Welcome to Pine Tree Class

I hope you have had a wonderful Easter break and are ready for an exciting term ahead. It is our final term (summer) in Year 5!

On this page, you will find some useful information about the term ahead and any key messages that you need to be aware of.  If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see our class Twitter feed and instructions for Google Classroom. We love to use Twitter to share some of the excellent things going on in class and will use Google Classroom to support learning at home - spellings, homework and useful documents will be uploaded and made available on there.  If you are on Twitter, please follow @pinetreeclass to see regular updates.

We are set to have a great term and have some really exciting things planned and lots of new things to learn about.  If there are ever any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to get in touch, either by popping in or telephoning.  The support you give is essential for your child's progress and the closer we can work together the better it will be for them.

Kind regards

Mrs Owen

Curriculum Overview:

This term, we will be focusing on perimeter and area, statistics, shape, position and direction, decimals, negative numbers, converting units and volume. We will also continue to visit previous learning through our daily maths retrieval sessions, such as place value, multiplication and division, addition and subtraction, fractions, decimals and percentages. Throughout each maths lesson we will focus on developing fluency, problem solving and reasoning skills. 

In our English lessons this term, we will be exploring the wonderful text 'The Hunter' by Paul Geraghty. We will work on our knowledge of punctuation and grammar from across KS2, with a particular focus on extending our writing through using relative clauses, adverbs of possibility and frequency, tense choices and independent proofreading and editing. Later in the term, we will explore poetry, focusing on 'Animals of Africa'. All of our writing across the term will be inspired by high quality texts and children's literature. We will also be engaging with daily whole class reading sessions to develop the children’s reading stamina, pace, understanding of vocabulary and comprehension skills, together with individual reading sessions, where each child will be heard to read by an adult weekly. Alongside everything we do in school, it is incredibly important that children are reading a variety of texts, at home and this is recorded in their planners. The planners need to be in school daily and to be signed at by an adult regularly.  Finally, the children will need to focus on using spelling strategies and rules consistently to ensure they spell a variety of common and uncommon words accurately. They need to be practising their weekly spellings, regularly at home, in preparation for a spelling test (each Friday).

Science

We are scientists!

Our science focus, this term, is Evolution & Inheritance. In this topic, the children will explore how living things have changed over time (evolved) and understand that fossils provide information about how living things inhabited the Earth millions of years ago. They will also discover how living things produce offspring of the same kind and identify how animals and plants have adapted to suit their environment in different ways and that adaptation may lead to evolution.

History/Geography                                                                                      

Our Geography focus for this term is How are our coasts changing?  During this topic, the children will be exploring the effects of coastal erosion and plastic pollution on coastlines in the UK / around the world. Children will learn about the structure of the coasts of the UK and other coasts around the world and how their shape and geography have changed over thousands of years. 

In History, our focus question is: Would the Viking really do anything for money and power? The children will be historians through exploring evidence relating to the Viking era, such as mapping this period of time on a timeline (chronology), mapping Viking settlements and homelands, studying daily life, invasions and battles along with raising their own questions to explore.

Additional Messages:

Reading: 

Please make sure that you read for at least 10 minutes everyday.  This can be your school book, own book, newspapers, comics, shopping list etc and record in your planner.

Spellings:

Spellings will be added to Google Classroom on a Friday afternoon and the children will be tested the following Friday.  Spellings will focus on particular spelling rule/pattern each week and we will also be looking at words taken from the statutory word list.  These will be taught and practised throughout the week. 

PE:

The children will have indoor PE on a Monday and outdoor PE on a Friday.  The children should come to school wearing their PE kits.  PE kits should be a house colour t-shirt, plain black shorts/ joggers/leggings and a plain black jacket/jumper.  Please remember to tie long hair up and make sure no jewellery is worn.

Homework:

Homework will be set on a Friday and this should be returned by the following Thursday.  Homework will consist of a maths activity and an English activity linked to the unit of work they are covering in class, so they should be able to complete the activity independently. 

Some useful websites, resources and links:

https://spellingframe.co.uk - Spelling Frame - A great, interactive website to give you chance to practise your spellings in a variety of different ways.

https://ttrockstars.com/ - Times Table Rockstars. Use this website to practise your times tables, battle with your band mates and keep your arithmetic skills up to scratch!