Year 5 w/b 4.12.23

In English this week we have been planning our biographies about Harriet Tubman, an enslaved woman who escaped using the Underground Railroad and bravely risked her life by going back several times to save others. 

In Geography, we have been comparing time zones in North America. It is incredible to discover people living in the same country have different times.  

In our final My Happy Mind lesson, we discussed how we can use our character strengths to help us when we are faced with a worrying or difficult situation. 

It has been an exciting end to the week in Y5!

On Thursday we walked to Church for our class service. Rev. Sandi talked to us about putting others before ourselves and I was delighted to see some of the children demonstrating this throughout the day. We stopped at the park on the way back. Sadly, the beautiful tree lights had been switched off. However, there was just enough snow left for a snowball fight! 

In the afternoon our STEM friend, Joanna, visited to teach science. We wrote to her last year so it was lovely to meet her and know it wasn't Mr Cotton writing those letters!

We continued our learning about forces and Joanna briefly explained what a civil engineer does, and how important this industry is to so many things we take for granted: clean water, road safety, school buildings and toilets. 

The children were then given 6 pieces of wooden doweling and some rubber bands and asked to make a pyramid - either in pairs or on their own. The children then had to work with three other groups and put their four pyramids together to make a large tetrahedron. They were then asked to carry on increasing the size of the structure by combining these large pyramids together. 

The children investigated and learned how the strength of the structure is dependent on where each piece of doweling is situated, and how this links to modern-day infrastructure design (bridges, stadium etc). 

The class showed that they could work well as a team - as a whole class they contributed to the final structure - as well as learning how important communication, creativity and problem solving skills are to civil engineering. 

The children have also completed their maths assessments this week and we are proud of the determination they have shown.

This afternoon Rev. Sandi joined us in class for RE to talk about the services at St Oswald's over Christmas. This was to extend out learning about Christmas and how our traditions link (or not) to the stories in Matthew and Luke. We then read the story of Joseph, Mary and Jesus escaping to Egypt and the children dressed as the characters to help us understand and empathises. We discovered that Jesus was a refugee. 

You will be delighted to know that we have completed our final forest school lesson for the term (so no more remembering wellies!). We will complete our next lessons in Spring 2 (after February half term).

Next week we have a theatre visit to look forward to on Tuesday. Children will need a disposable, still drink to take e.g carton of juice or small bottle of water. We will provide a snack at the theatre so please don't send sweets or fizzy drinks. 

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend.