Welcome back to summer term!
Everyone has returned rested and ready to launch themselves into the final term of year 5.
Celebrating Earth Day
Our first week back ended with a special assembly to mark Earth Day which is celebrated globally on 22nd April. We were incredibly fortunate that Professor Shuckburgh OBE, director of Cambridge Zero, co-author (with King Charles III) of ‘Climate Change – a ladybird book’ and a UCPS parent, joined us to share her experiences as a climate scientist in Antarctica and to share some simple, but effective, changes we can each make to help protect our planet.
Her enthusiasm was infectious and inspiring.
In Maths, we will be focusing on fractions, decimals and percentages this half-term.
This week we have made progress in multiplying unit and non-unit fractions. Next week we will move on to calculating fractions of a quantity, understanding fractions as an operator and finding the whole when given a part.
We use our shorter daily maths sessions to build mathematical fluency and consolidate prior learning.
In English, we have started a unit of work on mystery and suspense writing inspired by the Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. We have explored, and started to use, seven features of this writing – see if your child can tell you what they are!
Our Guided Reading text is a biography of Noor Inayat Khan, a female secret agent during the Second World War, written by Sufiyah Ahmed.
In STEM, our unit of work is on space. We have started by consolidating the importance of forming purposeful scientific enquiry questions and finding reliable evidence to validate or refute stated facts rather than accepting information at face value. An important life skill.
Spellings: This week we covered the following words which all contain the ‘ar’ phoneme: master parliament bargain rather laugh draught disastrous familiar partner
PE
Wednesday – Outdoor tennis
Thursday – Indoor / outdoor PE skills
Please ensure children have weather appropriate PE uniform in school. This includes a hair band to tie back long hair and tape to cover any ear-rings that cannot be removed.
Home Learning
- Read for 30 minutes each day
- Practise times tables for 10 minutes each day
- Spellings
For the remainder of year 5 our focus will be on the Y5/6 spelling requirements.
Please continue to practise and revise any gaps in your year 3-4 spelling knowledge.
It is important to keep practising spellings to ensure they are transferred from working memory to long term memory.
Please encourage your child to break the words down into syllables and sounds, just as we do in lessons in line with the Sounds-Write model:
We start by saying a word to the children, for example accommodate. We ask them how many syllables they can hear (4). We then provide them with all the sounds required to build the word but mixed up (a mm cc o o a-e t d). We then identify the sounds in each syllable and build the word syllable by syllable: a / cc o / mm o/ d a-e t). We then identify any potential challenges with the spelling – for example the double mm and double cc in accommodate. The children then use their sounds to build the word – initially in syllables (a / cc o / mm o/ d a-e t) and then as a single word without any syllable spaces (accommodate).
Mobile Telephones
Only children who have permission to walk home alone may bring a mobile telephone to school. It must be given to the class teacher at the start of each day and will be returned at home time.
Collection
Children will not be able to leave school alone unless parents have completed the online form via parentmail.
Children will not be released into the care of unfamiliar adults without prior notification and / or the provision of the child’s unique PIN number.
Have a lovely weekend and Happy Earth Day!
The Year 5 Team