Year 5 2023 - 2024

Welcome to Year Five

Year 5 is taught by Mrs Lynda Thomas and is supported by Miss L Hughes 

Weekly Round-up

In class guided reading this week we have started our new class book ‘War Horse’ by Michael Morpurgo. The children are already engrossed in the story and the characters. A small number of children have already read the book/seen the film however I have stressed the importance of ‘no spoilers’ and I have talked about how a film should ideally be watched after reading the book otherwise our imagination is impacted and when we are reading we imagine the actors from the film and do not allow our imagination to create the characters for us.  

In English we have been working on identifying different classes of words within sentences (nouns, adjectives, prepositions etc) and in Maths we have started our unit on multiplication and division and looked this week at multiples of numbers.

I have talked to the children about how vital it is that they have excellent knowledge and recall of our times tables facts for the majority of maths in Year 5 and Year 6. The children have had a times tables test today and following this I suggested that some pupils try an alternative strategy to TT Rock Stars and try the old-fashioned way of repeated copying out of their tables for learning their tables. I found some old exercise books that the children have taken home to use for this. Some children actually asked if they could have exercise books, demonstrating outstanding learning behaviour and a desire to improve and get even better and faster at knowing and recalling their times-tables facts. TT-Rock Stars will automatically renew every Thursday for those children who do enjoy using it, however I do feel that for some of our children perhaps a different approach to learning their tables (repeated copying them out, whilst saying them at the same time is best) might be worth a try.

Our rich and varied curriculum continues and in Geography this week we revised the names and locations of both continents and oceans and began to look at mountain ranges. In art the children have started to design their theatre diorama and have been looking at the design process and also creating atmospheric backdrops.

Have a good weekend,

Lynda Thomas

17th November 2023

                                            Please email me at year5@hillside.cheshire.sch.uk  if you need to get in touch or if you have any questions. 

Spelling and Punctuation

BBC Bitesize contains lots of valuable learning material linked to a wide range of topics.. For spelling rules click on the link here and for punctuation click here (note semi-colons and colons are in the Y6 English curriculum, however Y5 need to understand the names and how to use all other punctuation forms).

Times Tables

There are some times tables booklets for you to download on this page if needed, however the children are doing amazingly well in their weekly times tables tests and we are compiling our 'Premier League' table of pupils who are brave enough to take on the challenge of being timed to recall their tables in the shortest possible time! 

Wellbeing

Our Hillside Website has a Wellbeing Page that is being regularly updated and managed by Miss Leisa Hughes. You can find links to My Happy Mind, a range of activities and useful links to help support well-being and a positive mental health. Please do look at this page (situated below the Y6 class page on our website).