Welcome to Summer Term

 

Welcome back year 5 Hawthorne class,

Groundbreaking Greeks

For our final term we will be studying the history topic Groundbreaking Greeks. This project teaches children about developments and changes over six periods of ancient Greek history, focusing on the city state of Athens in the Classical age, and exploring the lasting legacy of Ancient Greece.

At the bottom of this page are documents - vocabulary, a knowledge organiser and home learning tasks for these units. The home learning tasks are optional and do not need to be brought into school but will support your child's learning.

Literacy

We will learn reading, writing, speaking and listening through different units based on high-quality texts. This term the theme of our stories is ambition and desire. We will begin this term by basing our writing on the book ‘Kasper, Prince of Cats' by Michael Murpurgo. We will create a range of fiction and non-fiction writing opportunities, including letter writing, narrative writing and an alternative ending, newspaper articles, recounts and researching The Titanic and its voyage.

Reading

We teach reading through the Destination Reader scheme at Oaklands. We will be learning the reading skills of prediction, inference, clarification, evaluation, questioning and making links. We will begin this term by reading 'The Secret Garden' by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 

Maths

At Oaklands we teach through the White Rose scheme. We will start this term by learning about shape, position and direction and decimals.

Science

Our first project this term is 'Properties and Changes of Materials'. In this unit we will learn about the wider properties of materials and their uses. We learn about mixtures and how they can be separated using sieving, filtration and evaporation. We study reversible and irreversible changes, and use common indicators to identify irreversible changes.

Computing

We use Purple Mash to help with our Computing learning. This term we will be working on online safety.

French

Language Angels is the scheme we use for French teaching at Oaklands. This term we will learn about pets and the weather.

Music

Using Charanga, we will learn how to: listen and appreciate music; sing in groups and to play along with known songs. We will have the opportunity to improvise using instruments as well. 

PE

In PE,for the first half of the term we will be having an intensive course of swimming lessons and for the second half, we will be playing cricket. PE at school will take place on Thursdays and Fridays where we will continue to wear our PE kit to school. The kit consists of a sky blue polo, royal blue Oaklands jumper, royal blue cotton shorts, socks and suitable sports trainers. For health and safety reasons, earrings and watches should be removed for all PE lessons and long hair must be tied up.

Homework

Reading: Every night (15 minutes)Reading books will be changed on a Tuesday and each pupil will take two books home depending on their level of reading ability. Please make sure children have their books available to read every day.

Timetable Rock Stars: Daily practice of timetables is strongly recommended. Recalling timetables improves memory skills, which is a transferrable skill that will help throughout school and into adult life. Children will find it easier to solve maths problems and to do mental arithmetic if they have already memorised their timetables.

A piece of homework to support learning in class will be given out every other week on a Friday and will be due on the following Wednesday in homework books.

On Thursday afternoons, Mrs Bissmire and Ms McGrath will teach PE and PHSE/RSE. If you, or anyone you know, has skills or knowledge that could enrich our in-class learning, we would love to hear from you and see if we can make use of this in our lessons. 

If you have any concerns or questions regarding your child, please contact the school office (admin@oaklands.herts.sch.uk) to arrange a meeting. 

Kind regards,

Ms Mohammed
Year 5 teacher
French and RE subject lead