Gallery

Hooray I've managed to upload three!!

I've been trying since half past 9 to upload the pictures but as there are literally thousands the wifi can't cope! As soon as we're home tomorrow I'll do it on the laptop. We've had a lovely day. I'm so proud of how many children have pushed themselves and they cannot wait to tell all of you all about it. See you all tomorrow, good might! Miss Dickson 😊

Robinwood day 2

Good morning from Robinwood!

We're all up and ready to enjoy our full breakfasts. Yesterday was so busy that I didn't have chance to upload any pictures. I'll make sure that I upload some from all 3 groups this evening (activities are on until 9pm) from the activities. Yesterday was an amazing day. We are all so proud of all of the children, they all pushed themselves and many fears were conquered. Slight rain this morning but it won't put us off.

We are all looking forward to another jam packed day after a good sleep last night. Everybody is absolutely fine and they are behaving themselves!

Have a lovely day and I'll upload some more photos this evening.

Miss Dickson 😊

The UK Military School

This afternoon was an afternoon which we have been looking forward to for a while! We had some very special guests in our school, The UK Military School. We were put into teams and we had to solve a number of team tasks. Some of them were extremely tricky but we persevered to solve them. We enjoyed the afternoon so much and the instructors were impressed with our behaviour and attitude. Our favourite part of the afternoon was the ass\ult course, of course! We listened to the safety briefing intently and in no time at all we were racing out friends on the course! We were so excited we even persuaded Miss Dickson and Miss Weston to have a go, they were shocked at how difficult it actually was! We really enjoyed our afternoon. Our fitness levels were tested and we learned team work skills which we will continue to work on in class. Miss Dickson is so proud of the way we represented our school this afternoon.

Multiplication games

Today we were proving to Miss Dickson how good we are at multiplication in Year Five. We were given all of the Y5 multiplication objectives and we were given some time to create a game to test our partner's skills. We are experts in short multiplication in Y5 now, Miss Dickson was very impressed!

Mini-Olympics

We were very lucky that the rain stayed away for our Olympic afternoon. Yesterday we organised a Mini-Olympics event for today. We decided on our teams, scorers, time keepers and event leaders. We had to research the Ancient Greek Olympics last week to compare it to the modern day games. Once we had compared them we could begin to plan our own event. We completed all of the planning so today we could start straight away. We set up all of the event stations and ensured that the teams were correct. Miss Dickson was very impressed with how we managed the event. We had some superb athletes this afternoon, we all excelled in at least one activity. It was very close but team Hermes were the winners! Miss Dickson was so impressed with how we behaved, our sportsmanship and our attitudes throughout the event.

The Solar System

In science we finished our astronomy topic by investigating the distance between the planets and the sun. We were given a scaled version of the distances as we wouldn't be able to use the real measurements! We had to be precise with our measurements to ensure that our models were accurate. We then added in the orbit path for each planet. Miss Dickson asked us the question "why don't the planets ever crash into each other?". We were able to use our models to explain why the planets don't crash. If you want to know any more ask us! Miss Dickson was very impressed with our scientific explanations.

Seasonal art

Today we continued with our year long study on the environment. We gathered some of the natural things from our playground and field to make a piece of artwork with. We started to discuss the differences between the natural art from Autumn and Winter compared to the Spring art.

Year 1's chicks

This week Year One have had some new class members; they have had chicks! As our science topic next half term is all about life cycles Mrs Crowder invited us along to observe the chicks throughout the week. Today the chicks were strong enough to be held so in our golden time we were able to go and have a hold if we wanted to. Head over to Year One's class page for a diary and more photographs about their chick experince this week.

Our debate

For our literacy lessons this week we have been researching two Ancient Greek states; Athens and Sparta. We/ were gathering information about the two states to prepare for our class debate today. On Wednesday we talked about how in a persuasive piece of writing the purpose is to make somebody do the thing that you want. We used our research about the two states and we set about turning the positives into negatives to strengthen our persuasive arguments. One example of this is that in Sparta girls took part in the military training as the belief was strong women produced strong babies (soldiers in the future). We talked about how this is positive as the girls are being provided with survival skills and they would be getting some form of education. However, not all girls would want to do military training, the girls could be at risk and why did the girls have to spend their whole life preparing to be a mother? Today we used what we have been learning and we held a debate in our classroom. We had a 'family' who didn't know if they should move to Athens or to Sparta, we had a judge to lead the debate and we had two opposing teams. Miss Dickson and Mrs Waston both joined a side to help us along. We set some ground rules before we started and then we got right to it! We were very orderly and clear with our persuasive arguments. We didn't even need to use our sheets as we knew what we wanted to say! Miss Dickson was very impressed with our debate and in the end the family decided to move to Athens, well done Athens! Next week we will be planning a piece of writing based on what we did today.

