Year 5

Both Year 5 classrooms are TIMMS (Total Interactive MultiMedia System) rooms with a PC for every pupil, connected to the school network, and whiteboard with PC, Video and DVD projection. Each workplace has space for the PC keyboard to be tucked beneath the monitor plinth enabling the student to use their writing books. The room enables every student to have a level of control over how they approach, organise and present their work in a way never before possible.

Class CS

So far this year 5CS have been both debating and investigation Dr Proctor’s statement ‘Girls are stronger than boys’. We have been designing a number of tests to investigate whether this is true or not and have been learning all about antagonistic muscles and the names of different muscle groups in our body. We also made electrical quiz boards to test other children in the school about their muscle knowledge.

Children in 5CS have also been using our new science lab to do some interesting experiments. Wearing lab coats and science goggles we have been finding out all about density and did an experiment to find out the density of different materials. We have also been learning about acids and bases and have tested a number of household products to see where they are on the Ph scale.

 We have also started learning about the Ancient Romans. As well as exploring what it would have been like to live in Roman times and examining surviving evidence and artifacts, we have investigated some of the technological legacies of the Romans in Britain. We have been designing ways to measure the height of trees because to build forts the Romans would often use the same design and even use prepared materials. This meant they had to know which trees to cut down as the forts would have to be constructed over night and they did not have any time to waste. We have used a variety of skill processes of estimating, measuring and calculating. We will also be building and testing catapults, and the Roman Groma, an early surveyor’s tool for building straight roads and intersections. The projects we cover incorporate a wide range of applied Mathematics skills, as well as writing for different purposes based on the school’s strong language policy, involving writing to debate, describe, or instruct, for example.

In our first term, 5AP have been venturing back to the swinging 60’s. As well as exploring what happened in the 1960’s, we have been investigating some of the technological legacies that came about then and that are still around in Britain today. For example, we researched Concorde to get vast background knowledge of this amazing plane. This research then helped the children to write newspaper reports from the scene of the AirFrance crash over Paris.
This then threw up a discussion amongst the children, who thought that Concorde should still be flying passengers today. As a result of this the class was split into two debate teams, one side were for the decommission of Concorde and the other to have it recommissioned. The groups were given a team captain and they all had to present their argument to the rest of the class. They finished with a class open debate that threw up some heated and controlled exchanges on whether it should be brought back or not. Points were awarded for each valid point and whether the children were using excellent speaking and listening skills. Our first class discussion was a statement that was made by our class character John Lennon, “Boys are faster than girls”. This was a vehicle that was used to guide the children on an investigative experiment to either prove the statement correct or incorrect. After a class discussion as to what factors could affect the investigation they chose to test girls speed and pulse rates against that of the boys. Through this the children were applying their Maths, English and science skills to find the answer. The results did actually show that boys are faster than girls on the whole (well just in class 5 AP!)