The Year 5 Team

Curriculum Overview

This week in Sussex 5:

Week beginning 5th January 2026

Dear parents and carers,

Happy New Year!  I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, new year and rest over the festive holiday.  

Thank you for all the lovely cards and gifts that you kindly sent your children in with - all much appreciated by Ms Walker and myself.  

Mr Gibson and the children made a good start with our new maths unit of multiplying using formal methods this week.  The children have set themselves targets to either learn the next step from where they feel confident with multiplication or applying their skills in reasoning using SPED.  Everyone will need to speed their fluency and accuracy particularly for the arithmetic tests.

We have started our new book, Twitch, looking and learning about the setting of a forest and nature reserve.  Some of the children's queries have been interesting - discussing the difference between a canal and a river, a wood and a forest, a hill and a mountain.  Exploring new vocabulary and language is really important to help the children's understanding of a text and can mean the difference between understanding and not.

Mr Gibson taught the children about allotments in geography this week as we start a new topic called 'Sow, Grow, Farm'.  Again, understanding vocabulary and land use in our local area will be crucial to the children's understanding.

Mr Gibson gave the children a glowing report after swimming yesterday, saying how well the children walked to and from swimming and how enthusiastic they were about their lessons in the pool.  

The children's other PE lesson will be on Thursdays with Mrs Nash this term.

Mrs Townshend and Ms Walker.

Please find the home learning at the top of this page.  

Spellings are set on a Wednesday for testing on the following Wednesday.

Times tables will be tested on a Friday - this week we will be testing  4 times table and 14 times table.

A typical week in Sussex 5

Home Learning

Spellings 

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.

To continue to learn times tables, this website is useful:

Times tables games - Learn them all here!

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