Welcome to Class 5H with Mr Hutton
This year has flown by and we can't quite believe that we will soon be in year six! In preparation for our transition to our final year of primary school, we have been discussing our hopes and fears for the future in class. We also started a new unit of work on Shakespeare and have thoroughly enjoyed reading Macbeth. We wrote our own versions of Macbeth, as well as adapting famous scenes from the play. We particularly enjoyed getting to act out the play scripts that we wrote.
In Science, we have been learning about living things and their habitats. We researched the different life cycles of a range of plants, mammals, birds and amphibians and we even made our own clones of plants that we have within the classroom. Now we just have to wait and see if our clones successfully take root. We were all fascinated by the life cycle of amphibians. Did you know that the word amphibian actually means two lives? This refers to the early stages of an amphibian's life, when it lives underwater, and the final stage of its life when it lives on land. We are lucky enough to have our own amazing habitat in the school so one afternoon, we went to observe the newts that live in our pond. We managed to find a newt that was getting ready to spawn!
Once again, we have had another busy half term. We came back from our holidays refreshed and ready to learn. We have been lucky enough to have been joined by the players from Southend United, who have been leading us on a course called 'Move and Learn'. Every week of this term, the players have come to our class and taught us about what we need to be doing in order to stay fit and healthy. We have been learning about how our bodies grow and develop as well as what we need to be eating and drinking to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle. As well as teaching us about our bodies in the classroom, the players have been leading our P.E. lessons! They have taught us how to play a range of team games and we have learned about the importance of warming up and cooling down correctly, before and after a workout.
This half term has been absolutely action packed and we are all looking forward to our Easter break. As part of our DT lessons, we researched and made our own tasty cookies. We reviewed many of the biscuits that are available on the market (yum yum) and we then adapted a cookie recipe that we found online. Inside our cookies we added: chocolate chips, smarties or marshmallows - after much class debate, we still couldn't decide our favourite. In our English lessons, we were learning about instructional texts and, if you visit our school, you can see the recipes that we wrote on our corridor display.
Unfortunately, our World Book Day activities were delayed by the infamous 'Beast from the East' however we did not let that stop us from enjoying all of our activities on the rescheduled day. As it was the centenary of woman being allowed to vote, we decided to dress up as characters from books which were written by female authors. Can you guess who we are?
On the second last week of term, we were visited by a team of people from the 'Show Racisim the Red Card' organisation. They put on a special assembly for us as well as a number of classroom workshops. Players from Southend football club also visited us and organised a number of team building exercises for us. We had a great day and it allowed us to discuss some interesting and challenging topics. We would like to take this opportunity to give our thanks as we all had a great day!
Finally, on the last Friday of term, we all donned our sporting gear and donated our pounds for Sports Relief. Mrs Morris organised a special sports morning for us to help us get as many steps for Sports Relief as we could. By the end of the morning we were all very puffed out, however we thoroughly enjoyed ouselves. Thank you Mrs Morris!
Enjoy your Easter break and we will see you all as we begin our final term as year fives!
Our topic in geography has been South America. We have been learning all about the continent, as well as the natural wonders that it contains. This term, we have been leaning about the arguments for and against deforestation. The Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world. We discovered that 20% of the world's oxygen is created by the trees in the Amazon. However, we also learned that the logging companies generate a lot of money and provide jobs for the people that live there. In English, we have been learning how to write a persuasive text. We planned and conducted out own debates on whether or not deforestation should be allowed to continue. We worked in small groups to research and plan our own debate. Some of us argued for deforestation and others argued against it. Please feel free to come into our class on Friday afternoons after school to read some of the persuasive arguments that we wrote.
Happy new year and we hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable Christmas break!
What a fun packed and busy start to the term that we have had. In science, we have started our new topic about materials and their properties. We have been learning about how materials can be classified based upon their properties, as well as creating our own chemical reactions to make new materials. Over the last half-term, we have been planning and conducting our own experiments to find out if materials are thermal and electrical conductors. We have used this knowledge to try and design a new pack lunch box which would keep our lunches at the same temperature all day.
We got into the Christmas spirit making paperchains. We got really enthusiastic and some of us carried on making them at home and and bringing them in. In the end we had such an enormous one that we just had to measure it in maths - it was 25.8m long!!
We then investigated the perimeter of our classromm to see if it would fit.
It did!! (You can see it behind us in this photo of our Christmas jumpers.)
We have enjoyed all the Christmas events this year - the Christmas production, the Christmas fayre, Christmas jumper day,
writing Christmas poems and making Christmas cam toys. We are looking forward to Christmas dinner and our carol concert.
We'd like to thank all our parents for their support at this busy time of year.
Merry Christmas from 5H!
In maths we have really been focussing on explaining our work. These photos show us solving problems in groups.
In science we have been making and testing boats. We tested our boats to see how streamlined they were during our lessons,
but then discovered that some of them had buoyancy problems! So, for homework, we designed and built boats which we could
test for buoyancy by filling them with marbles.
Year 5 were lucky enough to have been able to spend the day living as a Viking! Hilti came to visit our school and he brought along his massive collection of Viking weapons, clothes and artefacts. Many of us also dressed up as Vikings and we got to take part in a range of activities. Hilti taught us some traditional games which the Vikings played from an early age. These games developed the Viking children's strategical thinking and taught them to work together to win battles.
In science, we have begun to investigate and learn about forces. Already, we have learned that all forces are pushes and pulls. In class, we have been able to describe when forces are balanced or unbalanced and we have loved investigating famous scientists like Galileo and Isaac Newton. Today, our learning question has been, 'Can I investigate the effects of air resistance?'
We were tasked with helping a skydiving company to create the safest possible parachute. We decided to investigate whether or not the size of the parachute would effect the amount of air resistance it generated. Have a look at some of our team efforts below.
Welcome to class 5H!
Already, the children have made a great start to the academic year, settling in quickly to their new class and routines. Here, you will be able to see all of the exciting things that we have been learning about and doing in class. Check in regularly for updates and pictures of our learning journey.
We have started our term off by learning about the Vicious Vikings. We have been researching famous Viking explorers, as well as learning about the lesser known side of Viking life. During our guided reading sessions, we have started to read 'The Saga of Erik the Viking', by Terry Jones. We can't wait to finish it!
Please feel free to join us for our 'Meet the Teacher' session which will be held after school on Monday 18th September.