Friday 25th April

Wow! We have been so impressed with how our Year 5s have returned to school with an amazing attitude to learning and a wonderful joyful spirit. We have begun to enjoy the start of our new class novel - The Boy at the Back of the Class - and are wondering where the main character, Ahmet, may have come from and where his new adventure may lead us. Our new English book, The Paperbag Prince, has also motivated us to think more about our use of plastic and the real impact it has on our earth.

In RE, we have started our new topic of 'The Bible'. We were surprised to learn that there are 66 books in the Bible and that they are different types of book, written for different purposes. We are very much looking forward to the new concepts we are going to be introdued to.

Friday 4th April

Year 5 have shown themselves to be creative, determined and highly skilled in their amazing Pop-up books! Each pupil designed their own book for a Year 1 pupil to enjoy reading - what a variety of themes and genres we had. On Thursday, all of the Year 1 and Year 5 pupils shared the specially designed books whilst enjoying juice and biscuits, we were also joined by Mrs Carney and Mrs Bolton and we all had a wonderful time. Now that they have shared these books, all of Year 5 took them home to share with their families where we know they will be enjoyed and treasured!

We are all ready for our Easter break, having worked so hard, and look forward to us all being brought safely back together for our wonderful new topics!

Friday 28th March

What a fantastic week we have had this week! The highlight for us has been the Year 5 concert - how amazing! The children spoke, sang and played with such strength, courage and talent which enabled all watching to have a wonderful musical extravaganza. Well done to every pupil for giving of their best and succeeding in giving pleasure to every adult in attendance.

This hasn't been the only thing achieved this week. We completed our intense guided reading book - Cogheart. What a finish!! We took many twists and turns along our way and cannot wait to see how our next book compares to it. We have also been writing our own poems with a focus on the wonder of magic and wonder of nature. This task has been made much easier as a result of our beautiful weather this week - a great source of inspiration.

Friday 21st March

This week we completed our Geography unit of learning by finding key landmarks through grid references on Digimaps. Accuracy was key to our success, as was ensuring our longitude and latitude were not muddled, The children did a fantastic job and we are very much looking forward to starting our History unit next week. Not only this, but we also concluded our science unit by learning the gestation periods of animals - we were very surprised at the long length for elephants and the short length for opossums!

All Year 5 pupils have done an amazing job of writing a biography about the famous astronaut, Chris Hadfield. Pupils have used their learning concerning sentence structures and techniques to write an engaging and informative piece of writing which have been a joy to read. Looking ahead, we are eager to find out how our book, Cogheart will end!!! What is going to happen to Lily, Robert and John?? We hope to inform you of the outcome soon.

Friday 14th March

This week has seen us start to design our Moving Parts Books. These are our own stories designed and made ready for out Year 1 audience. When we have completed them, we will spend some time reading our books and enjoying some bicuits with Year 1 - we are really looking forward to it!

Our Class text - Cogheart - has taken an unexpected turn, with cliffhangers at the end of every chapter. What will happen to Lily and Robert next? We can't wait to find out! In English, we have learnt about the life of Neil Armstrong and have been research the life of Chris Hadfield. All of this is in preparation to write his biography, the man who went to space three times and took 45, 000 photographs of it. In Geography we have been using Digimaps to locate places all over the UK and next week we are taking this skill further to the whole world. We can't wait!

Friday 7th March

What an incredible week we have had! We have had so many wonderful experiences which have included celebrating International Women's Day and World Book Day - we have included some images of us enjoying our books and creating our own pieces of art, inspired by our book, 'The Dot'.

We have enjoyed our first encounter of drawing and measuring angles in maths along with solving problems involving multiplying and dividing, using bar models and fractions in the process. The children have done amazingly! Not only this, the children have also increased their use of punctuation to include commas, brackets and inverted commas to write more complex sentences - these have been a delight to read. Well done to all of our children for consistent effort and positive attitude to learning.

Friday 28th February

This week has been full of introductions and Intrigue! We have loved the start of our English and reading units. From beginning our first day with a rocket and footprints in our rooms to working out what on earth mechanicals are, we are very much looking forward to where our book, 'The Darkest Dark' and 'Cogheart' takes us!

Not only this, but we have been excited by our new Geography units, pinpointing where countries are by using co-ordinates. RE has begun our theme of Victory through the power of the cross and Science has seen us learn more about the beginning of life. It is all fascinating for us and we are all looking forward to this learning journey.

Friday 14th February

What a busy half term it has been! Year 5 have done themselves proud by working incredibly hard and always giving of their best. This week we spent time re-looking at the use and purpose of apostrophes, resulting in the creation of posters for guidance (see below). We took the opportunity to read some more Shakespeare texts - what a fascinating time that was!