Multiplying fractions

This week we have been learning all about fractions in maths. We have learned: how to convert from mixed number fractions to improper fractions and vice versa; how to work our equivalent fractions, how to simplify fractions, how to add and subtract fractions and finally today we learned how to multiply fractions. We are such busy learners in Year Five! We applied what we had learned all week to multiplying fractions, Miss Dickson and Mrs Watson were very impressed. One reasoning task that we did today was completing a tarsia jigsaw. We worked in small teams to tackle to problem, Miss Dickson was impressed with the conversations that we were having in our teams. The final challenge was to create our own tarsia jigsaw puzzle in our teams for somebody else to solve. One team reached this final problem and Miss Dickson has kept the jigsaw to give to another group next week.

Using our prize passes

As our prize for completing our topic homework last term we were given a set of prize passes. One pass was for hot chocolate with Miss Dickson at lunch time, this is the favourite pass amongst a selection of the class! We loved it so much that we had to use it just two days into the new term! We also used our lunch in the classroom passes (and some of us even used our slippers in class pass too!) and we had a really lovely lunch time inside.

Identifying persuasive techniques

To identify the features of a persuasive argument we were given four different examples where we had to find the features and annotate them. We had to order the persuasive texts from best to worst and explain why we had ordered them in that way. Once we had filled our steps to success box on our working wall Miss Dickson gave us some real holiday brochures from the travel agents. We had to see which techniques were used in the brochures before selecting a holiday and trying to persuade a friend to come with us!

Extra play winners!

We won! One of the tables pictured here won due to remembering lots of the persuasive features whereas the other won based on their persuasive performance techniques.

First persuasive task - persuade me to give you extra play!

Our new literacy unit is focusing on persuasive writing. Miss Dickson was told by Miss Weston that last year (in Year Four) we were a very persuasive bunch so we were set a challenge straight away! We had to try and remember the persuasive techniques that we were taught last year to persuade both Miss Dickson and Miss Weston that we deserved extra play. We worked in our table groups and we planned our arguments. After having some time to prepare we had to give a very quick speech persuading both of our teachers that our table deserved the play more so than any other. We created some fabulous persuasive arguments some being: we will burn our excess energy in the extra play, we work so hard that we need some more play time, the fresh air will be good for our brains and even because you are the best teacher ever there is no way that you will say no! Both Miss Dickson and Miss Weston selected one table each after listening to all of our arguments. We have some super persuasive salespeople in the making in our class! Miss Dickson said that we are the product promoters of the future.

Hot cross buns

For our Easter service at the church Mrs Serjeant asked us to talk about traditional Easter foods. In maths a couple of weeks ago we were learning about converting measures for a purpose, we were really good at this. So, Miss Dickson decided to combine the two things together and we really enjoyed the result! We were provided with a recipe for hot cross buns in kilograms (kg) and litres (l) but we needed it in grams (g) and millilitres (ml). Our first job was to convert the recipe into g and ml, once we had done this we had to gather the correct ingredients. We were responsible for weighing out the ingredients too, we had to be extra careful as there was just enough for all three groups! Miss Dickson was impressed with how careful we were and how we were supporting other members of our teams. Once we had weighed out the ingredients we had to follow the recipe to create our dough, we had an eggy disaster along the way in one group! Once the dough was ready we had to shape it into eight even balls and leave them to prove for an hour. We were shocked with how much the dough expanded in size in this time. Our final job before baking them was to add to crosses on the top of the buns. There are many different versions of what the cross represents but in church we will explain how the cross represents the cross which Jesus was crucified on. We are looking forward to taste testing our hot cross buns tomorrow morning!

