Cashes Green Primary School and Children's Centre

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Year 5

To contact Miss Jordan, please contact mjordan@cashesgreen-pri.gloucs.sch.uk 

Reminders:

P.E. - Our P.E. lessons are every Wednesday.  If they are in school, children need to come to school dressed in their P.E. kit with suitable footwear on this day.

Reading Records - signatures will be counted each Thursday.  Children can read to themselves but the record must be signed by an adult. 

Homework - will be set Friday via Seesaw and needs to be submitted by 9am the following Thursday.

Term 4

Rose Blanche - Robert Innocenti

This term our focus text is Rose Blanche by Robert Innocenti (please see below for a synopsis of the story).  The story is set during World War II and as such this is our theme for the term.  Below is an overview of what we will be learning in each subject.

Rose Blanche Synopsis

A young German girl watches as the streets of her town fill with soldiers and tanks.  Then, one day, she follows a truck into the woods and discovers a terrible secret. 

Class News

Friday 17th March 2023

Last week in English we spent time writing poetry.  We watched a animated video of a battlefield during World War II and thought about the senses we'd experience if we were there.  We then learnt about several different poetic techniques.  Finally we put all of this together to produced some fantastic poems which we have typed up, decorated and have become the covers of our Topic books this term.  This week in English we have been revisiting our previous work on speech punctuation and are going to be writing dialogue based on a scene from Rose Blanche.  In Maths we have begun our unit on decimals and percentages and we are all doing really well so far.  In History we have started learning about the Battle of Britain.  We looked at several different factors and decided if it it was an advantage for Britain or Germany.  We will finish this lesson off next week where we will look at a range of primary and secondary sources and think about what this tells us about different aspects of the Battle of Britain.  Finally, in Science we are learning about light this term.  We were given the statement 'Light travels in straight lines.' and had to prove/disprove it using a hose pipe, a torch and black card.  We found that the statement was true because when the hose pipe was straight the light could be seen on the black card but when we bent it, the light could not be seen.  We were also set the challenge of reflecting light from mirrors onto black card to also prove the statement.  We had to angle our three mirrors correctly so that the light reflected off of each one and then finally onto the black card.  

Friday 3rd March 2023

We have had a super first week back at school.  Our new topic is World War II which we are very excited about.  On Tuesday we spent time exploring our new class text Rose Blanche.  We used the front cover the make predictions and inferences about what we thought the story was going to be about.  Then we were given the pictures from the story and had a go at putting them in order and explaining what we thought was happening.  Finally, we listened to the story and found that some of our earlier predictions had been correct.  In English we wrote a synopsis of the story.  In History we learnt about the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I and how this contributed to World War II.  We were incredibly inquisitive and had lots of questions.  On Friday we travelled to Swindon to visit the Steam Museum and take part in their 'We'll Meet Again' experience.  Whilst there we took part in four different workshops.  Photographs from the day are on our Facebook page.  

Term 3

Wonder - R.J. Palacio

This term our focus text is Wonder by R.J. Palacio (please see below for a synopsis of the story).  This term the whole school is focusing upon mental health and wellbeing.  Below is an overview of what we will be learning in each subject. 

Wonder Synopsis

August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a severe facial difference that until now has prevented him from going to a mainstream school.  Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, Auggie wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid - but his new classmates can't get past his extraordinary face.  Wonder begins from Auggie's point of view, but soon switches to include the perspectives of his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend and others.  This voices converge to portray a community as it struggles with differences, and challenges readers, both young and old, to wonder about the true nature of empathy, compassion, acceptance, friendship, and - ultimately - kindness.  Auggie is a hero for the ages, one who proves that you can't blend in when you were born to stand out. 

