Delightful December!

Goodness me, how quickly we have reached December! 
Below are some of the highlights from this month. There has been some fantastic learning and, I'm sure, many memories made...

No Pens Day

We kicked off this month with No Pens Day, based all around preparing for Christmas!
We had a brilliant day filled with different crafty activities. The class took part in a maths competition (all questions were linked to a Christmas theme) before creating their own Christmas cards for RE using their knowledge of Christian symbols present at Christmas time. In the afternoon, we took on the challenge of learning the song We Three Kings, practicing it many times ready to include in the whole-school Christmas nativity video. Throughout the day, the children also recorded a part of our Christmas story, The Night Before Christmas, and overall it was an enjoyable day. We were all ready to get into the festive spirit!

English 

This month, Year 5 have been continuing with the mystery of The Last Chance Hotel. Inspired by the recipes featured in the story, the children have been writing their own recipes for Fish Head Soup, Raspberry Pavlova and the deadly yet delicious Apricot Delice. Take a look at some of our recipes below:

We were also treated to another Q&A Zoom session with Nicki Thornton. For this session, the children came up with their own brilliant magical devices and inventions to share with Nicki. She asked some really interesting questions to learn more about the children’s inventions and gave some excellent feedback and next steps. There were many challenging “what if” situations that the children had to think through!
The inventions included detective glasses that could spot fingerprints everywhere, a targeted bow and arrow that could help catch a villain and a teleporter device. Who wouldn’t want to be able to flit from one place to another super speedily? 

Moving on from our recipes and magical devices, the children developed their understanding of metaphors, similes and personification in order to write brilliant descriptions of the Last Chance Hotel and the surrounding forest. We had a great time being creative and fully immersing ourselves into the scenery of The Last Chance Hotel; the children wrote some brilliantly imaginative descriptions using a range of techniques they had learned.
Here are some of our ideas:

"In front of the dead, dry front porch of the horrid, hideous Last Chance Hotel, the tree are waving at me creepily."

"...the moon was like a light guiding me..."

"The dark, twisted trees were shaking in fright like a baby. As I get closer to the old building, I start to smell the gross, stinky aroma of fish-head soup."

"In the middle of nowhere, I stand terrified in front of the spooky, scary Last Chance Hotel."

"I could feel the violent, hideous wind howl while it looked for its next soul to devour."

Maths

Recently, the class moved onto a new topic of learning in maths and started thinking about statistics - reading information from timetables and graphs. We started by looking at timetables based on buses, trains and planes, considering the best time to depart/arrive and how long some of the journeys would last. The children were resilient with this new learning and worked hard to become more confident in reading timetables.
Shortly after, we moved on to reading information from a line graph and it became clear that sometimes line graphs are not always as simple as they might at first appear. With some practice, however, the children did well to improve their confidence with pulling information from a line graph. We are going to continue this learning when we return in January.

Creative Curriculum

As our learning about the Victorians comes to an end, we enjoyed learning about the important figure of Charles Dickens and his significant impact on Victorian Britain.
First, we learned about Charles Dickens and his own struggles being poor.

Did you know…?

Charles Dickens had to stop going to school and instead had to work gluing labels on jars? This was because his father was sent to debtors’ prison.

Charles Dickens never forgot about his struggles when he was younger so his stories focused on those living in extremely poor conditions, encouraging his readers to think more about how the other half live.
The children also engaged in a debate around whether all people should be allowed to read and enjoy stories. There were excellent ideas shared and the children worked hard to put their points across in a formal, reasonable manner.

Thinking about the emotive stories that Charles Dickens wrote many years ago, we used our own emotive language to describe the character of Oliver Twist. We combined our learning in English - using techniques such as expanded noun phrases, similes and personification - to portray the sad life that Oliver Twist led. Take a look at some of our descriptions below:

 "Oliver Twist, the poor orphan boy, was waiting in the old workshop for food to fill his empty, old bowl."

"He had a skinny, malnourished boy. His hair is as oily as a fish. He had a fragile, delicate heart."

"In the poor orphanage, Oliver Twist is a poor, malnourished, skinny boy who is the size of a mouse."

"His stomach was begging him for food."

"His tummy grumbled like a scary bear."

Science

In December, we continued to learn about forces.
The class enjoyed learning about how gravity, air resistance, water resistance and friction work and were able to use these forces to solve some real life problems and scenarios that might arise in which these forces would affect it.
We had great fun participating in a science investigation based around air resistance which involved preparing an egg in a parachute device in order to ensure it landed safely. Unfortunately, not all the eggs landed safely! Rest assured, they were hard boiled, though. One team won the trophy, ensuring that their egg survived three drops from the same height – success at last! All the children recognised that the bigger the parachute, the more air resistance the devices would gain. Perhaps with more time and another look at their designs, we could have kept more eggs safe.

Spanish Christmas Day

Feliz Navidad!
With the final few days of the Christmas term upon us, Joseph Cash enjoyed a ‘Christmas Around the World Day’, focusing on countries that speak Spanish.
Miss Dolman worked with small groups of children throughout the day to make pastelitos, a small pastry treat filled with caramel. Everyone did an absolutely brilliant job with the baking activity. Some children from 5AS even had the added challenge of instructing Miss Sandhu on how to make her own, although hers turned out a bit bigger than expected!

We also enjoyed reading the Spanish story A Pinata in a Pine Tree, the Spanish version of The Twelve Days of Christmas. The children did mighty well to sing along to the Spanish version which was certainly not easy!
To embrace the festivities seen in Spain over Christmas time, we also created Christmas mosaic images and made paper lanterns.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
We look forward to returning for more fun and exciting learning in January 2021!
Stay safe.