Mountain shelters

Today we went into our woodland area to create mountain shelters! We used plastic sheets, string, scissors and anything that we could find outside. Miss Dickson split us into three teams and we were able to plan and create our own mountain shelters. Before we could start we had to create a clear plan, which we all agreed on! Once we had a plan of action we could begin gathering any natural resources and selecting our place in the woodland area to build our shelter. We were given a success criteria which included: all of the group needed to fit under the shelter, the shelter must be able to stand by itself and we must listen to all of the members in our team. Miss Dickson was impressed with how our teams organised ourselves and created unified plans of action. We were very imaginative and resourceful with the things that we found around us. We were using logs/branches, rocks, netting, wooden crates and the trees around us! As you can tell from the photographs all three teams were successful in meeting the success criteria. However, we did get a little mucky in the process!

70s day!

As Mrs Serjeant started teaching in the 70s today the whole school dressed in 70s attire! We had so much fun in the hall this morning. We had a good sing and dance to some typical 70s music with the rest of the school and all of the teachers. Mrs Serjeant even came over to our class in the hall and had a dance with us! We all looked amazing! Miss Dickson was so impressed with how super we looked!

Dear Mrs Serjeant, thank you for...

This final week of term has been an emotional one in our school. Our very much loved head teacher has retired and we will miss her so much. To mark the special event we have been preparing different things in class to say thank you. As a class we have created an 'End of Career Report' for Mrs Serjeant. Each page of the report has been created by a different one of us. We commented on Mrs Serjeant's: assembly skills, teaching skills. sense of humour, favourite memories and what we will miss the most. Of course, all of the things that we wrote were very, very positive! For our class card we all had to complete the sentence 'Thank you for...'. Miss Dickson took our photograph with what we wanted to end the sentence with to put into the card. When we presented Mrs Serjeant with her gifts she was very pleased and thankful. We all want to say again how much we will miss Mrs Serjeant and how lucky we are to have had her as our head teacher. Thank you Mrs Serjeant x

Cross Factor

Today we went to the local Methodist Church for workshops all focused on Easter. We have been learning about Jesus and The Easter Story in RE this term so it fit in perfectly. We were able to participate in six different activities where we gained a greater insight to a different part of The Easter Story. Two of the activities involved 'meeting' a character from The Easter Story. This gave us the chance to ask experts questions about the period of time, Miss Dickson was impressed with the questions that we asked. Other activities gave us the chance to do some drama, which we love, where we took on the role of the different people in The Easter Story. We also were able to plant a sunflower seed to take home with us. This signified that Easter is all about new life and how valuable life is in this world. We promised that we would look after them over half term! Once again our behaviour was exemplary and the church commented on how impressed they were with us. Here are the photographs of Miss Dickson's group, Miss Dickson needs to get the photographs of the other two groups to upload.

Tug of War maths

We have been learning about negative numbers in maths, these are the numbers that are less than 0. After doing lots of counting forwards and backwards using negative numbers (even across 0!) we were set a challenge to create a game involving negative numbers. Miss Dickson provided us with a number line with all of the numbers from -16 to 16 on and we had to use dice and counters to create a game. Some of our games were extremely complex! We did lots of counting forwards and backwards to perfect our games. Miss Dickson was impressed that each pair created a totally different game but all focusing on counting with negative numbers.

Tennis

We have enjoyed all of our PE sports so far this year but tennis especially! We have finally been able to enjoy our PE outdoors on a weekly basis (we have been asking for this since September!). Miss Dickson, and Miss Valentine, have been impressed with how skilled we are in tennis and how hard we try. Here are a few photographs of us enjoying one of our sessions. There aren't many photographs of us doing PE as Miss Dickson joins in to make sure that we all have a partner.

New life everywhere!

We were the luckiest class in the school this afternoon! We worked with Mrs Sadgrove to find sources of new life in our school grounds. Our year long environment study is about the seasonal changes and the life cycles of animals and plants so today we went outside to investigate spring. We had to plant flowers but before we could do that we had to clear the area. We worked so well in our teams to clear the decaying plants and weed the area so that our flowers would look beautiful. We had so much fun doing this and Mrs Sadgrove appreciated our help so much. Next we went down to our pond where we did some pond dipping. Miss Dickson was very impressed with how well we behaved and how hard we tried at this activity. We listened so well to the instructions and rules given to us by Mrs Sadgrove before we started our pond dipping in small groups. We were amazed when we found frogspawn and even more amazed when Mrs Sadgrove let us have a close look at it by catching some in our nets. We could already tell which frogspawn were further developed than others by looking at the shapes of the embryos inside! We were so very considerate whilst handling and observing the frogspawn. We have already asked Miss Dickson if she can arrange for us to go and observe the development of the frogspawn to frogs! We had a lovely afternoon and we couldn't thank Mrs Sadgrove enough, we are so lucky in Year 5 to have had this opportunity.

