Have a look at what we’ve been learning…
KS2 Sports Day
On Thursday, Years 3, 5 and 6 took part in Sports Day. The events were competitive and everyone did really well! The winner of the KS2 Sports Day were the Blue Team!
Team Building – Thrills and Skills for Life
Our Year 5 had a chance to work with Sam from Thrills and Skills for Life. The children had to work together to use a drag stretcher to rescue their classmates. Each classmate had a chance to be the person who needed rescuing. The class then had to compete against each other to find out who would rescue their team mate first! It was a fantastic opportunity, and it was also great to hear of Sam’s stories from the army including seeing his army poncho which he got while in Belgium!
Euro 2020 Final
The morning after the Euro Final we did lots of activities to celebrate England’s achievement.
One of our class made this wonderful PowerPoint which shows the spirit of England’s path through the Euros.
Thank you, Miss Lister
Today we say goodbye to Miss Lister who has been working with our Year 5 children. We wish her the best of luck in her path to becoming a teacher.
Sculpture Making
Year 5 have been learning about Antony Gormley in Art. They turned their designs into a sculpture inspired by his work using mud roc. The next step will be to paint them.
Durham Rock Climbing
Year 5 absolutely loved the opportunity to go rock climbing today. They really stretched themselves to scale the walls, starting with a beginner wall before moving on to the more trickier walls. They also played lots of games to build their confidence with climbing. Thank you Beth and Charlotte for leading the groups!
Police Internet Safety Talk
Year 5 welcomed the Police in today to talk about keeping safe online. They learnt to think about their privacy settings, to think about hiding their location on apps and online grooming. They were also able to say who they could turn to if they thought they were getting bullied online or if they wanted to report something. A huge thank you to Jack and Jamie for coming along today.
Sculptures
This term, Year 5 have been looking at Antony Gormley in art. They created sculptures using modroc and then wire to show human emotion.
KS2 Mini Olympics at Parkside Academy
KS2 were invited to take part in a mini-Olympic carousel at Parkside Academy. The children took part in throwing, running and jumping events. The event was brilliantly run by the Year 9 sports leaders and Mrs Inglis, a huge thank you to them. The children thoroughly enjoyed being at their first event outside of school this year!
Jane Goodall
In Science, Year 5 have been learning about the work of Jane Goodall – a behaviourist specialist who has devoted her life to the chimpanzees in Tanzania. She discovered that chimpanzees are a lot like humans in the respect that they socialise like we do, even hugging and tickling one another. We thought about how their life cycle is becoming endangered and created posters to make people more aware of how preventing the natural life cycle of animals from happening can cause species to be endangered or even to become extinct.
Testing the Strength of Arches
In their Design and Technology lesson with Miss Lister, Year 5 worked on the strength of an arch. Firstly, they learnt the parts of the bridge linked to the arch. They then teamed up in groups to see if they could build a human bridge and point out the different parts of it. Next, the class used building blocks and card to test the strength of arches. They were put to the test to see if their bridge could hold the weight of a Mars Bar.
Problem Solving: Nets of Shapes
In this week’s problem solving lesson, we were set the challenge of visualising which nets would piece together to make a full 3D shape. We started the lesson recapping the features of shapes and their names. This week, some of us used the building blocks to recreate the shapes to help us work out which net belonged to which shape. Others were able to think about the features of a shape and use this information to recreate the shapes mentally before seeking out the correct pieces that fit together.
Making Trusses
This week in Design and Technology, we have been working on trusses. We looked at how trusses can strengthen the design of a bridge and looked at three types of truss patterns: Warren, Lattice and Pratt. We used paper straws to build our trusses using the Pratt lattice as a template. We discovered how strong the bridge would become using the truss.
The Puzzling Cube
Today we started looking at using our visualising skills to help us work out how a cube has been made. Some of us used different techniques to help them such as making their own cube nets with the different faces or using physical cubes to help them visualise the answer.
Adam Bushnell
It has been lovely to see the return of author Adam Bushnell in school. Today he worked with Year 5 to help inspire writing based on a flashback memory. The children even got to build shelters to help build a picture in their imagination of what being in the forest would be like. We look forward to reading the stories that have come from his work when they write them up later this week.
Testing Pillar Shape
To get us started on our Construction unit, we investigated the parts of a bridge including the pillar, deck and beam. In this lesson, we were investigating the shape of pillars to find out which shape would be the strongest. We tested the shapes of a square, rectangle, triangle or arch and then placed various weights on top of the deck suspended between the two pillars to find out how much they would hold.
