycle of a variety of flowering plants. This week we have predicted the conditions needed for a seed to germinate and planned how we could investigate this with a fair test. Next week, our science work will be a little bit different as it is Science Week at Grange Valley. Year 5 will be taking part in a whole school investigation. How exciting?!
This week we have been fighting fit! We have really enjoyed our PE sessions with the specialist coaches. On Wednesday we practised our cricket skills ready for our competition in a few weeks time and Thursday we put our funky feet to the test with Everton in football! Not only have we been keeping fit with our exercises but we have really enjoyed eating our healthy packed lunches in the lovely sunshine on our brand new picnic benches!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 1st June 2015
I cannot believe the first week of our last term in Year 5 is already over! Time really does fly when you're having fun! This week in Maths we have been learning all about factors and fractions. We started the week investigating factors and discussing why 3,5,7,13etc are 'bad' numbers to choose and why these numbers never ever won. Year 5 now know that we call these numbers Prime, because they can only have 1 and itself as a factor. Later in the week, we began to take another look at fractions. We have had great fun learning how to add and subtract fractions. Next week we will be moving on to look at how to multiply fractions.
This week we have started a new book in English linked to our History topic, The Vicious Vikings, called 'Beowulf'. The children are thoroughly enjoying reading the book and were super excited to write their own descriptions of their Grendel. I was so pleased with the children's writing. Their hard work this year is really starting to pay off! we have some fabulously talented writers in Year 5! Next week we will continue with our story and will be learning how to plan our own Myths and Legends.
Excitement filled the air today when the children were told they were going to write to a pen pal in South Korea. Year 5 were shown images of the school, children and staff. The children were really interested to see the similarities and differences between our classroom and theirs. We discussed how to use and informal style of writing to write their letters. It was lovely to read the children's letter, explaining to their pen pal about their hobbies and interests, and how fantastic their family and school are. Year 5 edited and redrafted their letters so that they can be sent later today. We cannot wait for our replies! We ended our lovely writing session by trying some traditional South Korean food- Kimchi! Some children loved it ...
Some children were unsure....
Some children raced to the tap!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 18th May 2015
This week has been ECO week at Grange Valley. We have really enjoyed learning all about the different ways we can help our environment. During the week we have decided on our very own ECO code which will be displayed all around school to remind us of the little things we can do each day to help. We have also created a detailed plan of our school garden and researched different plants we would like to include to increase biodiversity. During our Literacy sessions we continued with our choral poetry unit and enjoyed writing our own ECO raps to perform in front of the class. It was great fun! During the week we have had a whole host of visitors to share their role in the community and how it helps our environment. Our favourite visitor was the bee keeper!
Have a lovely half term!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 11th May 2015
Year 5 have had a wonderful week of learning! This week in Literacy we have began to look at Choral and Performance poetry. We enjoyed identifying the features of this type of poetry whilst reading and performing a selection of Miss Hitchen's favourites. We also discussed the use of apostrophes within the poems and the use of the subjunctive form. During our Maths sessions we have been looking at negative numbers in the context of temperature. This has been quite tricky. We have been practicing reading different temperatures on thermometers, finding the difference between temperatures and ordering temperatures from coolest to hottest. This week we have started a new unit in PE- Rugby. We really enjoyed our session in the sun on Wednesday afternoon learning how to work as a team and pass the ball correctly.
W/B 5th May 2015
A message from Mrs Holcroft:
On Thursday our new school gate arrived which means that the electrics will soon be activated. The gates will be controlled by the office as an extra security measure. Keeping our children safe at all times is so important to us at Grange Valley.
The gates will be locked to cars from 8:40 until 3:40, access within those times will be limited. Staff will have access fobs and visitors will need to speak to the office via the intercom that will be situated by the entrance.
The gates for pedestrians will also be locked and access to school will be limited with permission needed via the office through the new intercom.
Any queries please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Holcroft or the office staff.
We have made fabulous progress in English and Maths this week. Lots of children have met their targets and have been given new ones for the term ahead! During our Maths sessions we have been looking at efficient methods of long multiplication. I am so pleased with all children's perseverance to master this very challenging skill. As part of our English unit on Stories with Flashbacks, we have looked closely at Aiden Gibbons - The Piano. We really enjoyed writing dialogue for the short video using a range of emotive language. We ended our busy week writing our own narrative, using paragraphs to help us to create pace in our writing.
During our History sessions, we looked in greater detail at the Anglo- Saxons. We placed significant events on a timeline and located Saxon kingdoms and settlements on a map. As part of our Art and Design, we learnt all about Anglo - Saxon and Viking brooches and the different types. We set to work to design our own brooches which we will be making next week.