Science saw us concluding our Chemistry unit learning about physical and chemical changes, mixtures and solutions and reversible and irreversible changes. We are all now ready for a break and look forward to the fascinating things we will return back to.

Friday 7th February

Friday 31st January

What an amazing week we have had! I think the highlight for us all was the Maya day we all experienced together. Dr Diane Davies inspired us all with her knowledge of the Maya civilisation, her experience as an archaeologist and her encounters with lethal creatures. We were able to watch incredible footage of the dig sites, hear Dr Diane Davies' stories and play the conch shell but also the opportunity we had to explore and touch the genuine Maya artefacts. We cannot thank Dr Diane Davies for the most incredible day. This, however, were not the only experiences of the day, we made chocolate and tasted Maya hot chocolate and in the afternoon we made Maya Chocolate Pots. We look forward to painting these pots next week when they have dried.

Friday 24th January

Friday 17th January

Friday 10th January

Happy New Year from all of Year 5! What an amazing start we have had to 2025. The children have worked incredibly hard, through and extremely icy week, working with such enthusiasm and effort to our new curriculum content. From starting to learn about the Maya civilisation to beginning to create tints and tones of paint colour, the children have soaked up so much learning and asked stretching questions.

Our new text for reading has also created questions and intrigue. The famous work of William Shakespeare, Macbeth, has shocked and surprised us! Will Macbeth be king? We hope to discover the answer next week!

Friday 20th December

What a fantastic end to our first term in Year 5! We found it fascinating to learn more about the cities of New York and London, comparing and contrasting them in our non-fiction text in Guided Reading. Following our great success and confidence in multiplication, we moved onto multiplying 2 digit by 3 digit numbers - next term begins our work of multiplying by 4 digits and we cannot wait!

Friday 13th December

Today we got to the end of our 'Guided Reading' text - When The Sky Falls. What a surprising and shocking ending! Some of us had tears in our eyes and needed some time to reflect, but this then led us to discuss the impact of loss. Many of Year 5 also took part in the choir performance at Blackburn Cathedral, we were told how fantastic they were and what a great job they did - well done!

This week we learnt more about the developments of theories concerning our position in the solar system and how planets move orbit.. It was fantastic to see and question the different beliefs scientists have held and why theri theories were proven or disproven. As we look ahead to the final week of our first term, we are excited about the services, craft and Christmas cheer yet to come!

Friday 6th December

What another amazing week we have had in Year 5! Every pupil tried their absolute best in all of the assessments undertaken and we could not be more proud of each one of them - well done. This was not our only area of focus as we continued with our fairytale focus in English this week. None of us expected that the demise of the witch would take place in quite the manner it did this week and, as such, created much discussion and debate concerning who was the true villain at the heart of this story. We look forward to writing our own modern fairytales next week.

Our most significant highlight of the week has been our 150 year celebration of our school. It was amazing to look back at the journey our school has travelled and experince teaching in the way its first pupils did. Many of us loved the chalk and blackboard experience but the day also made us grateful for what we have.

Friday 29th November

This week we loved our visit to the panto to see Jack and the Beanstalk in Blackburn! It was wonderful for us all to go together and experience the story and singing and dancing performed well which included the skills of one of our past pupils.

French introduced us to the language needed to share our birthdate with others, we continue to grow in our understanding and pronunciation of new vocabulary. Other new learning this week included finding out how the earth’s rotation and axis tilt affects the seasons of the world. Not only this, but we learnt how continents have different types of biome and how they compare to each other.

As we enter December, we are excited to learn more about Christmas especially after having learnt that Jesus was a refugee escaping the dangers of King Herod.

Friday 22nd November

A massive well done to Year 5 this week for giving 100% to all that we have done. We have been fascinated by the types of biomes we have in our world, what can or cannot grow in them and which animals live in each climate. Not only this, but we have learnt about the rotation and movemnet of the sun. We were blown away by our new knowledge of what would happen if the earth were to spin faster, slower or stopped completely. Did you know that if the earth were to change from anti-clockwise to clockwise, the earth would be a very different place. Why not ask a Year 5 pupil to tell you the many consequences this would cause!

Music has seen us sing a gospel song that transitioned into rap. What amazing skills our pupils have gained moving from gospel to rap to wind instrument playing and even wind instrument playing within a five minute piece of music. We look forward to see what next week will bring.

Friday 15th November

Year 5 have worked incredibly hard this week. We completed our poetry unit, named 'The Moon,' where each pupil produced a wonderful and creative poem, using abstract phrases, which were a delight to read! Following the theme of this celestial body we delved deeper into our knowledge of the lunar month and how we can identify a lunar eclipse. We have been so interested in this topic that some pupils are going to visit Blackburn Cathedral's Moon exhibit with our families.

