Spring 2 and Summer 1

Year 5 have been working on their own group musical compositions inspired by Gustav Holst and his Planet Suite. In Spring 1, they listened to his composition of the planets and dicussed how the music captured the nature of the planet and the Roman god they were named after, such as the joy of Jupiter or the mysteriousness of Neptune. Using a video showing planet Earth's diverse and changing landscapes, pupils used percussion instrument, and planned collaboratively, thinking about the dynamics, texture on pitch of the instruments.

Spring  2 - Art

As part of our Art curriculum, Year 5 have created amazing pictures linked to our topic of Space. They enjoyed each stage, from designing; to creating a tie dye background; to learning two different stitching techniques. Today, we had a fantastic afternoon space sewing. The children (and teachers) loved having some of their grown ups come in to help with sewing. We now have very successful pieces of sewing art which we will share with you next week once they have been bordered. 

Spring 2 - Space!  We were adventurous explorers today as we were lucky enough to travel through the solar system through the use of Virtual Reality. Beginning with Mercury, we learnt about the features of each planet as we travelled further away the Sun. We learnt about other planets' moons, volcanoes, mountain ranges, storms, temperatures, atmospheres, cores and more! Did you know that Europa's ice crust lies salty oceans so is one of the most promising paces in our solar system to find signs of life! Europa is one of four larger moons belonging to Jupiter. Scientists are still trying to work out just how many moons Jupiter has! It is somewhere between 80 and 92. These are just a few of the facts we learnt today. 

Music - Spring 1

This half term, we have been learning to read and play music, learnigin the notes B, A and G. We have performed solo, duets and as a  a group.  In our last lesson, we evaluated the performance of our class using music terminology and discussed the effect of changing the pitch on our recorders. We applied our knowledge of notes and duration to read an unfamiliar piece: ‘Au Clair de la Lune’.

Spring 1 - D.T. - Creating a Maya Mask

Spring 1 - P.E. Dance

Pupils have really enjoyed developing their choreography skills. We have been really impressed with their dance work, their enthusiasm and their creative ideas. Pupils have shone in a variety of areas including leadership skills and guiding and encouraging their group.  Here are some examples of their work this half term.

Monday 16th January - We have started our Ancient Maya topic with a bang! Or rather, with flute whistles, a conch shell call and lots of drums! Our Year 5s had the most amazing morning learning an impressive amount of fascinating facts about the Maya civilization. This included Maya food, art, trade, music, their writing and number system and how all of these areas link to their religion and belief system. This has given us a lot to absorb and we are very excited to be taking this learning further by investigating the children's areas of inquiry that they want to delve deeper and learn about this term. There was a wealth of amazing knowledge and questions shared and their enthusiasm was wonderful to witness.

It's Spring Term and we have an exciting half term ahead of us!  Our Year 5 pupils have begun by learning more about the technology in our lives. This week, we have looked at the parts of a computer and learnt about the function of each component. Pupils found looking inside a computer fascinating!

Play Buddies - Autumn Term 

Play Buddies has been a real highlight this half term and has certainly brightened up our Autumn! It is truly wonderful to see the excitement and pleasure that Jaguar pupils have when they know that they will be seeing their play buddies! Throughout the sessions, the kindness, compassion, enthusiasm and joy oozes from the children as they share books, games and craft activities with their buddies. It is an absolute pleasure to observe the children and of great benefit to all involved as they have gained a new friend that they can say 'hello' to during the school day!

Writing Fromal Persuasive Letters - Autumn Term 2

We have been incredible impressed by our pupils' passion and ability to discuss and write convincing arguments. They wrote  formal letters as a response to prove how important it is for school pupils to learn about climate change. Their arguments were well-researched, convincing and contained lots of opinions and facts and statistic to justify each point. We know pupils are keen to share what they have written with a copy sent home and here are some examples of their work. Well done Year 5 - you all worked with incredible effort and commitment!

Science (Forces - 02.12.22)

We have been enjoying learnng about forces, especially friction. Following on from last week's investigation (to explore which surface would be most suitable for a skatepark) today's lesson focussed on air and water resistance. They are a type of friction as both are couased when one surface interacts with another surface. Both air and water resistance can slow or stop and object. We looked at streamlined shapes move quicker and how a shape with a larger surface area creates more resistance so move more slowly. We looked at how gravity pulls objects to earth and air resisance pushes against the object. Streamlined shapes in nature such as a sea diving bird or the shape of a shark and mimicked in man-made objects such as jets and submarines. We looked at how air resistance is useful for sails and windturbines. Finally, we wanted to feel the effects of air resistance ourselves to we used resistance parachutes and compared what it felt like to run both with and without it. Finally, we enjoyed feeling the force of air resistance pushing upward when using the giant parachute. 

Fairtrade

Pupils have really enjoyed learning about Fairtrade. We have learnt how the world is linked through trade and how we have become dependent on goods produced in countries around the equator. We have learnt the vast distance our food travels for produce to reach us, as consumers, in the U.K. We have explored the human impact of Fairtrade minimum wage and Fairtrade Premium and how it benefits communities in Developing Countries who grow our food. Our final celebration of this organisation was to cook using products grown in Fairtrade countries to raise money in a bake sale. Thank you to parents for supporting pupils with their learning and their bake sale. 

4th November

In PSHE today, we were learning how our individual behaviour can affect a team. We worked on skills to help us contribute positively to the group. Our task was the Newspaper Tower Challenge. We had 5 minutes to construct the tallest possible tower. We repeated this twice. The second time, each person had a role and we worked together. We then came up with a list of 6 rules that help us to be a fantastic team. We prioritised them in the order that we felt was most important. One example:

6 Rules to Achieve Super Teamwork: