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Autumn term

Our Mission Statement
 
We have thought about what we want our classroom to be like. We have used these ideas to write our class mission statement.
Our Class Councillor 
 
Our class councillor is Zachary. He won the majority of the votes during the class elections. 
 
 
School Rules 
British Values  - Rule of Law 
Class rule and expectations.
 
In our British Values lesson we spoke about the rule of law. Rules and laws are everywhere at home, in school, even when you play a game. A regulation is a rule made by an authority. Breaking rules and laws is likely to get you into trouble at the very least! 
We made our own rules for our classroom and the children discussed what the consequences should be if they are broken. 
 .Mrs Gould and Mrs Grattan are really impressed with some of the work that has been produced.
British Values - Democracy
Electing a class Councillor
 
In our British Values lesson we looked at how rules and decisions are made. We found out that votes are used to make agreements and find out the most popular plan.

In democracy every citizen should listen to the views of the different parties and candidates, and then make his or her own decision on whom to support. People must be 18 or over in order to take part in an election. We agreed that this is a good age as children would not always make an informed decision.

When voting, each person  votes for the candidate of his or her choice. S/he does this by putting a cross beside the person’s name on the ballot paper. People cast their ballots in a booth so that no one can see who they are voting for. This is called ‘secret ballot’.

At the end of the election day the votes are added up and the candidate with the highest number of votes (the majority) is declared the winner.

We are too young to vote in elections but we have been exercising our right for democracy. Our class needs a class Councillor so we wrote manifestos and voted for the person that we thought would do the best job representing our class.  

  
Zachary received the majority of the votes during the class election. Well done!
We have made a display to show off our fantastic manifestos 
Setting our dreams and goals
 
We have thought about what we want to achieve in Year 5 and when we are older. We have written our goals and ambitions down as at the moment they are our dreams but we hope that they become our reality. They are written on leaves and are keeping safe in our reading jungle. 
Penmanship Award
 
Although we have only been in school for two days, I have already been amazed by some of the beautiful handwriting and have had to give out some penmanship awards to children who can now use pen to do their work. I hope to give more out next week. 
The Lighthouse
 
In English we have been watching the animation clip of the lighthouse. The clip has no words but we have looked at detail which can be seen in the clip and thought about how we can use this to write our own narrative of the story. The children have made plans to help them with their writing. Mrs Gould was really impressed with some of the creative and imaginative work which was produced. he finished work will be put on our lighthouse display board. 
Watch the clips of some of the children reading their work out. 
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Mrs Gould was left speechless by some of the work produced. Watch Mollie read her narrative of the lighthouse clip.
Music
 
In music we looked at the Bon Jovi song Living on a prayer. We listened to the lyrics to identify what the song is about and then listened to instruments were could hear in the background music
Mental Health Week
 
We have been looking at what people think of us and why. We have compared this to how we view ourselves. We identified that our behaviours and actions influence how different people view us and form opinions. 
We have also looked at any worries that have. We understand that it is normal for any of us to have worries at any time. These may be little worries or, at times, big ones. We discussed that it important to talk to someone and share how we feel. This can help to solve the worry or just make other people aware of how we feel. 
We discussed that it is important to have people that we can share our problems and worries with. It is important that these people will respond kindly and can be trusted not to tell everyone. We identified 5 trusted people who we can share our problems and worries with. 
Religious Education 
 
In Year 5 we study Christianity, Sikhism and Buddhism. We have introduced the 3 religions and looked at key facts such as the place or worship, symbols, holy books. We will study each religion through the year. To begin with, we will be looking at symbols relating to each religion. 
Symbols / Christianity 
 
We see  range of every day symbols in our daily lives and understand what thy represent. The most common ones mentioned by 5G were McDonalds, Xbox, Facebook and Minecraft.  We understood that all religions have signs and symbols which have a meaning. 
 
religious symbol is an iconic representation intended to represent a specific religion, or a specific concept within a given religion. We have looked at symbols which have specific meanings to Christians.
Penmanship Award
 
This week Cora and Amy have also received their penmanship award for using neat, join handwriting in their work. Now that they have got their penmanship, they can use pen in all of the written tasks in school.
Fronted Adverbials
 
In English we have been looking at using fronted adverbials to give more detail to our sentences. We have written a recount of our first day in Year 5 and have included fronted adverbials our work. Mrs Gould is really impressed at how quickly the class have understood using the fronted adverbials. 
Mental health and Well-being 
 
