Welcome to Year 5!
Teacher: Mrs Hermiston (Monday - Weds and Thursday/Friday pm)
Mrs Furniss (Thursday/Friday am)
Teaching Assistant: Mrs Talbot (Monday - Wednesday)
Mrs Lindsay (Thursday/Friday)
Homework
- Reading 5 times a week
- Maths homework - practicing rapid-recall facts
- Times Table Rock Stars (this needs to be kept ticking over please)
- Any optional homework you would like to complete!
We love to see really creative homework and will award team points for any pieces completed
Reading!
Our current class text is 'Cosmic' by Frank Cottrell Boyce. I wonder if you have any ideas as to why there are so many different versions of the cover? Answers on a postcard, please!
We are also enjoying Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and finding all about the world we Muggles can't see!
Science
In Autumn 1 half term we will be learning about Living things and their Habitats with a focus on the life cycles of common plants and animals such as butterflies and frogs.
History!
Here are some links from the amazing History Skimmed videos on You Tube - they are a lovely revision tool of what we have covered in British History so far! We will upload the Medieval Britain ones as we cover them in the next few weeks. Enjoy!
Medieval Britain
The time between the fall of the Roman Empire (476 CE) to the beginning of the Tudor times (14th Century CE) is known as the Medieval times (or Middle Ages). We studied the Anglo Saxons and Vikings, and the invasion of the Normans and the victory of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in Year 4 - so now we quickly revisit those times and compare them to the period after the 1066 when the Normans ruled Britain!
The Bayeaux Tapestry is useful for us as historians as we could tell a lot about the types of weapons and armour each side in the Battle of Hastings used, and could use this primary source to help us understand some of what happened at the time. But what came next?
William the Conqueror built several castles to fortify settlements up to York (Motte and Bailey castles, like the one at Conisbrough that we will have visited by the end of the topic), but was not supported by everyone in England and he faced lots of opposition from Viking invaders and people in the North of Britain (Yorkshire included!) who refused to accept him as their king.
He made the decision to destroy settlements in the North of England, burning crops and houses, in a campaign called the Harrying of the North, and left the area uninhabited for many years as there was no food. By the time the settlements were built again, William was accepted as being their king, but he wasn't well thought of for his actions.
How do we know this? Monks and other scholars recorded things in writing in much greater numbers during the period after 1066, and several accounts tell us what happened. Another key piece of evidence we can use as historians is the Doomsday Book - a very detailed and comprehensive account of the settlements, occupants and livestock that made up Medieval Britain. Finningley and other local villages such as Armthorpe and Auckley are all mentioned in the Doomsday Book - so our village has been around for over a thousand years and we have proof - see the photo below which is an extract from the book with Finningley written on it with the spelling of it used in medieval times - can you spot it?
Click on the photo to be taken to a website that tells you all about Finningley and other local places in the Doomsday Book.
The next part of our history time travel will take us to Ancient Egypt, where we will look at an ancient civilization that used writing way before we did in Britain and we will use our Geography learning from this term about rivers to find out why the Nile was so important to this period of time. Then, in summer, we whizz straight back to what happened next in British history after the Medieval period - the Tudor times!
Geography!
We have learnt lots about our area including what land is used for and we are getting really good at knowing how to use digital maps. Ask for a demonstration from your child of Digimaps - they know the details to login!
Click the image to go to the login page.
We have recently learned about rainforests and the water cycle and are reminding ourselves about continents and oceans as we take our learning about water further in our unit Oceans, rivers and streams.
Click the image to go to the BBC Bitesize pages about the water cycle.
Click here for a revisit of facts about rainforests.
Oceans, rivers and streams - Autumn term
We will be learning about the journey of a river from source to mouth, and track the journey of the River Don. We will learn that our nearest local river is the River Torne that flows through Auckley and locate it on maps, following it to where it joins the sea at the Humber Estuary. We will be looking at the sea differently next time we go on our annual outing to the seaside town of Cleethorpes as this is very near the Humber estuary and we may be paddling in water that once flowed through Auckley!
We drive over this bridge on our way to Doncaster from Finningley.
Rivers can change the shape of the landscape and we can see this as we can see where erosion has taken place from photographs and link this to the outer edge of a meander, which flows faster than the inner edge causing more friction.
When the water eventually meets the sea, it becomes much deeper and there are 5 distinct layers of the ocean.
Different creatures live in each zone and are adapted in specific ways to cope with the changes in light, oxygen and pressure that occur with changing levels.
Do you think that there are layers like this in Finningley duck pond? Why?
Computing
For our first topic we will be learning how to use our Chromebooks to be creating documents and personalising them with different fonts, images and layouts. We will be practicing our word processing skills to hand in documents on Google Classrooms about topics such as mammals, oceans and The Harrying of the North.
Google Docs icon
PE
Year 5's PE days are Tuesday (with Mr Cullen) and Friday. There is no need for the children to come into school already wearing their PE kits on these days as both sessions are in the afternoon.
Autumn term 1 we are focusing on cricket and tag rugby. Autumn term 2 we are focusing on basketball and problem solving.
Useful Websites