Class News

Friday 3rd February 2023

In English last week we wrote our second diary entry in role as August after the Halloween incident at school.  We were really focusing on making sure that we put our work into paragraphs correctly.  This week we have started exploring present tense reports.  We are currently in the middle of writing a present tense report about the book Wonder.  Our first paragraph introduced the book and our following paragraphs are about some of the different characters within the story.  In Maths we have continued our multiplication and division work and have been primarily focused on short division, we have found this trickier than long multiplication but are continuing to practise. Next week we will begin learning about fractions again (yey!).  In PSHE we have been discussing mental health and advice we could give to people who are experiencing difficult times.  This week our whole class reading has been focused around body image.  We have had some fantastic discussions about this and came up with some superb advice that we could give to the main characters from the texts we explored.  In Computing we have been working on PowerPoint.  We have been tasked with creating a PowerPoint about a topic of our choosing which will feature non-linear hyperlinks and sound.  We will continue working on these over the next couple of weeks until half term. 

Friday 20th January 2023

In English over the past week we have been busy writing a diary entry in character.  We wrote as August after his first day of school detailing how it went.  We worked really hard on this and Miss Jordan said it is the best piece of writing we have done all year so far! : ]  In Maths we have left our fractions work for a short while (it'll be back soon!) and have moved onto multiplication and division.  This week we have started by learning how to carry out long multiplication and can now multiply numbers up to 3-digits by a 2-digit number.  We have one more step to go with this as we have to be able to multiply a 4-digit number by a 2-digit number but we've really got the hang of what we've done so far so we know we can do it!  Last week in Science we learnt about foetal development.  We were presented with a mixture of fruit and vegetables and had to order them according to the size of an embryo/foetus as it develops.  We then moved onto looking at developmental stages within this time.  This week in Science we've been researching the gestation periods of different animals.  We have combined our Computing work with this and have learnt how to create a table on Excel in which we inputted our data once we had researched it.  We then used Excel to generate bar graphs using the data we had gathered.  In Science we also need to be able to draw bar graphs so we will be having a go at this in our next Science lesson.   On Tuesday it was Martin Luther King Jr day so in our Reading lesson we heard a story about his life and then had some fantastic discussions about him and the Civil Rights Movement in America.  We listened to part of his famous I Have a Dream speech and thought about how we can continue to keep his dream alive today. 

Friday 6th January 2023

Happy New Year to you all! What a super first half of a week back we've had.  On Wednesday we spent time exploring the first few chapters of our new text Wonder.  In these first few chapters we learnt a lot about Auggie - the main character - and the difficulties he has faced in his life so far.  We spent time thinking about the front cover of the book and why the illustrator decided to design it in the way that they did.  We came up with loads of excellent reasons and decided that ultimately it was so that the reader gets to know Auggie through the story as opposed to making a judgement on his based on his appearance on a front cover.  We designed our own faces in the style of the book cover and these will be used as our Topic book covers for this term.  In Maths, we have been continuing our fractions work from before Christmas.  This has been really difficult at times but we have persevered through and have produced some super work!  This week we were adding mixed numbers and subtracting fractions.  In PSHE we spent time thinking about online safety with a specific focus on our health and wellbeing when online.  We talked about things such as screen addiction, privacy and cyberbullying.  We then came up with strategies and advice that we could give to people that were having difficulties with these things.  

Term 2

Street Child - Berlie Doherty

This term our focus text is Street Child by Berlie Doherty (please see below for a synopsis of the story).  The book is set during the Victorian times and as such a lot of our learning will be based around this period in history.  Below is an overview of what we will be learning in each subject. 

Street Child Synopsis

Jim Jarvis is a runaway.  When his mother dies, Jim is all alone in the workhouse and desperate to escape.  But London in the 1860s is a dangerous and lonely place for a small boy and life is a constant battle for survival.  Just when Jim finds some friends he is snatched away and made to work for the remorselessly cruel Grimy Nick, constantly guarded by his vicious dog, Snipe. Will Jim ever be free?

