Malone Year 5

Welcome to Malone Class

Class Teacher: Ms Griffiths

TA: Mrs Peden

Key Information:

• Children are expected to bring in their reading books and Reading Records to school every day. 
• Reading books can be changed once children have read them. They are expected to complete a reading quiz on Accelerated Reader every time they finish a book: AR Quizzes: https://ukhosted57.renlearn.co.uk/6708488/default.aspx
• Children need to read for at least 20 minutes each day.
• Homework (English, Maths and Spellings) will go out on a Thursday. English and Maths is due back on the following Wednesday . Homework will be uploaded onto Google Classroom and should be completed in the relivent Homework Books.
• Spellings will be tested on a Thursdays.
• Spelling practise- spellings are on Ed Shed (logins provided)  https://www.spellingshed.com/en-gb/
• Times Tables Rock Stars (https://play.ttrockstars.com/) should be used to practise for Times Tables. Children in years 5 are expected to know their Times Tables up to x12. This knowledge helps children with the year 5 maths curriculum, such as finding factors, column multiplication, formal division, calculating fractions and much more.

Spring 2

Corey’s Rock

In English, our core text was ‘Corey’s rock’ by Sita Brahmachari which is a sensitive story about bereavement, grief and new beginnings. This is set in the contemporary setting of the Orkney Islands and links to a cultural myth of Selkies, which are Seal People, from around the coasts of Ireland and Scotland. Through this book we explored characters’ emotions through the illustrations and the text. We researched the Orkney Islands and created engaging persuasive travel brochures/leaflets. We were whisked away into the main character’s vivid dreams and wrote a setting description based on the senses. Finally, we stepped into the character’s thoughts and feeling by writing a postcard and diary entry.

Science week

To celebrate ‘British Science Week’, we became engineers by undertaking a bridge building investigation with our partner class so that we could have some mixed year group collaborative learning. This activity was designed to get the children thinking about the connections between weights, forces and measures. Using paper and a small amount of tape to make a bridge, the children were allowed to cut, roll, or fold the paper to make a stronger structure. We then tested them and reflected on why some bridges were more successful than others. We had a wonderful time being Scientists!

World book day

Upper KS2 explored the book ‘Journey’ which has no words and only pictures. Using our inference skills from the clues in the pictures, we discussed the events that were happening in the story and meanings behind it. The main character was lonely and perhaps quite miserable as the colours were dark. No one would play with her, as they were too busy. However, she realised she could make her own fun and imagine her own world that she wanted to be in, by drawing a door with a red crayon. Within this world, she explored forests, castles and rivers and eventually met a friend who also had a crayon to create his own world. After detailed conversations, we came up with our own version, taking the character to a place of our choice.

Spring 1

Dark Sky Park

We read, analysed and performed some poetry in 'Dark Sky Park' during the spring term. These wonderful poems were all about nature and we particularly found the Tardigrade sagas interesting, as we learnt all about these hardy, fascinating creatures. We also enjoyed reading a poem about the Arctic Terns and their migrations from the Orkney Islands to the Antarctic.

One thousand and one Arabian nights

1001 Arabian Nights is filled with serialised stories, as Shahrazad keeps King Shahryar entertained and hooked with her skillful story telling, always leaving a story on a cliffhanger. In the tale of the Anklet, we noticed similarities between this story and Cinderella. In another tale, we met Sinbad the sailor and read the tales of his adventures. One adventure led his crew to an uninhabited island. Once they started to settle, they soon realised it was not an island at all. In fact, it was a whale that did not want to be disturbed and Sinbad needed to escape. We depicted part of this story using pastels and ensured to use details from the story to make our artwork accurate. Following on from this, Sinbad was taken by a Roc (giant mythical bird) to the Valley of Diamonds. We wrote to one of Sinbad’s friends (back in Baghdad) to tell them all that has happened since leaving the city. Before doing this, we used hot seating to get into character and think about questions that friends back home might want answers to. After reading more tales, we chose a tale to story map, summarising the key points and keeping finer details to the pictures. We read the story of Ali Baba and the forty bandits, freeze-framing the cliffhanger (shown below) in between chapters. Then, we wrote a persuasive letter to convince others who the cleverest character was and why. Using what we have learned throughout reading the book and identifying the recurring themes, we wrote our own tale. We either wrote a tale from scratch or modified a traditional one.

Autumn 2

Ancient Greece

In the final part of the Autumn term, we have been finding out about Ancient Greece and reading 'The Adventures of Odysseus' as our core text. We have really enjoyed following Odysseus as he fights to find his way back home after the brutal Trojan War. We rewrote our own endings to the story and also created a Greek tile that depicted one of the scenes from the book. We thought carefully about how to make our tile in the style of Ancient Greek art, such as including repeated patterns and engraving, and also about how we could add different layers to enhance its look.