Emmaville Primary School

Oceania Year 5

Welcome to the Oceania Year 5 Class Page.  Here, you can find out about everything that we've been doing this term.

Thursday 19th December

 

Happy last day of term! We have had such a wonderful week filled with lots of Christmas fun and exciting activities to end up an outstanding Autumn term in Oceania class. I couldn’t be prouder of how hard the children have all worked and they certainly deserve a rest over the Christmas holidays.

 

Our week has been filled with learning methods to complete division problems in Maths, evaluating our Christmas cards in DT and exploring the moon and why it has phases in science. Even after all this fantastic learning, the children have still had time do to something that has made me so incredibly proud as a teacher. My parents both work at a local hospital on a respite ward for the elderly. The children this week have created wooden hanging decorations and cards for all of the patients that are going to be on the ward this Christmas Day which will be delivered by my parents when they are on shift. I am so proud of the kindness that each of the children have shown this week and I know the decorations and cards will be so appreciated by those who are in hospital on Christmas Day.

 

I hope you all have the most wonderful Christmas and New Year!

Mrs Thompson

Friday 13th December

Wow! It has been such a busy week in Oceania class this week. We have fit so much in our Enrichment Week and have taken part in lots of different and exciting activities. Some of these have included workshops, creating an African mask out of clay, learning all about the Empire Windrush and its journey from the West Indies to Great Britain and finding out about the history of Black Music.

 

On Monday, we took part in an African drumming workshop delivered by Tonga who came from Zimbabwe. We had a go at playing the drums, copying in some call and response songs and listened to Tonga play some amazing instruments.

 

Following this, on Wednesday, we had the brilliant author Adam Bushnell come and visit to complete some work with us in Year 5. We love when Adam comes to visit school and especially when he brings his pet tortoise Jet! We worked with Adam to create some creative stories that were set in Africa or based on African animals. We got involved in completing some drama and writing tasks as well as drawing the illustrations to our short stories. It was a brilliant time by everyone!

 

Yesterday, we took part in the most fantastic space VR workshop. We have been learning all about Earth and Space in our Science lessons this half term and we were immersed into the role of being an astronaut going through space during the workshop. It brought everything to life whilst we had the headsets on.

 

Here are a few quotes from the children in regards to the week:

I really enjoyed making an African mask out of clay as it was interesting to see that every mask was different – Evie

I liked taking part in the African drumming workshop because you got to learn about a different way of drumming. I play the drums so I enjoyed doing something different and linked to that - Elliot

It was fun to learn about different music from different continents – Maaz

It was fun when we could make our own stories about the animals with Adam Bushnell – Sophie

I think it is important to learn different things so we have a good understanding of different cultures - Grace

 

Have a wonderful weekend everyone ready for our last week in school before Christmas!

Mrs Thompson

Friday 6th December

 

It has been brilliant week in Oceania class this week packed full of learning and the start of a very exciting Christmas period. I firstly just wanted to celebrate all of the children for their outstanding contributions and performance in the Year 5 class assembly last week. You made me very proud as a teacher and I am sure your families felt the same when they watched you all.

 

This week we have started exploring our new enquiry in RE which is focusing on the Christian faith and the big question of ‘Is the Christmas story true?’. In our first lesson, we have explored at what the truth may look like and how something being true can look different to different people. We explored the story of the Chilean miners who became trapped for a number of days. Whilst we explored this story, we soon realised that there were lots of different perspectives of the story however they were all true! We discussed there are three types of truth; historical, scientific and personal. In our next lesson, we are going to look at some different accounts of the Christmas story to see if it varies from person to person.

 

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Mrs Thompson

Thursday 28th November 
 
It has been a very busy week  this week in Oceania filled with lots of learning and a brilliant educational visit to Durham. We visited Durham on Tuesday to help build our understanding about the history of Durham and in particular the important key figures who had a role within Durham Cathedral. 
 
Our morning started off with a visit around the Cathedral whereby we explored significant parts of the cathedral including the tomb of St Cuthbert, the Great Kitchen and the Monks Dormitory. We were fascinated with the history behind the cathedral and were all blown away by its size and architecture. We asked lots of questions throughout the visit to get a better picture of how significant the cathedral was back in time. Following on from our morning tour, we then went on a guided walk around parts of Durham. During this walk, we used our map skills to direct ourselves around the city and completed some fieldwork by answering questions on places we had visited on the walk. We went on a walk from the Cathedral to the Old Bailey, along Prebends Bridge and then back up towards the Market Square in Durham. When we reached the Market Square we explored the historical statues and the timeline that runs through the square, detailing all the history of Durham. We had a brilliant time exploring and can't wait to start finding out more in our History lessons. 
 
Mrs Thompson
Friday 22nd November
 
We have had such a super week in Oceania class filled with so much learning and so much excitement for next week. We have been learning all about the grassland biome in Geography, explored the effects that name calling and spreading rumours can have on people in PSHE and we have created our own Christmas card designs for the Liz Twist card competition. 
 