Measurement part 2

We continued with our measuring work today and completed the opposite task to yesterday. This means that we have all measured real life things both inside our classroom and in our playground. Today Miss Dickson and Miss Weston were impressed with how we used our knowledge of how big units of measurement are and how big the things that we measured yesterday to inform our estimations. We were careful in our measurements and the difference between our estimates and the actual measurements was lower than yesterday. We also converted measurements of the objects today from mm to cm, cm to m and even m to km.

Periscopes

To continue with our learning of how we see and how mirrors (shiny surface) help us to see we were set the challenge of creating a periscope. We were given the net of the periscope and had to figure out which bits would be seen and which bits would be tucked away before designing them. We had some time to design our periscope before making it. We had to carefully cut out the net and then follow the instructions about where we needed to fold and stick. Once our periscope was put together we had to decide where the mirrors needed to go. Once we had completed this final step we could explore how we could use the periscope to help us to see. We learned that using our periscope we could see above the table when we were below it and around corners too! We were having so much fun exploring how to use our periscopes that when Miss Dickson told us that it was play time there was a great unanimous sigh! Miss Dickson told us that we could take them out at playtime and we were creating games which we could use our periscopes as a resource in. Before we could take them home we had to be able to tell Miss Dickson how they worked. We knew that it was because of the angle of the mirrors and how the light travels from the source of light to the object(s) then to the first mirror, then to the second mirror before reaching our eye.

Measurement

Today we started our new maths unit all about measurement. We discussed what things are measured in and all of the different types of measurement. Miss Dickson told us that we would begin with height as a measurement. We could tell Miss Dickson which units of measurement would be appropriate for this (mm, cm, m and km). We were then told that over today's lesson and the lesson tomorrow we would be measuring real life things in our classroom and in our playground. We had to estimate the height of the thing that we were measuring before carefully and precisely measuring it. Tomorrow we will have to use what we learned today to inform our estimation skills!

World Book Day

Yet again we have blown Miss Dickson away! Today we dressed up for World Book Day and we looked fabulous! So many of us made our own costumes and it was obvious how much time and effort was spent doing so. After play time we went into the hall where we started the parade off in style. It was so very hard for the teachers to select only two winners as we all looked so amazing. After a long deliberation Max and Amy were selected as our class winners. Both Max and Amy had made their own costumes at home with the help of their family. Both Max and Amy won a copy of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five (what a classic!).

Reasoning task 2

Today we were set the next reasoning challenge for our area and perimeter unit. Today, we had to create 'pictures' and 'picture frames'. We were deciding how the area (the 'picture') and the perimeter (the 'frame') link together. We were very good at investigating this and both Miss Dickson and Miss Weston were impressed at how we applied our leaning from the past two weeks. Some of us even began to write a formula for the relationship between the two (how clever are we!).

Reasoning task 1

Today we were set a challenge to apply what we have learned about area and perimeter. We were given a certain number of squares and we had to arrange them into a shape to create the largest perimeter and then the shortest perimeter. Miss Dickson tried to trick us by asking us to make the largest and smallest area too but we told her straight away that with the same number of squares the area will always be the same! We enjoyed how practical this task was.

Using mirrors to help us see

Today we learned about how light travels in straight lines and how it reflects off shiny surfaces. Miss Dickson asked us to think about how we could see what was behind us without turning around. We were very confused by this at first but it didn't take us long to realise that we could use mirrors to complete this task! We were asked to think about real life situations where mirrors are used to see behind us and straight away we realised this is why there are mirrors on cars. Miss Dickson set us the task of being able to see a message on our backs without turning around (or cheating!). We were very impressed with ourselves when we could do it. We said that for the afternoon we felt like Miss Dickson with eyes in the back of our heads!

