Welcome to Year 5 - Miss Hitchen's Class 2018-19

Summer 2 2019

What an exciting year we have had! It has been a pleasure to teach such a wonderful cohort of children, who have given their best every day and have achieved many amazing things during the year. Each day I have been amazed by their attitudes, behaviour and their determination to succeed. Year 5 should certainly be very proud of the progress they have made this year and I am sure they will make a fabulous Year 6 class!! Please find an overview of our year together below.

Autumn Term

Dinosaur Week was certainly a highlight of our Autumn Term. The children were thoroughly engrossed and it created a real ‘buzz’ within our classroom, giving children the experience needed to produce quality written work across the curriculum.

National Space Week also proved to be a hit with Year 5! The children enjoyed taking on the role of a NASA scientist. Year 5 were able to pose their own questions based upon their reading and plan and conduct their own experiments. One of our favourite investigations was, ‘Does life exist on other Planets?’ The children were thrilled to find out NASA had contacted Grange Valley for help to sort out their soil samples, which they had collected from different planets. Year 5 researched the properties of Martian soil and planned fair investigations to test the different properties.

Spring Term

The start of 2019 was filled with many new learning experiences, special visitors, sporting events and much more! Money, money, money week was thoroughly enjoyed by all. We enjoyed learning about the world of work, especially when our special visitors came to talk about their personal journeys to securing a position in their dream jobs. During the course of the week, Year 5 learnt where money comes from, what we use money for, including the concepts of spending and saving. The children also learnt about the role money plays in people’s lives, including how to manage, keep it safe and make choices about spending and what would influence choices. Year 5 were also lucky enough to participate in a ‘Money Wise’ workshop with Santander learning about the concepts of ‘interest’, ‘loan’, ‘debt’, and ‘tax’ along with the skills that make someone enterprising. Year 5 put their new skills to the test when asked to run a ‘Grange Valley Market Stall’. Our special visitors didn’t stop here though! To further inspire reading, we had a visit from the author Tom Palmer. The children loved hearing about how he became an author and how he creates his books. Tom’s presence in school certainly furthered our excitement around reading and lots of children in Year 5 have already read quite a few of his books!!

Summer Term

This term brought a terrific Harry Potter week, were we had the opportunity to visit our Partnership school to take part in a variety of fun, creative activities. We particularly enjoyed making magic wands and tasting Butterbeer! The highlight of this term was our Quidditch competition and our special owl assembly, were we got to experience first-hand the fascinating relationship between owls and humans. We ended a busy Summer Term with a super Sports Day, filled with fun, competitiveness and plenty of sunshine!

Spring 1 2019

What an amazing start to 2019 we have had! So many wonderful weeks filled with new learning experiences, special visitors, sporting events and much more!

During our Maths sessions this half term, we have been learning all about Fractions. We have learnt lots of new maths vocabulary, which has helped us when reasoning with our Maths partners to explain our answers. Throughout this unit of work, Year 5 have learnt how to compare fractions using fraction tiles, bar models and eventually by finding a common denominator. As our learning journey continued, we were able to generate our own rules such as, ‘the larger the denominator the smaller the fraction’, which enabled us to compare fractions more efficiently without the need for a written method – some children were even able to suggest when this method would be most effective and could compose questions to challenge the class!! We ended the half term learning how to add fractions with both like and unlike denominators. After the holidays, Year 5 will be looking at how to subtract fractions, before moving on to multiplying them! Some very tricky weeks ahead!

Money, money, money week has certainly been a highlight of our term. We thoroughly enjoyed learning about the world of work, especially when our special visitors came to talk about their personal journeys to securing a position in their dream jobs. During the course of the week, Year 5 learnt where money comes from, what we use money for, including the concepts of spending and saving. The children also learnt about the role money plays in people’s lives, including how to manage, keep it safe and make choices about spending and what would influence choices. Year 5 were also lucky enough to participate in a ‘Money Wise’ workshop with Santander learning about the concepts of ‘interest’, ‘loan’, ‘debt’, and ‘tax’ along with the skills that make someone enterprising. Year 5 put their new skills to the test when asked to run a ‘Grange Valley Market Stall’. The children received a small budget and set a target profit, which they would later donate to Willowbrook Hospice. As part of our English lesson during our themed week, we wrote our own Grange Valley Prospectus, written our own CV for our dream job, held formal interviews (dressed in formal business attire!) and wrote our own anthology of ‘When I Grow Up’ poems.

Our special visitors didn’t stop here though! To further inspire reading, we had a visit from the author Tom Palmer. The children loved hearing about how he became an author and how he creates his books. Tom’s presence in school certainly furthered our excitement around reading and lots of children in Year 5 have already read quite a few of his books!!

