The Year 5 Team

This week in Dorset 5

Wednesday 19th November.

We have been writing stories about going into space and persuasive arguments about why Liam, the main character, should be chosen to go into space.  The children have become very good at arguing their case and finding answers to arguments!  We are writing a balanced argument next to determine whether Liam should tell the truth and go home or should continue into space.  It will be interesting to see whether the children are able to adapt their writing from persuasion to being balanced in their thoughts.

We are continuing our fractions learning, adding and subtracting fractions.  At the moment the denominators are staying the same but we will need to use our prior skills of converting the denominator to do our adding and subtracting later in the week.

In geography the children have been looking at different sizes of settlements and creating a hierarchy of settlements.  They have identified the differences between cities, towns, villages and hamlets.  Population changes as do services and facilities in different sized settlements.

Thank you to all those children and parents who engaged with the home learning this week.  It was interesting to hear what the children had found out and wanted to extend their knowledge about.  The children need to move onto the next activity this week and bring in their findings on Tuesday next week.

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We will do PE on either a Tuesday or Thursday next term. 

Mr Borland

Home Learning

Spellings - starting Thursday 13th November.

October Half term Spirituality Home learning

Home Learning – October half term break – Whole School Spirituality Leaves Project.

In school we have all been exploring our own Spirituality.

Spirituality can be thought of as a personal journey of feeling awe and curiosity, asking big questions about life, reflecting on experiences, and feeling a connection to something greater than ourselves, such as nature, other people, or the world at large. It's not the same as a religion, but rather a deep, personal experience of awe, wonder, and connection to themselves, others, and the world around us.

We have described this at school using the image of a tree:

The trunk and roots: our sense of self, our own Spirituality, what makes me, me!

The leaves: our own faith or belief system, how we live our lives and show our true selves to others.

The flowers and fruit: How we share our beliefs and character with others.

To help the children understand this and share their understanding with you, we would like all the children to find a leaf that they especially like over the half term break. It could be chosen for its colour, shape or just because of where it was found.

This could be a lovely opportunity to take a walk and enjoy the beauty of Autumn as a family. Perhaps the adults in the family could also choose a leaf and discuss what it is that they appreciate about it.

We would like children to note down why they chose their leaf, where they found it and what was enjoyable and special about exploring outside to find it. See below for an example.

Feel free to make this a whole family activity, we are exploring our uniqueness in Spirituality, so are hoping we will see lots of beautiful leaves coming in to school! The met office have predicted a particularly beautiful Autumn after a warm Summer, so enjoy your explorations!

The leaves need to be brought in to school by Wednesday 29^th October 2025 please.

Finding a way to name your child’s leaf would be helpful please, maybe put it in a food bag with their name written on the outside of the bag.

Where did you find your leaf?

I found my Sycamore leaf on a walk with my family on the Ashdown Forest.

Why did you choose it? What makes it unique?

 I picked it up because I loved how you could see the changing colours all on one leaf, starting with the green right through to the red colour and all the shades in between. It made me think about the stages of Autumn. It was different to the other leaves that I saw and I appreciated how unique it is.

What was special about the trip to choose your leaf?

We were all searching for beautiful leaves and enjoyed talking about the colours and shapes that we saw and trying to identify the different trees. I enjoyed talking with my family about why we liked our leaves and what they meant to us.

Multiplication Tables

Weekly practise of multiplication tables is vital in supporting mathematical development. Below is a chart of the 36 essential facts to learn. This is especially helpful for children who are almost fluent.

Times Tables Rockstars! 

To keep practising the multiplication taught in class, and challenging yourself to keep the ones you already know fresh, don’t forget to log into your Times Tables Rockstars account. 

https://play.ttrockstars.com/

Challenge yourself to beat your score and build your knowledge as you become a Rockstar!

Please ask your class teacher if you need replacement log in details.

Reading

Children should bring their Accelerated Reading Book to and from school each day. When they have finished reading, children are asked to complete a quiz before changing their book. 

https://global-zone61.renaissance-go.com/welcomeportal/6704864

Parents please log your child's reading on the BOOM reader Parent Portal or by using the BOOM reader parent app on your tablet/mobile no more than once a week.

boomreader.co.uk/parents

Spelling

The link below will take you to the spelling scheme we are working from in school.

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/english/primary-spelling/

This document contains spelling strategies that are used in class, and can be used at home to aid learning new words:

Southborough's Spelling Strategies