Hawks

wb 6th Jan

Today, we were introduced to our new topic, Earth, which we will be exploring in both Geography and Science lessons. In our Geography lesson today, we were using atlases to help us label countries across the world. It was really fun to look at the different maps in the atlases we have and we were all successful at labeling countries across all the continents. We can't wait to delve further into our new topic!

wb 16/12/24

Over the last few weeks, we have been working on persuasive writing in English. The year 5s were tasked with writing a persuasive advert for the Women's Land Army. We spent some time looking at example propaganda posters and adverts before learning about and developing our persuasive techniques such as rhetorical questions and emotive language. After planning, drafting and editing our writing, we wrote up our adverts this week and Miss Cook and Mrs Duan are very impressed with how persuasive they all are!

wb 2/12/24

This week we had a visit from the Fire Brigade to talk to us about fire safety. We learnt some top safety tips and discussed what we should do if we ever discover a fire. This included talking about escape routes at home and checking fire alarms regularly. We then created some posters to help us to remember what we should do in the event of a fire: get out, stay out and call 999!

wb 18/11/24

Our Year 5 DT project has been an exciting journey into creativity and engineering this week. The children designed and built their very own Doodlers. They explored using circuits and motors to create stunning works of art. As part of the project, the children also designed eye-catching packaging for their Doodlers and instructions on how to make a Doodler. 

wb 18/11

This week we had our trip to Didcot Railway Centre for our World War II topic. The children dressed as evacuees, complete with rationed packed lunches—some even brave enough to include Spam!

The day was packed with immersive activities, including a visit to a bomb shelter, where we got to experience how people would have felt during air raids.

We also learned how railway systems adapted during the war and their crucial role in transporting evacuees and supplies. A highlight for many was the ride on the train, where the children experienced a dramatic re-enactment of what to do in case of a bombing.

It was a fantastic day filled with hands-on learning that brought their learning to life!

wb 11/11

In English this term, we have started our new unit based on the book Rose Blanche. After making some predictions based on the front cover and illustrations, reading the book and doing some drama based on the story, we have now started to practise new skills for our next write. One of our lessons this week was based on description using the five senses. We selected some illustrations from the book before discussing some ideas as a class and then ensuring we had used all the senses to describe what we could see. We're excited to use our descriptions in our piece of narrative writing that we'll begin drafting next week!

wb 21/10

In Art this week, we have been exploring art installations. In one lesson, we had a great time exploring the impact of scale on pieces of art and viewers. We learnt about Cai Guo-Qiang’s artwork which uses gunpowder and explosions to create large pieces of installation art. We used paint, glitter and crayons to try and recreate the explosion-style pieces of art in boxes that we then photographed with Lego men inside as if they were visiting the explosion art in an installation. This helped us to consider the impact of scale on the viewer of art. We also had a go at creating some art with everyday 3D objects. After raiding the classroom and PE shed, we worked in groups to form installation style art based on some examples that we had a look at in class that have been parts of exhibitions in art galleries. This was a fun and very different art lesson, enabling us to explore shape and art in a new way. 

w.b 14/10

This week in English, we were exploring some different World War Two poems after finishing our last extended write. We really enjoyed performing different poems, thinking about the language and how we could perform it. We also looked at the art of blackout poetry before taking some pages from our class book Once and creating some of our own examples; carefully considering which words we wanted to keep before hiding the other words on the page. 

wb 1/10

In history this week, we were learning more about evacuation. We used a range of sources to help us find out what the experience of evacuation was like for children during the war. Some of us looked at a combination of factual and fictional sources including a letter from an evacuee based in Eynsham, an account from a lady who was evacuated to Oxford and an extract from Goodnight Mister Tom. We enjoyed looking at how we could learn from the sources and debating which one was the most useful for learning about what evacuation was like. It helped prepare us for our trip next term to Didcot Railway Centre where we'll get to experience what being an evacuee was like ourselves!

wb 30/9/24

In last week's lesson, we learnt how to count on our fingers from 1-10 in Mandarin. This week, we learnt how to write the numbers from 1-10 in Mandarin characters. We have been enjoying our lessons so far with Mr Richter, especially the catchy songs!

wb 16/9/24

In our science lesson on air resistance, we explored how parachutes affect movement through the air. First, we ran a set distance and timed ourselves without using a parachute. Then, we repeated the run with a parachute. By comparing the two sets of times, we observed how the parachute slowed us down due to increased air resistance, helping us understand how this force works in real-life scenarios like skydiving or falling objects. 

 w/c 3rd September 2024

In our first history lesson of this year, we were introduced to our new topic 'World War Two.' After discussing why history is important and how historians learn about history, we became history investigators ourselves. In groups, we looked at different artefacts that were somehow linked to WW2 and had to answer the 5Ws in relation to each item: What do we think this item is? Who was it used by? When was it used? Why was it used? How was it used? We really enjoyed exploring these artefacts and can't wait to learn more about WW2 this term!