Exploring light

Today we started our new science topic, light. We were given some time to explore light sources (torches). We noted down what we know about light so that when we complete our topic we can return to it and add all our new learning! We had so much fun experimenting with the torches, Miss Dickson was impressed with our inquisitive nature this afternoon. Some of us created coloured filters for the torches, we were very impressed with what we could do! We had that much fun that some of us even chose to stay inside at play time to continue exploring with the torches!

Fitness plans

Today in science we finished off the practical element of our unit. We had a PE/science afternoon which was split into two parts. During the first part we sorted different types of exercise into hard, medium or easy work for your heart. We used what we have learned so far in the unit to explain our ideas. For example, we could tell Miss Dickson that sprinting makes your heart work a lot harder than walking does. This is because when you sprint your muscles and organs need more energy (oxygen) than when you walk. We tested out what we told Miss Dickson by participating in different types of exercise and measuring and recording our pulse rates before and after the exercise. We did this so that we could see which exercise raised our heart rates the greatest amount. Once we had compared our results we checked if our initial ideas were correct. This led us into the second part of the session. We had to design a ten minute fitness plan for somebody else to complete. We had to remember that a person would not be able to do intense exercise which is hard for their heart for the whole ten minutes. Once we had created our fitness plans we went into the hall and tested them out. There aren't many photographs because lots of us wanted to test Miss Dickson's heart and fitness levels with our fitness plans!

The Highwayman

Today we were set the task of performing the poem that we have been learning about, The Highwayman. Miss Dickson split us into groups and split the stanzas of the poem between us too. We were told that we our literacy lessons next week will be learning and practicing our parts of the poem. We had lots of very good ideas in our groups, next week we will work hard to compromise in our teams so that all of our ideas are used in some way. Miss Dickson is sure that we will be able to sort it! We have yet again impressed Miss Dickson with our creativity and confidence, we are a talented bunch!

Mighty mountains

In topic we have been focusing on geography. Today we discussed different mountain landscapes and how we can identify different mountain features. We used lots of photographs to do this. Once we had added the basic features Miss Dickson taught us about the different types of mountains there are. We looked on Google Earth to try and locate the different types of mountains in the world. Lennon has told us all about The Alps as he has been skiing there, he has told us that he will bring in some videos which he recorded himself on his helmet camera during his last trip. We cant wait to watch them!

Super scientists

In science today we made a model of the human body in our classroom, We had children acting as major organs and other body parts including the: heart, lungs, brain, kidneys, hands and feet. The rest of us were red blood cells. We reminded ourselves of the stages of the circulatory system before we acted out the circulatory system. Miss Dickson was impressed with how much we had remembered. We talked about the exchange of energy (oxygen) from red blood cells to the rest of the body. We included this in our model by using different coloured red blood cells. As red blood cells, when we began our journey around the body we left the heart as an oxygenated red blood cell and travelled to a body part or an organ. Here we had to exchange our oxygenated red blood cell for a deoxygenated red blood cell as the oxygen had been taken from the red blood cell to be used up in the body part or organ. This meant that we had to continue our journey back to the heart which swiftly sent us to the lungs to exchange our deoxydenated red blood cell for an oxygenated one. Finally, we had to go back to the heart to get our big push back around the body to begin the cycle again.

Our final fitness session

Born to Move has sadly come to an end for us. Today we took part in our final fitness session and classroom session. Mr Schofield let us pick which tracks we did today and he was blown away with how much we have developed in the short eight week programme. We did a variety of kick, punch, move and dance tracks and even a jump track which is designed for high school children! We have learned so much from the fitness sessions and the classroom sessions. If you come to our class assembly on Friday we will be sharing what we have learned with you then, we don't want to give too much away yet!

Move over Miss Dickson!

As Alex won the most amount of Class Dojo points in Autumn term he won half an hour of Miss Dickson's time. Alex was able to use this time for whatever he liked, Miss Dickson gave him some options including: extra play, games, extra PE and teaching a mini lesson. Alex impressed Miss Dickson when he chose to teach a lesson. Before Miss Dickson could even help Alex he had planned, resourced and even differentiated a lesson at home! WOW! Alex was helped to create a PowerPoint to assist his teaching but apart from that it was all entirely his own work. Alex taught us about the first five elements in the Periodic Table, we learned so much from him. Alex even planned some time for us to ask questions which he answered with ease and confidence. We are so lucky to have such smart, brave and hard working children in our class! Some of us told Miss Dickson that she needs to be careful as Alex may be after her job! Thank you Alex, you did an amazing job.

