Welcome to Year 5!

I am so excited to be your child's Year 5 class teacher! We have an exciting year planned for 2017 – 2018.

As the children begin their new journey into upper Key Stage 2, lots of new and exciting opportunities arise. We will begin the year learning how to play the West African Djembe Drums as part of our music lessons. In November we will be travelling to Boreatton Park in Shropshire for our annual PGL residential. trip, and in PE we will be taught how to develop our gymnastic skills. We also have some wonderful English lessons planned, working through a range of genres and texts. In Maths we aim to make very good progress through investigations, reasoning and problem solving activities and we can’t wait to tackle some of our terrific topic work, beginning with a little trip down the River Nile to learn about the Egyptians.

My aim this year is to make learning fun, and provide a happy, secure and challenging environment so that each child will reach their full potential and become confident, independent and enthusiastic learners.

Keep visiting our class page to follow our learning journey.

If you have any worries or concerns please, do not hesitate to come and see me at any point during the year.

PE and FA Skills Programme

In addition to our regular PE lessons, we have been very lucky to be working with Jay Burton this term. Jay is the team leader of the FA Lidl Skills teams in Cheshire and Liverpool. The skills programme is a unique football coaching programme that is part of an aspiration to get boys and girls aged 5 - 11 more active.

The sessions have certainly helped the children become more independent in their PE learning, as they have had to develop organisational skills to become team members. It has also allowed children to develop their skills for decision making and becoming team members

African Masks

As part of their Art lessons with Mrs Murphy, our Year 5 children designed and created these wonderful African masks out of air-dry clay.

The Life Caravan

Year 5 visited the life caravan this week and enjoyed talking about the body and what food and drink we need to stay healthy. We also met Harold the giraffe and discussed our different feelings at different times and how we can help someone who is feeling sad. We talked about different parts of the body, especially our hearts, and what changes happen to our hearts when we exercise and then cool down. 

Peer Massage

The children are really enjoying taking part in peer massage and are finding it really relaxing.

Our Year 5 children are very excited to be participating in a study conducted by Liverpool John Moores University. The purpose of the study is to develop a method of measuring sedentary behaviour in children. We know that physical activity is important for our health, but some children do not do enough physical activity, and many spend a lot of time watching TV and playing video games, which are classed as sedentary behaviours. Trying to minimise time spent sedentary is important, but the way we measure sedentary behaviour in children needs improving. The children are wearing activity monitors for a week and

self-reporting their sedentary time using an app.

In line with the Philosophy for Children approach, today Year 5 looked at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Q. Do all children have the same rights?

Q. Are "rights" something every child should have?

Q. How are rights and responsibilities similar?

We Love Maths!

Using the digit cards 0 – 9, can you arrange the cards into 5 prime numbers of any number of digits?

…….of course we can!

Fire Safety

We would like to say a huge thank you to Widnes Fire Brigade for coming along to visit us today and for teaching us some vital life saving skills.

PGL

We had an amazing time at PGL, challenging ourselves and doing things we didn't think we could. We built rafts, climbed Jacob's ladder, experienced a very long zip wire and braved the giant swing to name just a few of the amazing activities..

Liverpool World Museum

As part of our 'Ancient Egyptian' topic, Year 5 had the opportunity to visit the Liverpool World Museum this week to find out about how the Ancient Egyptians lived, their cultures and traditions. We explored lots of Ancient Egyptian artifacts, some of which were thousands of years old. We explored the Mummy Room to find out how people achieved eternal life. Read spells from the Book of the Dead and smelled ingredients used in mummification. We rounded our day off exploring other exhibits including the dinosaur exhibit, the Bug House and the Aquarium.  

Alter Servers

We would like to say a huge thank you to Father Matt and Alter Server Clive for visiting us in our class this week to show us the benefits of becoming an alter boy or girl.

Clive kindly allowed us to try on the Albs and explained to us the dedication needed to be an Alter Server.

Collective Worship

So very proud of our two class chaplains today. Together they delivered a wonderful collective worship to our class. 

The children created a focal point with artifacts, symbols and candles, read beautifully a scripture from the Bible and chose a hymn for the children to sing and reflect.

Philosophy for Children (P4C)

Our 'Big Questions' this morning in P4C:

Would you wear the happiness helmet for one day?

Would you put the happiness helmet on for the rest of your life?

Can happiness be bad for you?

Can sadness be good for you?

African Drumming

As part of our Music lessons, we are lucky enough to have Mr. Phillips, a percussion specialist, to come into school each week during Autumn term to teach us how to play West African Djembe Drums. Today we were taught how to play bass (with the heel of our hand) and tone (with fingertips). It was great fun and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.

We celebrated Mass in our classroom today, along with Father Matt and Deacon Anthony. During the Mass we thought about Forgiveness and why Jesus teaches us to Forgive. This was such a special service for Year 5 and the children commented on how special it felt to them having Mass in their classroom. The children read beautifully, sang wonderfully and were extremely well behaved. 

Philosophy for Children (P4C)

Thank you to Neil Phillipson who spent time with us this morning, giving us the confidence to ask 'Big' questions and learn through discussion. We were taught to value our own views and the views of others and the importance of respect and negotiation.