Class News

Friday 2nd December 2022

In our English we have been writing past tense reports exploring what Britain was like during the Victorian times.  Our writing focused on three main areas: Queen Victoria, school life and the workhouse.  We have now started our narrative unit.  Last week we paused our class text Street Child as we are going to have a go at writing our own endings to the story before finding out what actually happens.  So far we have written a synopsis of what has happened in the story so far.  We left the story at quite a pivotal moment so it will be up to us to decide how we think the story ends for Jim.  We have done a lot of History lessons this week which has been lots of fun.  On Monday we spent time exploring Victorian artefacts that have been loaned to us from the Museum in the Park.  We had to guess what we thought the artefacts were.  Then we thought about how they were different from what we use today.  We mostly discovered that a lot of what we use today relies on electricity which wasn't the case during the Victorian times.  We then went on to thinking about chronology and where the Victorians fit into the wider historical context.  We used what we had learnt in previous years (and a bit of guess work) to order different events/periods of time.  We then created a timeline.  Yesterday we spent time thinking about the question 'Would you rather live in Stroud today or Stroud during the Victorian times?'  We looked at many pictures/paintings of Stroud during the Victorian time and discussed what we could see in them and how it was different from today.  We recognised several of the places in Stroud still today from the pictures.  At the end of the lesson most of us decided that we would rather live in Stroud today.  In Art we have created our final pieces of work based on the Victorian artist William Morris.  We just our image once and then Miss Jordan scanned it into the computer and then reflected it four times to recreate the block printing style.  We are just finishing off adding the colour to these and then they will be finished.

On Wednesday we visited Stroud High for our Festival of Learning.  They have been coming to visit us in school for the past eight weeks.  Whilst there we took part in a Science, D.T. and Music lesson.  Check out the pictures of our day below. 

Friday 18th November 2022

In our English over last two weeks we have been working on writing a recount.  We pretended that we were Jim - the main character from our book - and wrote a diary entry at the end of his first day in the Workhouse.  Next, we are going to be working on present tense report writing where we will be writing about Queen Victoria.  In History/Geography we have been learning about The British Empire.  We learnt that Britain was once the greatest empire the world had ever seen and ruled over a quarter of the world's area and population.  We then used the laptops to complete a digital mapping task.  We used Digimaps to locate the countries that were once a part of the British Empire at one time or another.  In PSHE and our reading lessons this week we've been focusing on Anti-Bullying week.  We had lots of sensible discussions around this issue and know what to do if we are victims of bullying or see someone else being bullied.  In Science are currently learning about electricity.  We have had a go at creating simple circuits and have learnt about the symbols associated with the different components that are used within circuits.  We then drew the circuits that we had made.  This week, we were given circuit diagrams and had to work out whether or not the circuit would work or not using our scientific understanding of what makes a complete circuit.  Next week we will be carrying out some investigations to gather evidence to support or refute an idea.  

Friday 4th November 2022

What a fantastic first week back we've had so far.  We started off the week by exploring the first chapter of our new text Street Child.  In this chapter, the family spend their last shilling on a gravy-filled meat pie so in D.T. we made our own versions of this.  We peeled and chopped a selection of vegetables before cooking them in the slow cooker along with the meat.  Once this was all cooked the pies were assembled and cooked.  Then it was time for the good part - the eating!  On the whole, the pies went down very well and were liked by most of us.  Check out pictures of our D.T. work below.  Linked to this, in English we have been writing instructions for how to make these delicious pies.  In Computing we carried out a research task all about Queen Victoria.  In Art we have begun learning about the Victorian artist William Morris.  In our first lesson we spent time looking at his artwork and discussing the common themes.  We established that there is nature in all of his work, the colours are generally quite dark and dull and they featured repetitive patterns.  In future lessons we will learn more about William Morris and will then eventually have a go at creating our own piece of art in his style.    

Term 1

The Explorer - Katherine Rundell

This term our focus text is The Explorer by Katherine Rundell (please see below for a synopsis of the story).  The book is set in the Amazon Rainforest and as such a lot of our topic work will be based on learning about rainforests.  Below is an overview of what we will be learning in each subject. 

The Explorer Synopsis

From his seat in the tiny aeroplane, Fred watches as the mysteries of the Amazon jungle pass by below him. He has always dreamed of becoming an explorer, of making history and of reading his name amongst the lists of great discoveries. If only he could land and look about him.

