My name is Mr Robinson and I am the year 5 teacher. I really enjoy linking our lessons to our termly topic; hopefully, the children will enjoy this too.

SPAG

The teaching of spelling, grammar and punctuation (SPAG) forms an important element of the teaching of reading and writing in primary school. The SPaG element this term will involve using prepositions, relative clauses, semi-colons and dialogue. We will explore how these can engage the reader and vary our sentence structure.

It is of great importance that the children are able to identify word classes within sentences.

Literacy
This term we will be finishing Letters from the Lighthouse and lots of our writing will be based around this. We will look at many aspects of reading comprehension, such as prediction, inference, summarising and explanation. We will also be writing narratives, postcards and diary entries based on this book. Later on in this half term, we will be reading Buzz Aldrin’s autobiography – after reading this, we will research the moon landing and write our own diary entries in character as one of the astronauts.

Topic

This term, our topic is Space.

This topic is science-based, with a focus on the solar system and the other planets.

We will be learning about why day and night occur on Earth, how we can prove the Earth is spherical and we will also learn a mnemonic to help us remember the order of the planets in the solar system.

Opportunities for reading and writing will also be available through lots of texts about space, such as fact files and newspaper articles about the Apollo missions.

Maths

Dame Dorothy Primary School boasts excellent mathematic skills. Each morning, the children have mental maths to complete. It is important that the children get to school promptly at 8:45am so they don’t miss out on their mental maths. In this fifteen minutes we work on previous maths facts and times tables. I would also encourage the children to practise quick recall of all times tables up to 12×12, and related division facts at home.

We will be starting the term working on adding fractions with different denominators. We will then move to the written methods of multiplication and division, as well as learning how to divide with remainders. We will finish this term with work on decimals and percentages.

Spellings

Spellings will be sent home every Monday, with a test each Friday afternoon. We will be working on the following throughout the year:

• homophones
• synonyms/antonyms
• root words, prefixes and suffixes.
• application of spelling rules
• Year 5/6 curriculum spelling list of high frequency words

Music

Y5 have bi-weekly music lessons. They are taught a range of musical terms and are expected to use them when talking about musical examples that they listen to. They learn to play the ukulele and learn to accompany singing as well improvise melodies. They continue to develop their compositional skills by composing music using the first five notes of a scale. Some of the children are offered the opportunity to begin woodwind lessons with Mr. Brown. In lessons they will improvise and compose, and they will begin to notate their compositions using notes from major and minor scales. They take part in weekly singing sessions and introduced to singing in harmony.

PE

PE lessons are on a Wednesday afternoon. Please make sure your child has the correct kit and can remove any earrings they may be wearing. We will be taking part in netball this term with expert teaching from our PE coaches. Please note, it is essential that your children have suitable footwear for PE sessions. Trainers must be worn. The children need to have water bottles in school to keep hydrated during their PE lessons.

This term, we have tennis and then dance.

A few reminders

This term in year 5, children will be given weekly spellings on a Monday. These will need to be practised to gain a good knowledge of the spellings ready for our spelling tests on Friday. The children will also work on the spelling rules and vocabulary during the week to help them. Every weekday, the children will be given a 5-10 minute mental maths homework sheet to complete for the next day. Children will also be expected to read at home – we will check home reading diaries every Friday and there is an expectation that children have read at least 4 times per week. There will be open homework given out each half term linked to our topic, the first linking to shipyards, the next will be connected to the child at war topic. It is essential that home/school communication is effective. This partnership will ensure that the children receive the very best from school.

Please email me at teacher@damedorothy.org.uk if you have any queries or concerns: I’m happy to help!

All children need to have their own water bottle.

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