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 27th April 2015
We had a very special delivery this week! During our Geography afternoon, a peculiar looking box was found in our classroom. We could not wait to find out what was inside! Matthew answered some amazing questions about the Amazon Rainforest and was chosen to open the mystery box. Inside we found Sally, a Scarlet Macaw! She had travelled all the way from the Amazon to teach Year 5 about the different layers of the rainforest and the wildlife that lives in each. We had great fun researching the different layers and learning all about the different animals. We have written some fantastic non chronological reports to share our facts about the animals living in the different layers. Once they have been edited and redrafted they will be displayed in our classroom for you to come and read!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 20th April 2015
Reminder: Sponsored Dance - Friday 1st May
It was lovely to see the children on Monday morning, so excited to return to school and tell me all about the wonderful things they had been up to over the holidays! This week we have begun our new Literacy unit - Stories with flashbacks. We enjoyed looking at short clips of well-known films, to try and identify flashbacks. We discussed, with our coaching partner, the different techniques which had been used to create the flashback. We moved on to looking at flashbacks in narratives, our favourite being Harry Potter! We have really enjoyed reading different extracts from the series. We set to work on writing our very own Pensieve memory in the style of J.K. Rowling. I was so impressed with the children's work. It was very tricky to ensure our tenses were correct throughout our piece of writing!
During our Maths sessions we have been focussing on our mental addition and subtraction. We have been using rounding and adjusting to make our calculations more efficient. On Thursday we put our skills to the test and practiced calculating the costs of Harry Potter's wands and broom sticks and calculating his change. We are now super fast at mental addition and subtraction!
This week we have also begun a new topic in science - Life Cycles. We started the topic by completing a KWL poster to show what they children already know and what they would like to know. At the end of the unit the children will return to these posters to add everything they have learnt. We then moved on to labelling the different parts of a plant and learning their functions. All children were eager to find out how new plants were made. We discussed the fruit of a flowering plant and how seeds are produced. The children really enjoyed sorting the different flowering plants into groups by how their seeds are dispersed. Very soon we will be learning all about the conditions needed for seeds to germinate and grow.
This terms SEAL focus is all about relationships. This week we have been discussing how our actions can affect other people's feelings. We then chose a name at random to create a friendship card. The children wrote some lovely things about each other. Some children even wrote poems for each other! I'm so lucky to have a class full of kind and caring children!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 30th March 2015
Reminder: Friday 24th April - Year 5 will be visiting Haydock High School for a fun afternoon of PE activities! Please ensure your child has full PE kit in school!
We had so much fun taking part in all of the different Minecraft activities. We enjoyed showing our Parents, Grandparents, Aunties and Uncles how much we have progressed with our Reading, Writing and Mathematics!
Have a lovely Easter!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 23rd March 2015
Reminders - Fit 4 Life - Tuesday 31st March
Minecraft Mayhem - Wednesday 1st April
Decorate an Egg Competition - Wednesday 1st April
Easter Experience - Christ Church - Thursday 2nd April
Another brilliant week has been had in Year 5. This week all of our learning has been themed around 'Minecraft', which the children have really enjoyed. At the beginning of the week we received an email from 'Minecraft' explaining a new and exciting opportunity which children could become involved with. We began to plan our new imaginary world using an APP called 'Toontastic'. Children built their own 'worlds', characters and even provided voice overs to narrate their cartoon. We sent our ideas to 'Minecraft', who absolutely loved them and our creativity! They have since emailed back asking us to turn our cartoons into a story book for children!
We set to work on the task straight away! We decided in order for our writing to be the best it could possibly be, that we needed a clear, focussed and challenging success criteria, which we worked on together. To help us with our Imaginary World stories we read lots of extracts from famous books such as: The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Harry Potter, The Hobbit and many more. We identified the features and edited and improved our original cartoons to include these features.
We really enjoyed writing our setting descriptions for our stories. We challenged ourselves to use Relative Clauses to add extra detail in to our sentences. We even found out that 'drop in' relative clauses can use brackets and dashes. Some children even experimented using defining and non defining clauses! Why not ask your child to explain what a relative clause is and demonstrate for you how they are used?
During our Maths sessions we looked at Area and Perimeter of simple and compound shapes. We used our knowledge to help our favourite 'Minecraft' character Steve to solve some tricky problems. We also investigated how many square and rectangles had the same area as the perimeter. We drew up some fabulous conclusions!
