Term 1

English

Children of the Benin Kingdom by Dinah Orji will be the first novel which our writing will be based upon.  A fantastic, fast-paced adventure which brings to life one of Africa’s most fascinating civilisations. We will be working hard to build our vocabulary and use of varied sentence structures in our writing and will develop these through diary entries, letters and descriptions.

In reading, Empire class will begin with Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson and Ruben class will begin with the Legend of Podkin One-Ear by Kieran Larwood.  Both favourites of Mrs Armstrong and Mrs Wade!

Maths - Place Value

For this term, our focus will be to consolidate our understanding on place value including whole numbers up to 6 digit numbers and numbers with decimal values. Later in the term, we will revise the written methods for addition and subtraction and begin to look at angles, perimeter and area. We will also look at key mathematical vocabulary.

Science

The aim of this topic is to develop the children’s understanding of forces: identifying how gravity, water and air resistance and friction work.  We will explore how these forces are in action on different surfaces and what difference this makes.

R.E

We will be learning what makes people happy or unhappy in their lives.  We will learn about the life story of the Buddha and consider the beliefs of those who follow the Buddhist religion.

History

In history this term, we will be learning about the ancient African civilisation of Benin.   We will be learning how the Benin Kingdom began and what life was like for the Edo people.  We will learn what trade links were made and what goods were traded.  We will also find out about the Benin Bronzes and establish what they can teach us about life in the Benin Kingdom.

How you can support your child's learning:

Feel free to use the many helpful websites for practising Maths and literacy skills - some relevant links for Year 5 learning are at the bottom of our Class Page.  All you need to do is click the subject area you want to work on to open up the options.

If they would like to do some extra work, it is preferable that you hear your child read a few times each week, as well as reading to them, to model expression.  We would like to see the children logging how often they read in their contact books, feel free to add any notes to their books for us to see.

Days that the children have PE:

We will be having PE on Tuesday, please come to school dressed in your PE kit which should be weather appropriate.

Thank you in advance from the whole of the Year 5 Team for your on-going support.