Alex in action

Alex in action

We've caught the reading bug!

Miss Dickson heard that some of us were wanting to read Shakespeare so she bought the set of books for us and we love them so much! Amy was the first to catch the Shakespeare bug and she has quickly passed it on throughout the class. We now have a waiting list for some of the books! Miss Dickson loves how much we are loving reading and hopes that the bug continues to spread throughout the rest of the class.

Cakes and calculations

We have had even more visitors into our classroom this week! We were joined by some of our lovely mums, dads and grandparents for Cakes and Calculations this afternoon. Throughout the afternoon we had the chance to teach our guests how we complete calculations in Year 5, we are experts after all! Miss Dickson was impressed with how much we had remembered from Autumn term about the calculation rules in Year 5; our guests were equally impressed! We went through how to solve the calculation on the board before we had chance to solve some tricky problems. We wrote on huge pieces of paper on our desks and we very maturely helped our guests to solve the Year 5 calculation problems. We had lots of fun showing off how clever and sensible we are to our guests and of course we enjoyed the cakes and biscuits too!

The circulatory system

Today we continued with our science unit the circulatory system. Miss Dickson split the stages of the circulatory system into seven steps and hid them around the room. In our teams one person had to go and find a statement, remember it and tell the rest of the team what it said. Once we had all seven statements we had to order them into the correct order of how blood travels around our bodies. Some of us got all of the statements first go, others had to keep trying a little longer! We all worked hard and followed the rules of the game but Blue Table were the winners. Blue Table collected all of the statements and ordered them correctly the fastest. Well done Blue Table! Next lesson we will create a human model of the body and act out the circulatory system in our classroom.

Our visit from Christine

Our RE unit this term is Jesus. We have been talking about identity, belonging and guidance. We started the unit by writing down three things that we would like other people to think of when they think about us. We went around the classroom and wrote three things that we think about other people on their sheet, we then folded it up to keep it secret until the end. When we had finished we sat and read all of the lovely things that our friends think about us. We then moved on to how Jesus is known by Christians and why Christians think that. We also learned about the Bible and how people who belong to the Christian faith go to the Bible for guidance and support in times of need. We talked about how we find support in our own lives. Some of the places we look for guidance are: our parents, our siblings, our teachers, our friends, our role models and stories which we know. We talked about why Christians use the Bible for guidance and Miss Dickson invited in Christine from St John's Church to talk to us. Christine answered all of our many, many questions and we learned so much. Christine told us about her personal experiences with the Bible, including a very recent one where she felt like the Bible passage she was reading guided her to make an important life choice. We loved having Christine in our classroom and we would love to welcome her back again in the future! Thank you Christine!

Angle problems

We have been working hard all week in our maths lessons so today we were able to apply what we have learned to some problems. We were given statement which we had to prove true or false. Miss Dickson said that she wanted evidence to justify our decisions, just telling her isn't enough! We did very well at this task, we worked in our maths teams when we needed help to share our learning. Miss Dickson was yet again very impressed with us!

Oral health

Today we continued with outer wellbeing sessions where we focussed on sugar content in drinks. We had to sort from highest sugar content to lowest sugar content before we were told the answers. We talked about making healthy choices and how we should view sugary drinks as a treat rather than a part of every day life. We are asking lots of insightful questions during the classroom wellbeing sessions which demonstrates our willingness to learn how to become healthier human beings.

Reasoning in teams

Today we had a break from working on angles and worked in teams to solve a tricky reasoning challenge. Once we solved the challenge we adapted the game to set our own challenges. We had to use our understanding of number and rules of divisibility to solve the new challenges. We are super at deciding what we need to do when faced with a new challenge, Miss Dickson was very impressed with the the way we worked. She was so impressed that she sent half of us to the ICT suite with Mrs Watson to work in smaller teams. The half who stayed with Miss Dickson worked as a big team to solve a number of challenges.

Our finished headscarves

After leaving our headscarves in our selected natural dye over night we had to rinse them yesterday. We removed the excess dye and left them to dry overnight. Today we created a design to draw onto our headscarves with fabric pens, we understand that the Anglo Saxons wouldn't have been able to do this! Here we are looking lovely in our finished headscarves! We are desperate to take them home and show them off to our families!

