Year 5 Blog 29.11.24

Date: 29th Nov 2024 @ 5:00pm

Welcome to our Y5 Blog.

On Monday, Reverend Matt delivered our whole school ‘interactive’ worship. He recapped the significance of the rainbow to Christians. After the Flood, God made an everlasting covenant with Noah, his family, their descendants, and all the living creatures. He promised never again to destroy the earth by a flood. The rainbow was the sign of that promise – a reminder of God's commitment to the earth. He added that the rainbow is like a God’s bow transformed into an ornament of great beauty and that hostility had ceased.

In science, we learnt about gravity and how it keeps us from floating off into space. Did you know on the Moon gravity is 1/6 of what it is on Earth. So, that’s why Buzz Aldrin likened the experience of walking on the moon to "a trampoline, but without the springiness and instability."

We also carried out an investigation to test air resistance using paper of differing surface areas and timing how long each took to fall to the ground.  We concluded that the greater the surface area of the falling object, the greater the air resistance acting upon the object. The children knew that to keep the test fair, they had to keep all of the variables the same apart from one, which in this case was the surface area of the paper.

In Geography and on the theme of the Earth, we learnt about time zones and that it is mainly where a country is along a line of longitude that determines what time it is. If we all had the same time, then at midday in some countries it would be light and in others dark! Did you know that Portugal, Iceland and some Western Aftrican countries have the same time as us in the UK? To confuse matters, we have something called British Summer Time, where our time springs forward by 1 hour between the months of March and October. Now that is tricky to get your head around!

In maths, we have had fun solving real life problems related to dance timetables! The children learnt that by using a time line to plot events can help in solving these problems. Try this one: Amira takes 18 minutes to cycle to the dance studio. She gets there 15 minutes before the dance class begins, which is class 3 in studio 4 (children use the timetable to work out that this class begins at 14:30 and lasts for 50 mins). She then chats to her friend for 10 minutes before leaving the studio to return home. What time did Amira leave home? What time did she start chatting to her friend? What time did she get home if it took the same time as the morning cycle? As you can see, the children worked so hard on these problems and demonstrated fabulous resilience! Following on from the timetables, we looked at how continuous data can be plotted using line graphs. We examined line graphs that contained not only one set of data but two! The children analysed the how the sales of both ice cream and candy floss altered throughout the week and were able to come up with reasons for the changes.

In English, we have have finally concluded our Mars Transmission build up work and the children wrote their own mission transmission. It was great to see them using their imaginations to take their missions to other places other than Mars or other planets. We had some exploring undiscovered lost Maya civilisations and some deserted and isolated in Antarctica whilst on an exhibition. As teachers, we can’t wait to mark their efforts over the weekend and share in their successes next week. Next week, we will begin our Christmas themed writing. I’ll just say, the children are beyond excited for this!

Have a safe, restful and wonderful weekend, everybody, and happy Advent Sunday.

The Year 5 Team