Our musical skills are developing well - our music teacher is very impressed! We are very much looking forward to the performance where you can all listen to the progress we have made. In addition to this, we are doing very well at learning our numbers, days and months in French. Next week we will begin to write the date in our books.

Friday 8^th November

It has been a wonderful week in Year 5 and it was so lovely for us, as Year 5 staff, to have the opportunity to meet with you in Parents Evening on Thursday – thank you for your attendance and support. Our highlight this week was working with The Woodland Trust to plant trees in Swindells Forest, we planted over 70 all by ourselves. This was such an amazing opportunity for us and it was so lovely to see everyone working so hard to create a better future. This future has become increasingly important as we continue to read ‘When The Sky Falls,’ our class novel, where we have spent some time reflecting on the war and destruction.

French has been exciting for us as we have been learning the days and moths of the year. Writing the date in French is going to be fun especially when we get to write our birth date – Bravo! We have also enjoyed starting our new Science learning, where we are now keeping a closer eye on the moon to spot what phase we are in.

Friday 1st November

This week has seen both our return to school and the beginning of some new learning journeys. We were all excited to begin learning about Earth and Space! We considered the size, distance and order of planets this week, which caused some mind-stretching questions to be asked. We cannot wait to continue this learning journey and literally see where it takes us! Another area for enthusiasm was the start of our new class novel, 'When The Sky Falls,' which is set in the war and follows the life experiences of a young boy called Joseph. We are all intrigued to know how the gorilla, on the front cover, features in a book that is based on a true story.

P.E saw Robins start their swimming lessons and Swifts begin with Key PE - both classes fully engaged with their learning, responded enthusiastically and represented school well - it was a joy to be part of. Looking ahead to next week, we are looking forward to learning more about The Song of Hiawatha and negative numbers in context. Not only that but we are beginning to learn more about our planet in Geography. We cannot wait!

Friday 18th October

We have most certainly had an exciting and busy week! One of the highlights of the week has been our making of biscuits in RE. The biscuits, known as hamantaschen, are made and eaten during the festival of Purim as a reminder of how God used Esther to save His people. They were delicious! So much so that many of us wanted the recipe and they are now going to be tasted by those on school dinners in the near future.

Computing has been another highlight where we have learnt about systems, search engines and computers. This study made great connections with our mathematical work on negative numbers and made us very curious to see how the world wide web actually works. More creativity was unleashed as we made our Christmas card designs - we hope you liked them when they came home this week! We are all ready for our rest and are looking forward to the next steps in our Year 5 learning upon our return.

Friday 11th October

Year 5 have had another exciting week! It began with our Learning Engagement session on Monday where the children enjoyed sharing the work they were most proud of with their visitors. Part of this excitement was connected to the fact that we had finished our novel - Holes! What a climactic end! We have also been enjoying a new book in English based on the real daredevil adventure of Annie Edison Taylor. The story of this 62 year old lady, who travelled on the Niagra Falls in a barrel, has been both exciting and unbelievable. Our classes have enjoyed mapping her story and using different grammatical devices to write recounts of her tale.

In Maths, we have been learning about negative numbers, their purpose and practical application. We have also completed our Autumn 1 Rapid Recall booklets where we have all made significant progress and have been excited to see the difference in our mathematical thinking skills. Next week, our focus will be on developing our computer skills - this will be an amazing journey for us all.

Friday 4^th October

This week has provided Year 5 with many and varied experiences. Both classes were very excited to be given the opportunity to take their wind instruments home, we have already heard stories of the exciting adventures they have had at home with them! PSHE is teaching us amazing First Aid skills, St John’s Ambulance training is a fantastic resource and we are learning much from there.

We delved deeper into the world of the Vikings and found out much about their invasions and raids – we were in total shock that they had chosen to steal from Churches. However, in Art we are thinking about our homes and our environment and created images that reflect this.

We cannot wait until next week.

Robins and Swifts have had an exciting learning journey this week. We were all thrilled to begin finding out who the Vikings were and where they came from but, we were completely shocked to find out that their helmets did not have horns! Science introduced us to an incredible woman named Maria Sibylla Merian who is respected both as a scientist and as an artist. It is because of her that we know more about insects and butterflies. Look at the detailed and impressive drawing of this species:

Our Guided Reading text, Holes, has taken us on an emotional roller-coaster! We have been worried about the survival of two endearing characters in the book and have been relieved when we have seen signs of hope. Where will it take us next?