Friday 30th January
It has been a great week this week in Year 5 Oceania as we have been working our socks off. We have wrote letters to apply for the position of a Prince Bishop in History, began our DT project of creating an anti-aircraft vehicle and we have continued to develop our gymnastic skills in PE looking at putting together what we have learned so far into a sequence.
This week we have been exploring poetry in English and in particular performing poems. We have explored a range of poems written by Brian Moses, Valerie Bloom and Matt Goodfellow. During our discussions, we have tried to identify key elements of the poem such as the rhythm, rhyme and pattern. We loved the rhythm of the poem 'Walking with my iguana' by Brian Moses and we loved the rhyme within Matt Goodfellow's poem of 'Haircut Rap'. Following our discussion about the content of the poems, we also looked at listening to the poems being read by the authors themselves which then gave us a great toolkit we could use when we came to reading them aloud. Linking to our Oracy, we have been really focused this week on our physical stance when reading anything. We have talked and practiced how our bodies should look when we are speaking out loud to an audience whether that be presenting or performing. We are excited next week to look at some more poems and to try writing some of our own ready to perform.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 23rd January
This week's science continued our learning journey through Forces, with an investigation into friction. There was lots of great discussion about what friction is and how it can be very useful when we have a lot of it (between our shoes and the carpet for example) or very little (ice skating), and when it can also be a nuisance or even dangerous (have you ever slipped over on the ice, or had a friction burn?).
We were challenged to plan and carry out a simple fair test to find out how the soles of our shoes can affect the friction force between the grips and a surface. This involved using our Newton meters to pull a shoe along a flat surface; some groups decided to change the type of shoe, while others changed the surface. Predictions were made first, as to which shoe or surface would produce the largest friction force, and then testing was completed. After recording repeat readings and working out the mean averages, we were able to compare our results with the predictions. A very busy session, but super science in Year 5!
Friday 16th January
It has been a great week in Oceania class this week. We have continued to build on our gymnastics skills in PE, completed some force experiments in Science and have found out how to find the area of compound shapes in Maths.
This week I wanted to share with you the brilliant work we have done in our History lessons. One of our Year 5 topics for this year is learning about World War One. We studied in the Autumn term reasons as to why the war began and also what life was like for soldiers in the trenches. This week, we built up on our prior learning and explored what technological advancements were made during WWI to help each side try to win the war. We found out about various strategies and items that were used by both sides to try to defeat the opposition including the use of submarines, gas , machine guns and zeppelins. The children worked together in groups to decide which of these were the most significant and essential and we had some fantastic debates about our opinions. We had to justify what we believed with the top three technological advancements that were used and it was fantastic to see the children thinking like historians during our lesson. We will be using some of our knowledge about tactics and strategies used in the next few week when we build our own anti-aircraft vehicles in DT.
Have a brilliant weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 9th January
Happy 1st week back everyone! It has been a super week back in Oceania class this week with us starting lots of new topics across our subjects such as forces in Science, a new text called Voices in the Park in English and a new unit in PSHE where were going to focus on our dreams and goals. The children have been really excited to get started with these new things and we spent some time on Monday reflecting on what we wanted our New Year's resolutions to be for 2026. It was so lovely to hear the children's goals and aspirations including getting better at sport or cutting out unhealthy food.
This week I wanted to share with you all the amazing work that the children began in our DT lesson on Wednesday. We have started a new topic this term focusing on woodwork. This was very exciting for the children to begin and they couldn't wait to start making things with the tools. During our lesson on Wednesday afternoon, we explored how to create a small magnetic note holder. The children used a small hand saw to cut a 10cm piece of wood. They then decorated the wood and added a design feature, small clip for their notes and a magnetic strip on the back. The creativity was fantastic and everyone was so varied in their designs. I was impressed most by the children's resilience within the lesson to use the handsaw by themselves to cut the pieces of wood as this can be a tricky task. They needed very little help from me and worked so hard to ensure their note holders were finished by the end of the lesson. Keep up the super work everyone!
Have a lovely weekend everyone.
Mrs Thompson