Easter Egg Decorating Competition
It was our annual Easter Egg Decorating Competition this week. Have a look at our marvellous creations.
Separating Materials
Today we investigated how we could separate four different things: rice and paper clips, pasta and salt, sand and water and salt and water. We looked at how knowing whether something was soluble may help us, whether something is magnetic and the size of the particles of the substances too. We also found out that you can create reversible changes to help separate salt and water by heating it up and using the logic behind the water cycle.
Outdoor Adventures
This week, we have been lucky to have someone from OASES who came in to teach the children the basics of orienteering. The children built skills based on reading a compass and map and then practised these skills by creating their own treasure trail.
Solubility
Today we investigated materials which are soluble and which aren’t. This means those that dissolve into a liquid and which don’t. We found that sand is insoluble but also, surprisingly, so was the hot chocolate. We used our scientific minds to explain that hot chocolate may need hotter temperatures to allow it to dissolve. We also learnt that too much of a substance and not enough water can mean that the substance also doesn’t dissolve.
Red Nose Day 2021
We all dressed up as Superheroes to celebrate Red Nose Day 2021 today! We all looked amazing! On the afternoon, we listened to different jokes and voted who was the funniest!
Thermal Conductivity
In our Science lesson, we looked at how materials could help insulate. We placed hot water in the centre of a larger container and then wrapped different materials around it to see how long they retained the heat. We found out that foil and bubble wrap were the best scores and that the control did better than we expected. We reasoned that this is because the control was poured out a short time after the others had been prepared and spoiled our fair test!
Properties of Materials
In this lesson, we looked at the properties of materials such as their hardness, permeability and transparency. We tested our materials in different ways before thinking of ways to classify (group) them.
Twelve Days of Christmas
Despite being very different this year, we still managed to get together (in a socially distanced way) to do the Twelve Days of Christmas – a Wolsingham Primary tradition!
Christmas Party Time!
Our Year 5s had a fun time this morning at their Christmas party. They played a whole range of games including Flap the Fish, Musical Statues and Bumps and Pass the Parcel. We even tried our hand at the Mannequin Challenge! Merry Christmas from us all!
Magical Mechanisms
As a group, we did a fact finding activity. We found out how pulleys, gears and levers worked. We read the facts and then had to feed this back to our group to add it to a poster of facts. It was hard work but we finally got them all!
Water Resistance Investigation
Today, we looked at how quickly different shapes travel through water. We made different shapes using Play-Doh and timed them to see how long it took them to sink. We found that the cone shape was the fastest because of its streamlined shape.
Air Resistance Investigation
To investigate the different factors of what affects air resistance, we built three separate parachutes. The one variable that was changed was either the size or the shape of the parachute. We found out that the parachute that worked the best were larger parachutes. This is because they had a larger surface area to trap air which makes the user fall slower and, therefore, much more safely!
Christmas Fun
This week, we have been doing lots of Christmas crafts to celebrate the end of the term. Today we created our own Christmas cards and then tomorrow we will make our own cards on the computers using Publisher as part of our Computing. We wonder which we will prefer?
Christmas Jumper Day
We had a lovely day today in our Christmas Jumpers. We had a lovely Christmas dinner prepared by our kitchen staff and then sang our song for our Christmas performance.
Rapid Fire Cricket!
Today we worked on our bowling skills, making sure we kept a straight arm and even moved on to the full motion of bowling like a cricketer. To finish the lesson, we had a game of Rapid Fire Cricket, where the person batting had to bat three balls before running, whilst the fielders retrieved the balls to hand it to the fielder in the ‘Circle of Doom’!
Poetry Recital
Before we have a go writing our own poetry, we recited poems from Valerie Bloom. In small groups, we thought about the rhythm and accent of the poems. We also thought about actions and our body language so that we could help show the meaning of the poems. Finally, we performed them in front of the green screen. To view some of our collaborative videos, please see below:
Cricket with Darren
We’re lucky enough to have some sessions with Darren from All Stars Cricket. Today, the class practised how to throw the ball. We learnt that a cricket ball has seams stitched into it and this helps us grip it. We also learnt that we had to keep our arms straight while bowling. At the end of the session, we had a game of diamond cricket and our scores were so close!
Weight v Mass
In Science, we investigated the differences between weight (how much gravity acts on an object) and mass (the amount of matter in an object). Each group, wrote down different objects to measure using some scales and a Newton metre so that we could compare them afterwards. We found that, around 1 Newton (which is a measurement of weight) equals 10g (measurement of mass) and that we’d weigh significantly less if we were on the moon because there is less gravity acting on us!