Tuesday we took part in another Fit 4 Life sessions and really enjoyed making our own healthy wraps!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 16th March 2015
Reminders: Fit 4 Life - Tuesday 24th March - Please ensure children have full PE kits in school
Easter Egg Raffle Tickets: Tickets will be on sale in school at break time for the Easter Egg Raffle that will be drawn at our Easter Bingo on the Thursdays 26th March organised by our PTFA. There are lots of scrummy Easter eggs available to win. Tickets are 20p each or £1 for a strip.
Decorate an Egg Competiton: We will be holding our ‘decorate an egg’ competition once again, back by popular demand from the children.
We would like children to use their creative talents by decorating a ‘boiled egg’ and bringing it into school to exhibit it in the hall on Wednesday 1st April. All eggs will be judged by Mrs Bailey and Mrs Louden and prizes will be given for the best dressed eggs in each class!
So let’s see what wonderful designs you can come up with this year…
First of all, 'Thank you so much' to all the parents who came to our parents evening to celebrate the success and progress Year 5 have made so far this year. It was lovely to see you all and hear your positive comments. As promised, children's new target sheets will be sent home at the beginning of next week.
We have had lots of exciting children in Year 5 this week. Excitement peaked when Sully and Mike from Monsters Inc came to visit. They helped us with our problem solving in Maths. We used their monster friends to write our own problems involving measures. We found out that in order to solve a problem involving measures, we needed to covert numbers to the same units. We had great fun during our English session when we used masks to role play Sully and Mike's day on Scare Floor F. We also learnt a 'TopTip' for using paragraphs in our writing. To- change of topic, P- change of place, Ti - change in time and P- introducing a new person. We used this 'TopTip' to write a diary entry in role as Sully.
This week we have also spent some time discussing the eclipse. We really enjoyed watching the eclipse and learning why they are so rare and why they occur. We looked at a range of newspaper reports from 1999 (the last solar eclipse) and discussed why this report was so important. We looked at the features of newspapers and set to work on our very own report about the eclipse. We enjoyed visiting different classes, asking both children and staff what they were doing in their class surrounding the eclipse and what their thoughts were. We used this information to write our own quotes to include in our reports. Our reports will soon be displayed in our new 'Space' themed area. Why not pop into school and have a read?
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 9th March 2015
Reminders: Fit 4 Life - Tuesday 17th March - Please ensure children have full PE kits in school
Parents Evening - Monday 16th March, Tuesday 17th March, Wednesday 18th March - Please check your letter for your time!
I cannot believe another week is over! This week has been so much fun and Year 5 have been up to lots of different things (as usual)! During our Literacy sessions we wrote our very own non - chronological reports all about Carnivals. We had lots of fun editing and redrafting our writing using lots of different techniques to improve our sentences. Year 5 really enjoyed snowballing their sentences to share with each other so that they could be 'up levelled' using our shared criteria. Once we were happy with our finished report we set to work on the illustrations to accompany it. We looked at a variety of photographs from Brazil and played 'Caption That!'. We discussed the use of puns as headings in our report and to make captions for our pictures.
Our Maths work has been exceptionally tricky this week! We have been learning all about written methods for division and how to apply these to problem solving situations!! Some children were given the answer to a question and they had to think of the question! We have very talented mathematicians in Year 5! Why not ask your child to demonstrate their new skills at home?
Our science focus this week has been all about classifying animals. We learnt all about Aristotle and his Ladder of Nature and discussed how scientists continue to find and discover new things each day, which has led to they way we classify animals today. We moved on to look at similarities and differences of animals within the same category.
We really enjoyed our Fit 4 Life session on Tuesday. Have a look at what we got up to!
On Thursday we had a lovely trip to Haydock Library. We discussed the book titles we have been reading as part of the BASH project. We enjoyed reading a snippet of each and acting out the different characters. We cannot wait to vote for our favourite title .... we may even get to go to the awards ceremony!
We finished another fantastic week by 'dressing funny for money' to support a fabulous charity 'Comic Relief'.
Have lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 2nd March 2015
Reminder: Thursday 12th March - Year 5 will be visiting Haydock Library
Friday 13th March - Red Nose Day - the theme this year is 'Dress Funny for Money'. Please do not feel you need to spend money on outfits! Please see the newsletter for extra details!
Another wonderful week has been had in Year 5! This week during Literacy we have taken a closer look at non chronological reports. We spent a little bit of time identifying the features, on a range of example texts, which we displayed on our working wall to help us with our learning for the rest of the week. We also looked at the use of fact and opinion, rhetorical questions and semicolons in our writing before moving on to plan our very own report all about Rio de Janeiro and the a amazing carnivals.