Making natural dyes

Yesterday we had to persuade Miss Dickson to buy the natural items that we thought would make the best natural dyes. We did a very good job and Miss Dickson really struggled to select four options. She made a list and went to Tesco and bought: curry powder, kale, herbs, beetroot, red onion and red currants. We had to make the natural dyes in a similar way that the Anglo Saxons would have done. However, with it being January (cold and wet!) we improvised and used an electric hob rather than going into the woodland area to light a fire. In our groups we had to prepare the natural resource ready to make a dye with. This included chopping, pealing, crushing and mashing the natural resources. We had to do all of the steps to making the dye by ourselves, we worked well in our teams and Miss Dickson supervised. We knew exactly what we had to do because of the secondary task we were doing this morning. Whilst we were all waiting to have our turn at making a dye we were creating a page for our Beautiful Books where we outlined step by step instructions on how to make the dye (we even used adverbials of time!). We had lots of fun creating the dyes, but as you can tell from some of the photographs some of us did not like the smell which was created!

Identifying features of a text

Today we started our new literary unit. However, Miss Dickson wouldn't tell us which text type we were working with! Instead we were given four examples of the text type and we had to figure it out. Straight away we could eliminate some types of text (poetry, newspaper report, play script and a story). We then identified common features across all four texts and used these features to decide which text type they were. After using our non-fiction text types display we agreed that we were reading non-chronological reports. Miss Dickson told us that not all of the examples that we had were 'good ones'. Here are the photographs of us ordering the examples from best to worse. We were all in agreement with last place! Miss Dickson asked us to rip it up and made us promise that ours would not be like that one! Over the next couple of weeks we will research Mount Everest and we will write our own non-chronological reports using the research.

Angles

Today we started our new unit in maths. We are looking at angles for the next two weeks. Today we started with the basics and we proved to Miss Dickson that we could recognise and draw different types of angles. We had so much fun drawing angles on our tables! We were set a challenge to draw a picture with a certain number of each type of angle in it or write our name and identify the different types of angles in that. We then had two more activities to do, we found angles in a picture and we went outside to see angles in the real wide world! We drew angles on the floor in chalk and then we had to find examples of the angles in our environment. Some examples of right angles were: the corners on the benches, where the tree trunks met the ground, the goal posts and the corners on the 100 square on the floor. Examples of acute angles were: between the tree branches, between the blades of grass and on the climbing frame. Examples of obtuse angles were: the school roof, tree branches and the climbing frame. There were a lot of straight lines! Some of them were: the edges of bricks, the edge of the grass, the poles in the gate and the basketball net.

Reviewing our classroom rules

To mark the start of a new term we reviewed our classroom rules. We created them in September but Miss Dickson told us that we would have chance to alter them to suit us as we grow up during the year. We decided to change the wording of most of the five rules and we added a new one too. We chose to add 'to line up quietly' because we know how important this is now that we are upper KS2. We always earn dojo points for lining up quietly so it makes sense for it to be a rule as we know that it is expected from us. Miss Dickson has typed up the new rules and Miss Weston has laminated them so they are all ready to go onto the wall. We also decided to review what will happen if we don't follow the rules, we have all agreed that the procedure is fair and we understand why we need to follow the rules. We will review our classroom rules again in Summer term.

Progress award

Well the first full term in Year 5 is complete! I am so proud of all 31 children for so many different reasons. Each child in the class has developed in many ways and all of the children are blossoming into even more special human beings than they already are. I could sit and type for hours all of the things that they have done that have made me so proud to be their teacher. I was faced with the very difficult task of awarding the progress shield to one child for their achievements from the first term in Year 5. After weeks of bouncing from name to name and great deliberations with Miss Weston and Mrs Watson there was one name which stood out to me. Aidan has achieved so much in the first term and he is a very deserving winner of the first award. He tries his best in all subjects of the curriculum and he is a credit to our class. Aidan's attitude towards learning is exemplary and adults who come into our class always comment on how Aidan impresses them. I can't wait to see who impresses me over the next term to win the next progress award!

