Welcome to Autumn Term

 

Welcome year 5 Hawthorne class,

Our first history topic for this year is ‘Dynamic Dynasties’.  We will be learning about the history of ancient China, focusing primarily on the Shang Dynasty, and explores the lasting legacy of the first five Chinese dynasties, some of which can still be seen in the world today.

At the bottom of this page are documents - vocabulary, a knowledge organiser and home learning tasks for these units. The home learning tasks are optional and do not need to be brought into school but will support your child's learning.

Literacy

We will learn reading, writing, speaking and listening through different units based on high-quality texts. This term the theme of our stories is ambition and desire . We will begin this term by basing our writing on the book ‘The Man Who Walked Between The Twin Towers ‘ by Mordicai Gerstein. We will create a range of information writing, formal letters of advice, interviews, news report, and persuasive speeches.

Reading

We teach reading through the Destination Reader scheme at Oaklands. Children will be learning the reading skills of prediction, inference, clarification, evaluation, questioning and making links. We will begin this term by reading  Bronze and Sunflower' by Cao Wenxuan. 

Maths

At Oaklands we teach through the White Rose scheme. We will start this term by learning about place value up to a million.

Science

Our first project this term is 'Earth and Space'. In this unit we will learn about our Solar System and its spherical celestial bodies. They describe the movements of the Earth and the other planets relative to the Sun, the Moon relative to Earth, and the Earth's rotation to explain day and night.

Computing

We use Purple Mash to help with our Computing learning. This term we will working on coding and online safety.

French

Language Angels is the scheme we use for French teaching at Oaklands. This term we will learn days of the week, months of the year and numbers 1-31 will be introduced.

Music

Using Charanga, the children will learn how to: listen and appreciate music; sing in groups and to play along with known songs. They will have the opportunity to improvise using instruments as well. 

PE

In PE, children will learn basketball and gymnastics. P.E. at school will take place on Mondays and Thursdays where we will continue to wear our PE kit to school. The kit consist of a sky blue polo, royal blue Oaklands jumper, royal blue cotton shorts, socks and suitable sports trainers. For health and safety reasons earrings and watches should be removed for all PE lessons and long hair must be tied up.

Homework

Reading: Every night (15 minutes)Reading books will be changed on a Tuesday and each pupil will take two books home depending on their level of reading ability. Please make sure children have their books available to read every day.

Timetable Rock stars: Daily practise of timetables is strongly recommended. Recalling times tables improves memory skills, which is a transferrable skill that will help throughout school and into adult life. Children will find it easier to solve maths problems and to do mental arithmetic if they have already memorised their times tables.

A piece of homework to support learning in class will be given out every other week on a Friday and will be due on the following Wednesday in homework books.

On Thursday afternoons, Mrs Bissmire and Ms McGrath will teach PE and PHSE/RSE. If you, or anyone you know, has skills or knowledge that could enrich our in-class learning, we would love to hear from you and see if we can make use of this in our lessons. 

If you have any concerns, or questions regarding your child, please contact the school office (admin@oaklands.herts.sch.uk) to arrange a meeting. 

Kind regards,

Ms Mohammed
Year 5 teacher
French and RE subject lead