Autumn 2

Week 5:

Wrapping up the half-term, as scientists, we explored our solar system investigating the eight planets, generating our own mnemonics to remember the order and creating our own top trump cards on each of them. It was a fun way to gather white hat facts and present them in a fun way. As writers, we continued our non-chronological reports considering the appearance, atmosphere, moons and uniqueness of our planets. As historians, we delved deeper into British space scientists and learned all about Brian Cox, Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Stephen Hawking and the impact these people have had (and are still having) on British space exploration. We discovered what inspired them as children as well as the difficulties they had to overcome to fulfil their dreams. We also enjoyed learning about ostinatos in the Dr Who theme song and playing these rhythms on a xylophone.

Week 4:

Week 4 saw us using oranges as scientists to understand the scientific phenomenon of how we experience night and day on Earth. We used torches to both explore and explain the process, which was really fun. In English, we explored the features and techniques of a non-chronological report about a planet and then began to design our own to inspire our own writing next week. As historians, we investigated significant events in British space exploration and how these have shaped what happens in this country. We specifically dove deeper into the events surrounding Helen Sharman and Tim Peake.

Week 3:

This week, as part of our learning, we explored the different phases of the moon and linked this with our history learning about the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission. We found both fascinating! We continued to plan our aspirational story using the character of Luna in our WAGOLL to really consider the mood of the plot points we were going to write in our final piece. As citizens, we participated in our GAV workshop. We were shocked to hear about how social media can really affect and shape lives in both a positive and negative way. We learned the importance of staying safe online and reporting when situations or events seem to change either with ourselves or our friends. It was an incredibly useful session and made us all reflect on our personal online practices. We also had the opportunity to try out some ‘Now-Press-Play’ immersive storytelling where we journeyed through the atmosphere and into outer space where we were heroes of our very own mission.

Week 2:

What a busy week in year 5. We had so much fun at the Natural History Museum where we participated in a Mars Rover workshop. Here we built a basic rover made from Lego, before modifying it with particular features we wanted to add as a group. We were then all transported to Mars to explore the surface of the planet through coding and went to rescue an old rover too. We took our learning outside, participating in ‘Outdoor Learning Day’ where we were proving that the Earth is a spherical body using the positioning of the sun and the horizon as evidence. We created our own text map using ‘One Small Step’ as our inspiration. As historians, we explored the chronology of space exploration and ended with a Royal Albert Hall rehearsal with two other schools. We wonder what next week will bring.

Week 1:

Our first trailblazer of the year saw our amazing Year 5 team become pop stars! Inspired by the film ‘K-Pop Demon Hunters’, Year 5 learnt more about the amazing world of K-Pop. Using an atlas and digital maps to locate South Korea, we used our knowledge of North America to draw conclusions about the climate and biomes experienced by the people who live there. Understanding that K-Pop music is multilingual and includes high-energy dance moves, children composed their own lyrics to well-known K-Pop melodies before using popular choreography (that we had explored earlier on in the week) to create an amazing dance routine ready to film their own unique pop videos.