Week ending 4/2/22

A few highlights of our week!

English
We have been reading the book Cloud Busting which is a story about childhood, being different and covers the themes of friendship, diversity and bullying.  The story is told through various types of poetry and we have really enjoyed reading it together.  In our English lessons, we will be looking deeper into the way the story is told and will be writing our own stories through poetry based on the viewpoints of different characters in the book.  We were really impressed with the children's elicitation tasks where they showed a great deal of talent for writing poetry.

Maths
We have begun our new unit of work focusing on decimals. This week has seen revision of some of the Year 5 objectives in maths to recap learning that happened during the last lockdown. The focus has been on understanding decimals to two decimal places (2dp), understanding thousandths, decimals to three decimal places (3dp) and multiplying decimals by 10, 100 and 1000. This week we have used lots of manipulatives (resources such as place value charts, place value counters, gattegnocharts and base 10) and have taken photos for our books and working wall. 

Science
Our lesson this week was about heat transfer and conduction.  We were able to observe conduction by heating a knife above a candle and seeing how the end of the knife became warm as the particles in contact with each other transferred the heat along the knife.  It is really good to be able to carry out this type of investigation with them as they begin to show much more maturity.

History
In history this week, we read and performed an abridged version of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream speech". We learnt that the march on Washington in 1963, in which over 250,000 people from all over America gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to demand civil rights and economic equality for all Americans, culminated with this historical speech.

PSHE (Life Lessons)
We discussed stereotypes, learnt what they were and how/why they exist.  We thought of ways to challenge stereotypes.  Some excellent ideas from the children were: "Call them out!" and "Prove them to be wrong."

World Religions and Views 
We have been finding out about the Hindu beliefs of Samsara, Karma, Dharma and Moksha and asking "Why do Hindus try to be good?" We read and interpreted the story of the man in the well and we found our interpretation of the story to be very different to that of a Hindu.  It has been really interesting to study a religion with its origins from a culture very different to our own.

PE
This week we have been incredibly active! Relay races, gymnastics, swimming and a cross country event! The cross country event in Simmons Park, Okehampton, was the first of three races that will take place over the year. The children were placed into teams and ran approximately one and half miles through mud track and footpaths. They all did incredibly well and showed huge resilience, positivity and teamwork!