As the plane crashes into the canopy, Fred is suddenly left without a choice. He and the three other children may be alive, but the jungle is a vast, untamed place. With no hope of rescue, the chance of getting home feels impossibly small.

Except, it seems, someone has been there before them …

Class News

Friday 4th November 2022

Class News

Friday 14th October 2022

This week we have been very busy in class practising for our sharing assembly - our first one for several years!  We do hope you enjoyed it.  Besides practising our assembly we have been very busy with our learning.  In English we wrote our persuasive letters to the Brazilian Environments Minister last week and this week we have been combining our Science and English learning together.  In Science we are learning about the lifecycles of different animals and comparing them.  Then in English, we are writing a present tense report about different animals lifecycles so far we have written our introduction, a paragraph about mammals and a paragraph about birds.  Next week we will finish it off by writing about insects and amphibians.  In Maths we have moved on from our place value unit this week and have started working on addition and subtraction.  Last week in Geography we created thematic maps showing the population of both Brazil and the UK.  We then compared what was the same/different about them.  We noticed that the population was much more spread out in the UK whereas in Brazil the heavily populated spots were along the Amazon river or on the coast.  In our final art lesson of the term we created our final pieces using acrylic paints.  We all became artists for the day and created our own piece of art in the style of the artist we've been studying.  Please check out the pictures of our finished work below.

We have also continued to enjoy our weekly Forest School sessions each week.  Sadly next week is our last week but we will be working with Mr Meadows again a little later in the year.  Below are some photographs of what we were up to this week.  

Friday 30th September 2022

Last week in English we wrote newspaper reports recounting the plane crash that the characters in our book experienced at the beginning of the story.  This week in English we have started our unit of work on persuasive writing.  We spent time exploring a persuasive letter and looking at the structure and features of this text type.  Next week we will be writing a persuasive letter to the Brazilian Government trying to persuade them to make deforestation of the rainforest illegal.  We have spent time this week learning about deforestation so that we have a good understanding of what it is and the consequences before we start our writing next week.  In Maths we have continued our work on place value and will soon be moving on to our next unit of work.  In Science, we have been learning about reproduction in plants.  We have learnt that plants reproduce in two different ways - sexually and asexually.  Today we have set up an investigation where we are going to be seeing if we are able to propagate new plants from cuttings we've taken from a parent plant (check out the pictures of this below).  In small groups, we decided which part of the parent plant to take a cutting from using our scientific understanding to explain why we'd made our decisions.  We will continue to monitor our plants over the coming weeks/months to make observations of the changes that happen.  Last week in Art we learnt about an American artist named Nick Gustafson.  We learnt about him and his style of art.  We spent time discussing the common themes of his artwork and what we liked about them.  This afternoon we are going to plan our own piece of artwork based on the style of Nick's.  Next week we will create out final pieces and use acrylic paint to add colour to make them as vibrant as his.  

Friday 16th September 2022

Well what a fantastic first two weeks we have had exploring our new topic based around The Explorer.  We spent our first couple of days exploring the first few chapters of the book and predicting what we thought was going to happen to the four children who are stranded alone in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest.  In English last week, we spent time thinking about what it would be like if we were in the middle of the Rainforest.  We thought about what each of our senses would experience and then wrote a setting description.  This week in English, we have been exploring story openings and have had a go at writing our own.  We tried really hard to make our openings exciting to make the reader want to read on.  In Maths we have been working hard on place value and exploring numbers to 10,000 - look out for this in our homework this week.  In Science we are learning all about living things and their habitats and are beginning by learning about plants and the parts of a flowering plant.  We got to dissect lilies and labelled each of the parts.  In Art we have been using acrylic paint and exploring different washes and painting techniques.  We will be using acrylic paint when we come to create our Topic Book covers in a couple of weeks.  In our Geography lessons we started off by learning about the countries that were in South America.  We had to locate each of them in an atlas and then on our map and then label them using the countries flag.  This week we have been learning about biomes and the different climates, landscapes, animals and plants that can be found in each one.