Our focus in maths this week has been multiplication. We have looked at two different written methods which we have used and applied to solve a variety of problems. Next week we will be looking at the inverse, division! Get practicing your bus stops Year 5!
During our Geography lesson we looked at life in the rainforest. The children were very interested in the different tribes! We set up a Market Place in our classroom to share our facts before using them to write a comparative diary entry!
We have ended our busy week with a fabulous dress up day for world book day. Thank you to all parents for your efforts with your child's costume, they looked fantastic and really enjoyed showing them off during assembly. We ended our day with a 'reading cafe' were we shared stories over a hot chocolate and a biscuit. Who knew school could be so much fun!!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 23rd February 2015
Reminders: World Book Day - Friday 6th March - Children are welcome to come to school dressed as their favourite book character
What a week! This week we have travelled the world and learnt all about Egypt! We have had so much fun: dancing, singing, food tasting, mask making, playing instruments and even mummifying!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 9th February 2015
This week year 5 have been working exceptionally hard to complete their end of term assessments. I am so proud of all of the children and the progress they have made. Mrs Williams, who began working in our class on Monday, has also been very impressed and cannot wait to start teaching the children after half term!
During our Art and Design sessions we looked at our design brief and wrote our own specification for our rainforest hat or carnival headress. We researched, using IPads, what designs are already on the market and looked at the properties of a variety of materials we could use to make our designs. We then completed our final designs and began to take measurements. On Friday, we set to work to create our product. We had lots of fun parading around the hall in our hats so Mrs Threlkeld could choose the best design. Well done to Naimh who was announced the winner!
Have a lovely Half Term!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 2nd February
This week has been National Story Telling Week. Year 5 have really enjoyed listening to a variety of stories this week. At the beginning of the week Year 5 were challenged to bring in their favourite story books and see how many they could read to gain stamps on their new 'Reading Passports'. I have been so impressed with the children's efforts. It was lovely to hear children discussing their books and recommending their favourites.
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 26th January
What a week! Well done children for coming in to school 'whatever the weather' and continuing to try your very best. This week in maths we have been carrying out our own number investigations. We have looked carefully at composite and prime numbers. Year 5 were challenged to find the answers to questions similiar to: 'Are all prime numbers odd?' 'Are all prime numbers, one more or one less than a multiple of 6?' Why not ask your children about their findings!
As part of our English unit on 'Journey to the River Sea' we looked at a variety of ways to make our writing more exciting. We began the week learning how to use a new sentence type called 'emotion, comma'. The children wrote some brilliant letters in role as the Maia (the main character), back to her friends in England. Year 5 have been trying very hard to meet their writing targets and I am so pleased with their progress. Children are constantly challenging themselves to 'uplevel' their use of vocabulary and a higher level of punctuation.
As part of our Geography unit on Rainforests, we prepared our own weather forecast and used a map of South Africa to present to the class. The children really enjoyed watching their performances back and giving themselves 2 stars and a wish!
Today, we held a debate and wrote a balanced argument during our Creative Writing lesson! It was lovely to hear all of the children's responses. It made me realise how many sensible and caring children are in Year 5! I can not wait to read their writing over the weekend!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
W/B 19th January
Another brilliant week has been had in Year 5. This week we began reading 'Journey to the River Sea'. The children have thoroughly enjoyed the story and have completed some excellent 'What happens next?' pieces of writing. We have some very imaginative writers in Year 5! We used an adventure story APP on the IPAD's to look at how authors carefully choose each story strand to make their writing as exciting as possible. We had great fun changing each strand to see the effect it had on the plot of the story.
During our Maths sessions we have been looking at different types of triangles. Year 5 now confidently know the properties of each type of triangle and can even use a protractor and ruler to accurately draw their own triangles. Towards the end of the week we looked at how we would calculate the area of a triangle. Why not ask your child to explain the rules to you?
On Wednesday we continued with our Computing Curriculum. We prepared our own pitch for our APP's that we designed in our previous lessons. It was lovely to see how much confidence the children had when talking about their ideas in front of the class. The confidence continued to ooze from the children on Friday when they presented their 'Brazil' homework projects. I was amazed at all the hard work and efforts made by the children! They are fabulous! 'Well done children!'
During our creative writing this week, we pretended to be pirates, in search of buried treasure. We looked at how action, dialogue and description are key to writing an exciting and entertaining story. We used levelled criteria to help us to identify our own next steps in our writing. With our talk partners we discussed how we would meet this target next time. We will be editing and redrafting our stories to put on display in our classroom!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Hitchen