The week I wanted to share with you all the amazing work the children have completed in English. Over the past 3 weeks, we have been exploring all about writing to create suspense and have explored a model text called 'Ice Forest'. Following this, we looked at the techniques and toolkit you would need to write a story where you build suspense. Some of these features included using powerful description, describing the threat using empty words at first and revealing your main character's thoughts and feelings. After looking at each of these features and having a practice of each one, we have moved onto this week writing our suspense stories. I have been absolutely amazed by the stories written by everyone and they blew me away with their outstanding description. We have spent some time today looking at editing our work by visiting various editing stations in the classroom with our partner. At each station we focused on something different to edit within our story and it was great to see the children working with their partner to help develop ideas and make changes to their stories. As Miss Armstrong would say 'Jolly well done everyone'! As a teacher, I couldn't be prouder of how hard you have all worked. Keep up the super work Oceania class!
 
Have a lovely weekend!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 15th November 
 
Happy Friday everyone! It has been a fantastic week in Oceania with the children working their socks off this week. We have completed our Maths unit on negative numbers, explored all about the lives of people who lived during the Shang Dynasty and have been developing our settings and description of threats for our suspense story next week. 
 
This week in DT we have created a prototype for our project this term. We were set with the challenge last week of creating a pop up Christmas card. We chose last week who the target audience would be for the card, what the design would look like and which pop up mechanisms it would use such as a slider or lever. The children planned out their designs including how the mechanism would work and this week it was time to see if our plans would work. We discussed that prototypes are really useful because they help us to see if anything could go wrong and to make changes before we make the final product. We had a great lesson exploring our designs and felt very confident by the end of the lesson that in the next few weeks we could start making a great Christmas card. I can't wait to see the final product! 
 
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 8th November
 
It has been a super week back in Oceania class following on from the half-term holidays. The children have been ready and eager to learn this week and I can see massive progress in everyone since September. We have talked a lot this week about being great role models around school to the other children and I look forward to seeing that more next week in class and rewarding children who show this. 
 
This week we were very lucky to have a brilliant trip to the local Crawcrook library. Whilst we were there, we got involved in a few activities with the librarian Kyle including a little challenge game where we had to guess the book and title based on a small extract from the book. We shared our thoughts following the extract on whether we liked and were interested in the book or whether we didn't enjoy the extract. After that, we had a vote on which book it could be before the correct book was unwrapped and revealed. Some of the books were written by authors such as Roald Dahl, Alesha Dixon and David Wallace which some of our children had read before. We were then given some free time in library to explore some of the books and have some quiet reading time. It was a great session for all. 
 
Have a lovely weekend everyone! 
Mrs Thompson

Friday 18th October

It has been a brilliant week in Oceania class. We have been learning about the taiga biome in Geography, found out all about the Brockenspectre in Guided Reading and learnt some ways a Hindu shows commitment to God.

 

This week I wanted to share with you the brilliant the work the children have complete in Computing. We have been using the laptops in Computing and working on a computing programme called Scratch. The children were already experts at using this before they came to Year 5 however they have amazed me with their knowledge of how to complete code on the programme. This week we made code to create our very own ghost catching games. Within the game, we made code to help a ghost appear and disappear from the screen. The aim of the game was to click on the ghost and collect a point. We made variables on the game such as speed and score which changed during the game. Please see below and example of Maaz and Sophie’s code working in action.

 

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Thompson

Friday 11th October
 
It has been a busy but super week this week in Oceania class. We have been working our socks off across our lessons and pushing ourselves to try quite challenging things. We have been creating propaganda posters in Art, learning all about money in Maths and we have been exploring our new guided reading book called 'The Brockenspectre'. We have loved the suspense so far , made some fantastic predictions based on the text we have read and we can't wait to find out what the 'brockensprectre' is.
 
This week I wanted to share with you all the brilliant work we have been doing in History. We have started exploring WWI in our History lessons and in our lesson this week we explored the trenches in depth. We used a mixture of sources to help us to find evidence of what the trenches were like for the soldiers who were on the Western Front. We found out about the conditions that soldiers had to cope with whilst fighting and we thought about what it suggested about their life on the Western Front. We had a fantastic discussion in regards to how the soldiers must have felt and that they made such a big sacrifice of their life when fighting for Great Britain. 
 
Have a brilliant weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 4th October
 
We have had such a wonderful week this week in Year 5. We have been exploring poetry throughout the week and celebrate National Poetry Day yesterday. It has been 30 years since it was first started and the children were set with a challenge of creating a poem based on the theme 'Your Voice Matters'. We had some absolutely wonderful poems written and shared by the children and 3 brilliant poets shared their pieces with the whole school during assembly. Please find their poems below. 
 
In addition to writing our own poems, we also have been exploring some different poets and poetic techniques. Some of the poets we have explored are Valerie Bloom, James Berry, Matt Goodfellow and Brian Moses. The children absolutely loved listening to their poems and in particular took a shine to the poem 'Walking with my iguana' by Brian Moses. They loved the rhythm Brian uses throughout the poem to keep the flow of the poem and we gave it a go ourselves. 
 