Valerie Bloom Poetry
Today we compared poetry by Jamaican born poet, Valerie Bloom. We explored how she recreated the culture of the Caribbean through her words and the content of her poems. We then compared the poems to see if she uses similar linguistic features before comparing this to Pie Corbett’s work.
Pie Corbett Poetry
This week are exploring the poetry of Pie Corbett and Valerie Bloom. Today, we looked at a range of poems from Pie Corbett and tried to spot any common features in his poetry such as using imagery such as similes and metaphors, or any set rhyming patterns and structure. We loved his use of personification and idioms in some of his poems! On Wednesday, we’ll be comparing his work to Jamaican-born Valerie Bloom.
Outdoor Adventures
As part of our PE curriculum, the children have been learning some outdoor adventures skills. This week they followed a trail around our playground in the attempt to crack a code. The groups did very well and have started developing their understanding of the points of the compass!
Odd Sock Day
To celebrate Anti-bullying Week (16th November to 20th November), we came to school wearing Odd Socks. The idea was to celebrate the differences in all of us. We have also done lots of activities linked to anti-bullying across the week too.
Kensuke’s Kingdom
We are coming to the end of our class novel in English and will be writing our own ending for the story before reading it. To help us plan out what would happen, we became the characters and created our own play. We will use this to write our endings in the next lesson.
Space Day
Year 5 thoroughly enjoyed their Space Day. We watched live footage from the International Space Station and couldn’t believe the beautiful views of the Earth they had and how they were suspended from the station. We then investigated the phases of the moon, watched a solar scientists describe the sun before making our very own pop up cards. Finally, in the afternoon, we learnt about the bones, muscles and joints of astronauts and how, if they didn’t exercise, they would be so weak returning to Earth. To understand the workouts that they do to prevent this, we all participated in a workout fit for an astronaut!
Just So Stories
In Year 5, we have been reading books from 19th Century author Rudyard Kipling such as the Jungle Book and Just So Stories. We have done lots of work linked to them and decided to write our own Just So Story about a creature and how it got its strange feature. We have looked at all sorts of different animals from giraffes to blob fish! We then used Puppet Pals to recreate our stories into animations that would be suitable for our Reception children to watch. Click here to have a watch of some of our recordings!
What do shadows tell us about how the Earth moves during the day?
Today, we made the most of the sun to find out what shadows tell us about how the Earth moves. We built on our knowledge from Year 3 where we drew around our shadows to find out how they changed. This time, we used tape measures and an protractor to see what was going on scientifically. We found out that the length of the shadow changed across the day, becoming shorter over midday and longer as it went into the evening. We could also see an angle change throughout the day which shows that the sun is moving across the sky. This is proof that the sun moves around us.
Geocentric v Heliocentric
Today, we went through time to investigate what scientists and previous civilisations thought about how our Solar System was organised. We found out that through thousands of years, our understanding of the planets and the Earth has changed. To start with, people thought that the sun travelled around the Earth (a geocentric view), however, as science discoveries were made, we discovered that actually the Earth orbits the sun (a heliocentric view). To help us develop our understanding, we took the role of the many scientists involved in changing our understanding about the planets, including Isaac Newton and Galileo! It made us wonder what might change about our understanding of the world over the next few hundred years.
A Scaled Model of our Solar System
In order to understand the true size of our solar system, we first used our mathematical skills to compare and order the planets in terms of their diameter. We chose a ball to represent the size of that planet. Then we used our times table knowledge to help us reduce the scale of the planets from the sun, to that of sheets of toilet paper! We went outside to line up where our planets would be from the sun and couldn’t believe how far away from the sun some planets orbited!
Investigating the Mayans
We found out that the Mayans were discovered by Spanish explorers who stumbled across an area built up of elaborate buildings. We put ourselves in the footsteps of the Spanish and imagined how they were feeling. We then explored some artifacts to find out what WE would have discovered about the area and the unknown civilisation that lived there. Have a look at the photos and see what you think they were used for.
L’alphabet Francais
To help us learn the French alphabet, we had fun playing French hangman and a French game of Countdown after we’d listened to a song based on it. If you’d like to learn the l’alphabet francais, have a listen to the video by clicking here.
Word Class
To help us learn and revise the different word classes, we played a sorting game. We had to find cards that fit the description of adjectives, verbs, adverbs, determiners and prepositions etc. We then wrote definitions and examples in our books to create our very own ‘Word Class’ dictionary.