"Do everything in love” 1 Corinthians 16:14

 

Learning to love, loving to learn

Welcome to Year 5!

Our staff

Mrs Haslam is our class teacher, Miss Elwell and Mrs Whittaker provide support on a regular basis. 

The following information tells you a little more about the coming term in Year 5 and your child's learning. However, if you have any queries or questions please don't hesitate to contact us.

sara.haslam@st-marys.halton.sch.uk

General information

• Please tie back long hair and only wear stud earrings if you have pierced ears.
• Please have a bottle of water at school every day. This can be refilled as necessary.
• Please bring a small school bag, reading book & diary every day.
• Please return your homework on or before Wednesday for marking. Homework will be sent out on a Friday. If you are absent on Friday, please make sure you ask for it as early as possible the following week so you have time to complete it. 
• All school uniform needs to be labelled with your name but particularly jumpers and cardigans.
• A full PE kit should be in school at all times, consisting of black shorts, white t-shirts and trainers. Jogging bottoms/leggings can be added as the weather gets colder.

PE is timetabled for Thursday and we will be swimming on Friday until February Half Term. 

 

Spring Term 2025

 

Our Christian Values

During the first Spring half term, our school value is RESPECT. This value is a foundation of our school rules at St Mary's, Be Ready, Be Respectful, Be Safe.

Jesus said: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Matthew 7:12

Love of reading

We will be reading There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom by Louise Sachar as our class reading book. We have enjoyed meeting the characters as getting to know a little more about American school culture so far!

English

Our weekly routine will include learning writing skills, spelling and grammar, handwriting and guided reading sessions. Daily reading at home continues to be essential and we would ask that you question your child regularly on the book they are reading to develop a deeper understanding of a range of texts, to develop new vocabulary and strengthen writing skills.

Writing

During the first half of the Spring term, we are exploring Arthur and the Golden Rope by Joe Todd-Stanton to develop our writing skills. We will use this to inspire us to write a myth style story.

Reading

Our Guided Reading text this half term is Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

 

Spelling

We will use Pathways to Spell as part of our English lessons to develop spelling strategies and learn spelling rules, as well as the essential Y5/6 words.

Maths

As mathematicians, the children will learn through concrete experiences moving onto pictorial and abstract methods as their confidence builds. They will also be expected to use their learning to reason about maths and solve problems. 

During the first half of the Spring term, we will  focus on Multiplcation and Division. This is an approximately 6 week unit, encompassing revision and consolidation of times tables knowledge, multiplying and dividing by powers of 10 (10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, etc), understanding prime numbers and prime factors, standard methods for multiplying and dividing and solving problems using these skills. 

Science

As scientists, we aim to develop our knowledge and understanding, scientific skills and measuring and recording abilities. During the Spring term we will be studying the topic of Materials - using lots of practical investigations to identify the properties of materials and then finding out about changes to materials. 

History

Our Spring term history topic is Ancient Greece. We will study what made the Ancient Greek society so successful and learn why it is still relevant to study this topic thousands of years after it existed!

RE

For RE we will continue to use the Questful RE planning. This half term we will focus on Jesus: Why do Christians believe Jesus was a great teacher?

The aim of this unit is to: 

• • emphasise Jesus’ skills as a great teacher.
  • consider carefully the messages of the parables and how they impact on the lives of practising Christians.

We will explore through these key questions:

• Why did Jesus tell this story?
• What can we learn from this story?
• How does this story help us to understand Christian beliefs?
• How does this story impact on the lives of believers?

PE

Our PE will concentrate on Outdoor Adventurous Activity. We will also swim once per week this term. 

Art and DT

Our Art this term focuses on The Art of the Anatomy. This will enable us to explore life-like qualities and real life proportions when developing our drawing skills. Our DT is focused on food - designing a dish inspired by Ancient Greece, considering seasonality and culture. 

PHSE

In PHSE, we will follow the Heartsmart scheme. The focus is Too Much Selfie Isn't Healthy! - Respect

Music

As musicians, we will be using Charanga to explore different music genres and new terminology. This term's focus is composition, where we will use the YUMU studio on the Charanga Website to compose our own music. 

MfL

As linguists, we will learn how to read, write and say more names of places in our town. We will also learn about how gender changes what we say and write when considering nouns and adjectives. Our spoken sentences will be extended by the use of conjunctions. 

Computing

This term we will learn about video editing and flat-file databases. We will also learn about managing and evaluating online information considering the use of different searches and search engines.

Homework will be sent out on Friday to be returned on or before the following Wednesday.  We expect each piece to take about 30 minutes.  Please come and see us if there are any difficulties or write a note on the piece of work. It is important to complete each piece as they will either build on taught skills or pre teach skills ready for the following week.