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Thompson

Your Voice Matters

It doesn’t matter that you are big or small, tough and tall, your voice matters.

It doesn’t matter that your a sporty guy, have a german passport, a mud pie maker or a pasta baker, your voice matters.

It doesn’t matter that your scared of bugs, or are you a bear that needs a hug, your voice matters.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a man united fan or a man city man, your voice matters.

It really doesn’t matter if your scared to be alone or your bare to the bone because always your voice matters.

By Freddie H

 

Voice

Some voices are so loud they echo down the street,

Others so quiet they can’t make a squeak.

Some voices are as high as a scream,

Others as low as a beam.

Some croaky,

And some squeaky.

Others all over the place.

But we all have the human right to be heard,

And to say at least a word.

So stand up and be proud,

Read your poem to the crowd!!

By Eva N

 

Your voice matters!

You can stand up high and tall or hunch up into a little ball.

You could speak up and shout out loud or stay quiet and not make a sound.

You could be sporty and always jumping up and down or always be still and be sat down on the ground.

Your voice is a very important instrument you own so use it to speak and sing our loud and always remember your voice counts because your voice is what makes you you!

By Evie S

Friday 27th September
 
It has been such a busy week this week in Year 5 filled with so much learning but also so much progress. I couldn't be prouder of how well everyone is doing at settling into a new year group with new topics and they have shown such fantastic growth mindset at some quite challenging tasks. For example, this week the children have been writing their own warning stories in English using a number of new techniques that we have explored in our previous lessons. The creativity has shone through in their writing and I was so impressed by the stories they have developed. 
 
Over the past few weeks, we have taken part in some football coaching lessons with Warren. These have involved us learning skills to help us develop our football playing as well as team building games to support us working in cohesion with one another. Unfortunately, this week we weren't able to complete our session outside due to the weather however Warren still worked with us in school to develop our skills. During the session we completed skill practise with tennis balls where we were dribbling and passing the ball. Furthermore, we completed some fast-paced team games which involved us using cooperation and quick thinking to make decisions. These are vital skills that we need to use when we play football. We are really looking forward to our next session with Warren on Monday and hopefully the sun is shining. 
 
Have a lovely weekend everyone! 
Mrs Thompson
Friday 20th September
 
We have had a wonderful week in Oceania class this week. It feels like the days are flying over since our first day back at the start of September. This week we have been learning all about tenths and decimal places in Maths, created our own plans for an innovated warning story in English and we have explored together all about the different biomes Earth has in Geography. 
 
This week I wanted to share with you all the amazing work our budding artists have complete in class. We started our new topic in Art this half-term on Wednesday. During this half-term, we will be exploring all about propaganda poster linked to our learning in History. For our first lesson this week, we looked at what drawing is. We explored a number of famous artists and drawings that dated all the way back to 15,000BCE! We then discussed that one of the most important skills when drawing is observation. We were set with the challenge of drawing a number of objects onto a sheet through copying the various lines. We had to work really hard to ensure they were proportionate and also accurately spaced as to what the original drawing looked like. We were so quiet due to concentration, you could have heard a pin drop in the room. As a teacher, I was so impressed by their fantastic drawing skills and I have to say that I even think they put my drawings to shame. 
 
Have a lovely weekend everyone! 
Mrs Thompson
Friday 13th September 
 
What a brilliant week we have had in Year 5 Oceania this week. It has been filled full of learning as we are straight into our new Year 5 timetable. This week we got to go swimming for the first time on Tuesday morning at Blaydon Leisure Centre. The children were so excited to take part in this and they worked their socks off during their lesson. I am sure they are all very excited to take part in this again next week. 
 
This week I wanted to share with you some pictures that Mr Saddington took during our Science lesson where we began our new topic on investigating materials. We started the lesson off discussing lots of vocabulary linked to the properties of materials. Once we had discussed what each word meant , we then investigated some physical materials in our small groups. We discussed about the different properties that these materials had and sorted them accordingly. I was so impressed by the scientific vocabulary used by the children during and after the session and they had so much enthusiasm towards Science. Keep it up Oceania!
 
I hope you all have a lovely weekend.
Mrs Thompson
Friday 6th September
 
Welcome back! It has been such a wonderful start to the term this week in Year 5 and I couldn't be more proud of how well Oceania has settled into a new classroom and new routine. This week we have been exploring the book 'Farther' in English, practising the methods of column addition and column multiplication in Maths and we have also created a pop-up book all about Oceania. 
 
Today we took part in a brilliant assembly by Picture News called #biggestassembly. There were over 500,000 children and teachers who took part in the virtual assembly and we were so excited to make the news as it was featuring on Newsround this week. The assembly focused on being part of a community and coming together following the riots that has taken place in the Summer holidays. The children were fantastic and contributing in the assembly to the discussions and I was so impressed by their attitudes towards communities. The biggest takeaway for all of was to treat others how we would like to be treated which I am sure is something that the children will always do in Oceania.
 
Have a wonderful weekend everyone! 
Mrs Thompson