Algebrainiacs!

Our brains are feeling particularly tired this week! We’ve gone through some pretty tough and intensive lessons – but as usual Class 5 were able to meet the challenge!

Our week began with a bit of healthy competition with the year 5/6 class at Stebbing Primary School. As their teacher, Mr Crawley, is Miss Vidler’s fiancé we knew we had to really show them our writing skills – and we did Miss Vidler proud! We had to create a 100 word saga based on time travel, so either in the past and the future. Not only this, but we had to make our writing interesting, and we really impressed the other class!

In English this week we have been continuing our study of Non-Chronological reports. Miss Vidler was determined to make sure our final writing is interesting – factual doesn’t have to be boring! Firstly, Miss Vidler gave us the cruel task of creating an interesting introductory paragraph based on something boring such as sellotape or stairs (we did – in return – make her write about celery). We have also thought about how we can change the structure of sentences and include adjectives to make our writing sound more interesting.

An introduction to a report on slippers!

An improved paragraph

In maths we have continued to pursue our algebra work. We began by trying to discover all the different answers for equations such as (x + y = 8) by using systematic approaches and inverse operations. By the end of the week we were also able to write our own algebraic formulae and follow them.

Tricky Algebra!

Our 'gold' challenge for the week

In theme we found out about different types of human settlement. We used this knowledge to look at images of the Earth at night from the international space station. The light pollution from human settlements meant we were able to identify settlements both nationally and globally – giving us a chance to study the geography of our Earth.

In science, Year 6 had a chance to experiment with how changing a component of a circuit affects the brightness of a bulb. So far we have only looked at series circuits, however next week we will look into parallel circuits and how these differ.

We also had a road safety expert from Essex County Council come in to teach us how to stay safe on the road when we are out and about more independently as we get older. We had a chance to practice looking for good parts of the road to cross safely, and how to make sure we are seen by motorists.

Finally, as it has been friendship week, we had a chance to reflect on what it means to be a good friend. Mrs Martin led us in creating a friendship wall, showing all the different qualities that people need to be good friends.

Our Friendship Wall

Next week we have our whole school power down day – although there’s no way class 5 will be powering down on their hard work any time soon!

Miss Vidler

Remembering the week gone by...

This week has been one of reflection and remembrance - although we still found time to learn something new!

Our week began with a Music Festival for Year 6. Despite Miss Vidler only going through the words with us at the last minute - we still did a great job and enjoyed practicing songs with other local primary schools. Year 6 really showed what amazing ambassadors of the school they can be, proven again on Wednesday as they represented the school in the village Remembrance Service by the war memorial.

Meanwhile Mrs Martin stayed with the year 5s and completed a constellation project. As part of this we got to design our own constellations and decide what animal or object they represented. Our writing work was to write an imaginary myth about our constellation, and our maths was to practice estimating and measuring angles between each of the stars. All resulted in some great work!

Constellation Project Work

Once we were all back together we could begin our writing focus on non-chronological reports. We started by writing one of our own about Fordham School, and reminded ourselves these texts needed to be more impersonal and include introductory paragraphs! We studied the pages of some of our space books to spot these features, and ended the week by beginning our design of our own planet ready to write our own page of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.

In maths we began looking at algebra forming missing number problems. Although most of us understood how to use inverse to find the answer we were sometimes thrown by questions that involved decimal numbers and even fractions! We have all shown great perseverance and growth mindset during these tricky lessons.

We continued our exploration of space by looking at the scale of the universe. First we stood out on the playground to work out relative distances of planets in our solar system, then we made our own planets and showed how the compared in size to each other. Our astonishing efforts are currently on display on the classroom ceiling!

The size of the Sun compared to the inner planets is mind-blowing!

Class 5 Solar System - compete with asteroid belt!

We also looked into the space race and used our computing skills to research on the internet the important dates of space travel and the heated competition between the USSR and the USA. This gave us a great excuse to revise how to display a timeline, something we had already worked on as a class during our Greek topic. We also continued our astronaut training program in PE, by doing push-ups, squats and crunches to help build our core muscle strength!

We had to calculate the radius and use compasses to work out the scaled-down size of the planets

Feeling the burn!

Just one more!

Homework also went out this week. Every pupil in the school has been asked to come up with a piece of homework that persuades people to look after our planet! This fits with our powerdown week in a few weeks time. Our 'unofficial' homework as a class was to also continue our discovery of our new planet - again using any type of medium that we thought appropriate!

Another great week Class 5, lets hope next week we can share stories of kindness as we enter Friendship Week!

The Class 5 team celebrate Children in Need!

Miss Vidler

Here we go again...

Welcome back Class 5!

Considering this week was only 4 days we have yet again crammed in quite a bit of learning! Here is a round up of our learning this week.

Before we jet off into Outer Space, we spent most of this week focusing on World War One poetry. This will be rounded off next week when the year 6s go up to the War Memorial in the village to pay our respects on the 11th of November. We looked at the works of famous poets Wilfred Owen and John McCrae. We were able to analyse them both for poetic devises and draw out the imagery that the poems conveyed. We completed our poetry unit by writing our own poem/prayers on poppies to be placed on the school prayer tree in the hall. They look stunning and the writing is quite thought-provoking. Don't forget to have a look the next time you are in the hall!

In maths we have been revising finding percentages (%) of amounts. Miss Vidler taught us the 'bubble method' to show that if you can divide a number by 2 or 10, then you can find a variety of % such as 50%, 25%, 10%, 5% and 1%. Some of us were then able to combine these findings to discover others such as 15% and 60%.




We have been working hard on our RE topic this week. On Wednesday we discovered the life-changing events of Muhammed(pbuh) in the Islamic faith and Moses in the Jewish faith. Finally on Friday we watched how Buddha sought enlightenment in the Buddhist faith. Along with the baptism of Jesus, which we studied before the holiday, we have learnt a lot about the lives of these important men.

Of course we should also mention the Space Dome that we got to explore on Thursday! It really was a fun and exciting start to our topic and has already filled us with many questions - here's hoping we have enough time to answer them this term!

In PE we are now learning rugby/football on a Tuesday and astronaut training skills on a Friday. Could you all please remember to have a pair of 'indoor' trainers (or plimsolls) for Friday's PE lesson, as we really don't want to have to keep sweeping the mud off of the floor!

Let's see how much we can fit into next week!

Miss Vidler