Year 5 - Term 1

In Year 5 this term, our learning is focused around ‘Where we are in place and time’. The central idea for our Unit of Inquiry is ‘Conflict and the impact on wider communities’. As part of our inquiry we will be trying to answer the following:

• How did the civilians of Great Britain respond to the impact of World War Two?
• What were the causes of World War Two?
• What can we learn from the impact of conflict on communities?

We will begin our inquiry by looking at investigating the impact of evacuation and rationing on communities across the UK and trying to understand what it might have been like for the people living through this era. We will then continue this learning by exploring the impact on our own community and families, discussing how the world changed our area and wider areas of the United Kingdom. We will then take an in depth look into causes of the conflict, debating and exploring these in detail. Using what we have learnt about the impact of conflict, we will discuss and debate how we can learn from these conflicts and how they have helped shape society and continue to do so.
In English, we will be using the core texts ‘Goodnight Mr Tom’ and picture book ‘Rose Blanche’. Our main focus will be on creative writing. We will be using these texts and others to help us write from a range of perspectives in a range of styles, such as narratives, diary entries, flashback stories and many more. We will be consolidating and developing key aspects of writing, including clear structures for writing, Years 4 and 5 punctuation, particularly commas and parenthesis. In addition to this, we will be ensuring that everyone is proof-reading their work and using a range of tools to up level and edit their writing.
In maths, we will be focusing on place value this term. We will focus on interpreting negative and positive numbers, ordering and comparing number to a million, rounding with whole and decimal numbers and roman numerals. Throughout our focus on place value, the children will be using their knowledge to solve number and practical problems. We will continue our Big Maths Beat That Challenge every Friday where the focus will be on quick recall of our times tables up to the 12 times tables and related division facts.

Our focus in PE is swimming and rugby. PE will continue to be on Monday mornings, mostly outside, and swimming will take place on Friday afternoons, so please make sure that your child has their kit in school on these days so that they can take part in these lessons.