Our class novel ‘Holes’ sparked lots of interest during our English lessons this term. The children have thoroughly enjoyed reading the story, studying the different characterisations Louis Sacher has used alongside carefully planned subplots within his writing to add an extra layer of mystery and suspense for his readers. Year 5 produced some fabulous alternative subplot stories of their own, which showcased the progress they have made with their writing so far this year.

Thank you to all parents for your help with this term’s Ancient Egyptian homework projects. They all looked fabulous and I know the children learnt so much from each other when they shared their hard work during lessons. Year 5 have been completely engrossed with this topic, with many children completing additional reading and work at home! We particularly enjoyed learning about the process of mummification. Our favourite lesson this term was when we were able to follow our friend’s instructions to mummify one of our peers!

It was lovely to see the children finish the term with a wonderful Valentines disco. Lots of happy children and fantastic dance moves!

Have a lovely half term,

Miss Hitchen x

Autumn 2 2018

Another terrific term has flown by in Year 5! We have had an extremely busy few weeks, filled with lots of new learning experiences and plenty of festive fun!

Year 5 have continued to impress during this term, achieving amazing outcomes in all areas of their learning.

Year 5 have thoroughly enjoyed their 'Magnificent Mountains' topic this term. Their extensive knowledge was showcased through their home learning projects, were I was completely blown away with the children's use of technical vocabulary and their creative ideas for presenting their hard work. I’m sure you will agree, they all look spectacular!

During our English lessons we have enjoyed a wide range of texts. We thoroughly enjoyed reading the narrative poem – The Highwayman, where we were introduced to old English words and phrases. We enjoyed taking on the role of the different characters and participating in role play activities so that we were able to empathise with the characters and begin to understand the reasons for their actions. One of the highlights from this unit was when we held a class debate to decide if Tim was right or wrong to inform King George’s Men about Bess and The Highwayman. Year 5 displayed great maturity during this activity and could use their learning experiences to write fantastic diary entries in role as the Ostler.

During the festive period we enjoyed reading the story ‘The Polar Express’, were we transformed our classroom into an old steam train and climbed aboard to drink hot chocolate, to begin our journey to the North Pole! During this unit, we further improved our sentence stacking technique and used our knowledge of figurative language from earlier in the term to bring our writing alive for the reader. Our final pieces of writing were truly outstanding!

This term our Maths sessions have cantered around refining our written methods for Multiplication and Division, which has been quite tricky and will remain one of our class targets for the Spring Term to ensure our calculations, are both accurate and efficient. This chapter has highlighted the importance of fact recall to the children and it has been great to see so many children taking responsibility for their own learning and accessing Times Tables Rockstars at home to help them to further improve.

Despite all of the hard work, we have had lots of Christmassy fun too! We went to Christ Church, with Sandra and her wonderful helpers to celebrate the Christmas story. We also performed Merry Movie Mayhem where our parents came to join in the quiz and we sang songs from Christmas films! We were even lucky enough to have a Christmas cinema treat along with a pantomime and a puppet show! We really are lucky here at Grange Valley!

I would like to say a big thank you for all your support over the last term and I can’t wait to see the progress the children make next term.

Merry Christmas!

Miss Hitchen x

Autumn 1 2018

What an amazing start Year 5 have made to this academic year! It has been an extremely busy few weeks, filled with lots of exciting activities, which have helped us to make outstanding progress within all areas of our learning.

Year 5 have been immersed in many creative writing opportunities this term. One of our favourite units has been Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which began by the children receiving a mystery golden ticket, inviting them to a sweet tasting party! During this unit, the children focussed upon expanding their vocabulary, thinking carefully how different words can impact the reader in different ways. Year 5 thoroughly enjoyed displaying all of their new learning in their end of unit piece of work when they were able to create their own magical factory to write about.

Dinosaur Week was certainly a highlight of our term. The children were thoroughly engrossed and it certainly created a ‘buzz’ within our classroom, giving children the experience needed to produce quality written work across the curriculum. Year 5 enjoyed making predictions, completing home learning projects and writing their own newspaper reports in English.

National Space Week also proved to be a hit this half term. The children enjoyed taking on the role of a NASA scientist. Year 5 were able to pose their own questions based upon their reading and plan and conduct their own experiments. One of our favourite investigations was, ‘Does life exist on other Planets?’ The children were thrilled to find out NASA had contacted Grange Valley for help to sort out their soil samples, which they had collected from different planets. Year 5 researched the properties of Martian soil and planned fair investigations to test the different properties.

This term we also celebrated National Libraries week and enjoyed a visit to the local library, learning about the different services available, to help us with our school work. During this week, we also had a visit from a real life author and his dog Monty, were we learnt what life as an author is like and how to improve our own story writing.