Mrs Cheetham, teacher of Cheetahs class here. I am really looking forward to our writing lessons  during the Autumn term and am excited to be finding out about Ancient Britain during our topic too. At home, I like to have a nice cup of coffee and a chocolate bar whilst learning Korean and listening to K-pop music. A book is never very far away from my hands, and I hope to hear lots of your book recommendations this year. 

Mrs Metcalfe is the teaching assistant in Cheetah’s. She is a mum of 2 boys and loves family fun on the weekends. Her favourite subject is English (especially handwriting) and she is looking forward to seeing all the wonderful work Cheetah’s produce this year. Additionally, Mrs Allam is a Learning Support Assistant in Cheetahs. S he really enjoys arts and craft and design and technology. Mrs Allam is really looking forward to learning more about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo during the spring term in Art.

Our PE days are Wednesday and Thursday for the Autumn term, so please remember to come in your full PE kit! Have a look below at some of the wonderful things we will be learning this term!

History

Our Autumn Term topic is focussed around the question 'Invaders and Settlers - How did they change Britain?' We will be learning about why the Angles, Saxons and Jutes settled in Britain. How the Anglo-Saxons ruled and kept control of their kingdoms. Additionally, we will investigate the shift in power and religion after the arrival of the Vikings and why they carried out raids.

Writing

Our writing this term will be inspired by the books 'Race to the Frozen North' by Catherine Johnson, 'Young Gifted and Black' by Jamia Wilson and Michael Morpurgo's 'Beowulf'. For Race to the Frozen North, our outcome will be a recount - writing a series of diary entries. Beowulf will have a fiction focus, leading to us writing a further adventure. Throughout our writing, we will continue to develop our grammar, punctuation and spelling through our Gateway, Mastery and Feature keys.

Reading

Word reading and fluency are developed within each unit through various activities, such as echo reads, timed reads, and fluency grids. Each text includes high-frequency words and a range of common exception words, enabling children to read aloud and understand the meaning of new words they encounter through repeated reading of the text, contiguous reads, echo reads, and the use of the fluency grid. Children will check that the book makes sense to them, discuss their understanding, explore the meaning of words in context, and identify how language, structure, and presentation contribute to meaning. A range of vocabulary-based questions will be used to develop and demonstrate this knowledge. Our year 5 reading, helps develop retrieval skills through diverse texts, teaching children to pinpoint key elements like characters and events. Summarising skills are honed as they identify main ideas from multiple paragraphs. Lastly, children learn to make simple inferences and ask questions to deepen their understanding, reinforcing their analytical skills throughout the reading journey.

Maths

Maths in the Autumn Term will focus on mastering place value. Children will work on reading, writing, partitioning and comparing numbers up to 1,000,000.  Furthermore, they will round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000 within 1,000,000. Our children will learn all the Roman Numerals and practise them with date writing. Moving on to addition and subtraction, we will be adding and subtracting whole numbers with up to 4 digits and moving on to multi-step problems.  Our multiplication and division learning covers multiples, common multiples, factors and common factors. We will then investigate prime numbers, square numbers and cube numbers, before finishing with multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000. Our final unit of the Autumn Term is all about fractions. We will be finding and recognising equivalent fractions. Converting and comparing fractions and adding and subtracting fractions.

 

Art and Design and Technology

In art, our children will be learning about Chinese art.  This will include exploring themes, styles and colours in traditional art and learning about the importance of brushstrokes. The children will replicate Chinese calligraphy and recreate porcelain of the Ming dynasty. Food and Nutrition will be the theme of our Autumn term Design and Technology with children learning about the farm to fork process.

Science

Forces and Mechanisms and Properties and Uses of Materials are our Autumn term topics in Science.  The children will investigate friction between different surfaces, why objects fall at different speeds and how gears work. In addition to this, we will be comparing and grouping materials, thinking about containers to keep items hot and cold and which materials are absorbent, permeable and waterproof.

 

RE

We are very lucky to have our RE delivered by Kevin from In Christ In Schools.  The Bible Explorer programme follows a specific line through the Bible as understood from the Christian world view. It is far from exhaustive, however it covers many well-known events from the New Testament. The children are encouraged to ask questions related to the teaching and challenge/respectfully argue for/against the topic from their own belief/non-belief world view both with the teaching lead and their own peers.

RSHE - Relationships, Sex and Health Education

Our year 5 children will explore good emotional health and well-being. They will learn that actions have consequences and consider how to make informed choices understanding peer pressure. Our E-Safety sessions will focus on safe online communities, celebrating strengths and setting goals. Additionally, our children will look at economic well-being thinking about their future work and career aspirations.

PE

In PE, the children will be completing a dance unit! In addition to this, they will have half a term of yoga-inspired sessions focussing on balance and shape. We will also be learning about all the skills needed for handball, choosing the best tactics for attacking and defending. Finally, our athletics unit will allow us to master the art of running, looking at pace and stamina and throwing - both overarm and underarm.