Thank you for all of your hard work in Autumn term Year 5. Have a lovely break with your families and I shall see you all refreshed and ready to learn in January! Miss Dickson :)

Christmas service

Today during the Christmas service in church we demonstrated our resilience. Just before we were due to perform our Christmas song for one final time the CD broke! We stepped up to the challenge and with a little help from Mr Matthews we performed our song acoustically. Some of us even said that it sounded better this way! We made Miss Dickson very proud, yet again! We didn't practise the song without the backing track but our beautiful voices and smiles carried us through. The service was beautiful and it really made us think about what is important in life. We are so lucky to be surrounded by love, especially at Christmas time.

Christmas performance

This afternoon was the first of the Christmas performances. Here we all are looking lovely in our party clothes and our headbands displaying 29 different parts of a traditional Christmas dinner. Our part in the play is focused on the Christmas dinner (lucky us!) where we explain why we eat some of the things that we do on Christmas Day. We sing a song about the dinner and we choreographed our own dance for the chorus (Miss Dickson was very impressed). Miss Dickson was very proud of how we performed, she watched from side stage and she was blown away! We are rearing to go for the next two performances now!

Dojo celebration afternoon

All half term we have been earning dojo points. Miss Dickson has kept a record of our amount of points and this afternoon we were able to spend the points during our celebration afternoon. Miss Dickson bought sugar free drinks and some snacks for us to buy with our points. We had a dance station, biscuit decorating station, colouring stations and our shopping station. We had a lot of fun and spent our hard earned points. Miss Dickson has uploaded some videos that she filmed during the afternoon, they are beneath this text. One of the videos is our mannequin challenge video. Some of us have been asking Miss Dickson if we can do this for weeks! We think that we had a pretty good attempt!

Having a lot of fun!

Mannequin challenge

Christmas dinner!

Today was Christmas dinner day in school! Yum! Here we are giving thumbs up as our approval of the dinner. Our part in the Christmas play is about the Christmas dinner so we talked about this whilst eating our lunch. We can tell you why we eat: turkey, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, Brussel sprouts and mince pies on Christmas Day. We also know the history of the Christmas cracker too!

Decimals to fractions

Today we talked about how to convert a decimal into a fraction. We started by writing decimal numbers with 2 decimal places. We then talked about what makes up the number (units, decimal point, tenths and hundredths) and what this means. We talked about how many parts of the whole one were in the number and how this links to fractions! To convert from decimals to fractions we started with the basics, having 100 as the denominator. We then had to decide how to simplify this fraction, this was the tricky bit! Whilst doing all of this we were developing our understanding of number fluency. This means that we were applying what we already know about maths and number to the new concept of simplifying fractions. Whilst us in the photographs did this task Blue group did a lot of work on finding fractions in shapes with Miss Weston. All of us impressed Miss Dickson, we channeled our competitive nature into a mathematical game to deepen our understanding.

Fractions

Last week we finished our unit on division. This means that we have covered all four operations in depth and we all know the recognised written methods for each. To start our fractions unit Miss Dickson asked us to show her what we already know. We were given an A3 piece of paper in our teams and a coloured pen each. We had to create a key so that Miss Dickson knew who knew what! We knew a lot which means that we can move on straight to the unit tomorrow!

DT

Today we continued our D&T unit of work. Half of us completed our Bikeability course so the rest of us did the sewing part of the unit. We had to pin a hem on our head scarf to make it look neat and tidy before we sewed them. Miss Dickson split us up into confident and not so confident sewers and together in our teams we helped each other to tackle this tricky task. Miss Dickson worked with the not so confident sewers which explains why there aren't many photographs! Miss Dickson was very impressed with our attitude towards the task. Some of us really struggled but none of us gave up, we proved that the growth mindset work that we did at the start of half term has stuck with us. The rest of us who did Bikeability will sew our headscarves throughout the week with Mrs Watson.

The month of kindness in Year Five

Our new PSHE topic is about relationships. Yesterday our session focused on friendship (more specifically how to be a good friend). We all recieved a kindness chart for this month to tie in with the topic. Conveniently, there are 31 days in this month and 31 of us so all of the us will have the chance to complete the class chart with an act of kindness at some point. Even though we break up on the 22nd of December the final 9 days of the chart will be completed retrospectively in January when we return to school. Some of us have asked for a chart for our families at home to complete. Miss Dickson has provided these and would love to see any completed ones in January. She will also upload a photograph of our completed class chart in January.