Class Teacher: Mrs Utteridge

LSA: Mrs Wall and Ms Moreton

Term Four: Monday 15th April – Friday 24th May

Our term value: courage

Term learning enquiry: Why is it important to look after our world?

Reading: On Thursdays and Fridays, the class participates in Whole Class Guided Reading lessons. We are reading Boy in the Tower. The class will explore the text and use comprehension skills to answer questions - key skills will include vocabulary, explaining, retrieval, choice and interpretation.

We are using the Accelerated Reader programme and the children complete quizzes on the books they read during DEAR time. Mrs Utteridge has assigned each child a level to read. Each time a child has read a levelled book, they can read a book of choice. This is to help maintain our focus on reading for pleasure. 

Writing: On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays we focus on our writing skills. To start term 5, the class will be exploring a poem from the Lost Words book and build up to writing their own poem.  The class will then move onto The Great Kapok Tree picture book to enforce the message of deforestation and the learning enquiry. The children will use this anchor text to create a newspaper report informing the audience on the issues of deforestation.

Spelling: We have 3 weekly spelling sessions (spellings can be found in your child's spelling book and on EdShed). Your child is expected to use EdShed to practise their spellings, a daily leader board is displayed in class. There is a weekly spelling check every Thursday.

Handwriting: We have 2 handwriting sessions per week. 

Maths: we do daily maths lessons after break which begin with a starter activity in pairs or independently, which enables practice of key skills. This term we are covering the following areas: 

• Factors, multiples and primes
• Fractions

We will be doing daily fluency in maths to provide a chance to regularly practice our arithmetic skills.

We complete daily times table practice, focusing on different time table facts. Children are expected to practice their times tables using Times Table Rock Stars, a daily leader board is displayed in class.

Enquiry

Why is it important to look after our world?

We are learning about the issues facing the world around us. We will do this by answering some mini-enquiries.

• How can we be more sustainable?
• Why do we need to be sustainable?
• Why are the rainforests important?
• If we damage the world, what is the impact?
• How were the Mayans sustainable? (term 6)

In Geography, we will be exploring the location of different biomes, investigating rainforests in detail. The class will discover sustainability and learn about fair trade. 

During the Science lessons, the class will explore life cycles and classifying animals.

Please see our Knowledge Organiser for more detailed information about our enquiry. 

PSHE: this term Year 5, will be exploring relationships.

Art: Year 5 will be learning about the French artist, Henri Rousseau, and recreating one of his famous paintings - Tiger in a Tropical Storm.

Home learning

For home learning, children should be doing the following every week: 

• Reading as often as possible - ideally 5 times a week
• Practising times tables on TT rockstars (go into jamming and select the times table to practise)
• Spelling shed - complete the assignment (specific words) set each week by Mrs Utteridge

TT Rockstars: https://ttrockstars.com/

Spelling Shed: https://www.spellingshed.com/en-gb/

Children have logins for the websites above in their reading records. Please let Mrs Utteridge know if the children need another copy of their log-in details. 

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