Author: Kate Watson

Welcome to our second term in Year 5. We have an exciting term ahead of us!
A few reminders:
PE will continue to be every Monday and Thursday. Please ensure children come to school in full outdoor PE kit, with current covid-19 restrictions in place, we will continue to have PE outdoors. Children will need a big coat and suitable layers to keep warm during these winter months.
Homework will commence again from Friday 8th January 2021. Please can we remind children that they should be completing 20 minutes on TT Rockstars (10 minutes garage and 10 minutes studio); 10 games on spelling shed and reading at least x3 times per week. Parents should sign reading records so that we can see clearly that reading homework has been completed. Children will receive a team point for completing each aspect of their homework and, if homework isn’t completed, will stay in for part of their lunchtime on a Friday to complete any homework that has not been completed at home.

Curriculum
This term our topic is ‘Our Extraordinary World’. In the first half term, we will be focusing on The Amazon Rainforest in geography. Our Science work will focus on living things and their habitats whilst our art work will focus on us designing and making our own teacups from clay, in relation to our text driver: Cloud Tea Monkeys. This will be the text that our English work is based upon this half-term; we will also complete some persuasive writing .within our English work
In the second half term, we are focusing on Space as part of our science work and the children will be learning all about the universe and the planets. Our English work for this half term will be focused around a video called “The Astronomer’s Sun.” After developing a good understanding of what the video is about (using their retrieval and inference skills), the children will write their own version of the story to produce some quality narrative work.

Reading
When reading at home, and to develop their comprehension skills further, please work with your child on understanding the meaning of words and phrases within the book they are reading, and also answering inference-based questions where they have to use clues from the text to answer questions. Questions prompts may include:
·What does the word ….. Imply about …...?
·Why did ……? ·What words tell us ….?
·How did … ………..? ·Why is …. important?
·How did ….. react? ·What does …. think?

Maths
In maths this term, we will be learning about shape, fractions, decimals and measure. We will also be having weekly arithmetic lessons to consolidate what the children learnt last term and to continue using the written and mental methods of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Parents can find copies of the calculation policy on the school website if you wish to see the methods of calculating that we teach the children in school.
When supporting your child further in maths at home, as well as times tables, please continue to practise using numbers skills in everyday life situations (e.g. measures while baking, use of money, etc). It essential that the children are confident with their times tables as they are a critical element of all areas of maths and will be used daily. Please use apps , games and written methods to practise these skills in a variety of contexts.

Spelling
Please ensure that your child continues to learn their weekly spellings and that they are also learning the spelling rules so that they can apply these to their writing. It is important that the children are regularly revising the previous spelling rules we have learnt in class until they have been consolidated enough that the children can use them effectively in their writing.

·How was … different after ….?

·How did ….. react?

·What does …. think?