We are looking at the book ‘What to do when you worry too much’. We have discussed how worries start and what can make them grow. We have also looked at how we can share and ignore worries and even how to make them smaller. We have made individual Plans to help us relax when we are worried. 
We have made a display to show what worries we have and how we can make them smaller.
After reading the book ‘What to do when you worry too much’ we decided to write letters to Miss Phillips (our Year 3 teacher)  and offer her advice about how to reduce worries. She is due to fly to Oman any day now so hopefully she’ll get to read all of our letters on the plane. 
The children presented the letters in their best handwriting which really impressed Mrs Gould. 
Place Value and Rounding 
 
In maths we have been looking at place value and the value of different digits. We found out that to round a number to the nearest 100, look at the tens digit. If the tens digit is 5 or more, round up. If the tens digit is 4 or less, round down. To round a number to the nearest 1000, look at the hundreds digit. We looked at some problems and some of our children explained the answers. 
Look at the problems and see if you agree with our answers. 
Contributing to the Community
 
In our assembly we looked at how we can contribute to the community. Contributing to the community can be by doing random acts of kindness or by do doing something planned to help others.
Simple acts of kindness may be as simple as smiling at someone or giving them a compliment to make them feel good. Other contributions may be more planned such as giving money to the local foodbank, donating to charity or doing events to raise money for people in need. 
In class we discussed how we could help in the community and the children gave some of their ideas.  
 
 
Place Value
 
In maths we have been reading, ordering and comparing numbers up to 100,000. We have used the symbols < and  > to compare numbers. After working on fluency of ordering and comparing numbers, we tested our knowledge by solving problems. Watch the video to see how the children answered the problems.
Awards Assembly
 
Each week we have an award / celebration assembly. This used to be done in the main hall but now, due to covid19, we are keeping safe by doing these assembly  virtually. We are enjoying this new way of doing assemblies. 
Mental Health and Well-being 
 
Today we looked at our own mental health and well-being. We discussed how we can feel, made, sad, low, angry and upset but not know why we feel like this. We discussed ways of making ourselves feel calmer. These things included: having tie out, having a bit of peace and quiet, talking to a friend.
We discussed having a healthy diet and eating and drinking water regularly.
Please take a look at the PowerPoint. 
English 
The Arrival 
 
In English, we are using the book The Arrival as a stimulus for our writing. The book is a picture book and through the pictures, tells the story of a family looking for safety from their dangerous home town.
The children have used the pictures to work what is happening and what the characters may be saying to each other. The book has helped us to create some very creative writing. 
The children used the pictures from chapter one work out what the man was doing and then used this information to write a diary in as the man from the picture. 
Star Reader 
 
Well done Sachleen for being the first person in the class to complete the first reading chart. You are clearly enjoying reading at home and this is helping you with your reading in school. Keep it up. 
 
Mollie also completed her reading chart a few days later. Great work!
Music 
 
In music, Mrs Bedell has been looking at the lyrics to the Bon Jovi song Living on a prayer. The children have been learning the lyrics and working out what message the song writing wants to give. The children have looked at changing their voice to reach higher notes. Listen to our singing. 
Daily Mile
 
This week we started doing the daily mile. Luckily the weather was good for us today but throughout October, we will be doing a mile a day. We are hoping to get faster at completing the mile. 
Inference Skills
 
In reading we are looking a using inference skills. We are reading a text and then trying to work out other information from the clues that are in the text. We are trying to infer character's feeling, reasons for their actions and impressions given by the author. It is a tricky skill to learn so we will be working on this for the next few weeks. 
Another Day - another mile!
 
We have completed our first week of the daily mile. It was hard work but as the week has gone on, we are finding it easier and doing quicker. Only another 21 miles to go!
Number - Adding 2 numbers and exchanging 
 
We have finished our place value unit in maths so we have moved onto the number unit. We have started by adding 2 numbers and exchanging when a column goes over ten. Take a look at the children who could demonstrate this to the rest of the class. 
The Arrival
 
Still using the wordless book, The Arrival, we have been working out from the pictures what the story is about. The children have been really imaginative and creative and written their own version of chapter 2.
Niamh has chosen very interesting word choices and sentence openers. Listen to her read her work. 
Harvest Assembly 
 
Today in assembly time, we looked at Harvest. Harvest festivals are traditionally held on or near the Sunday of the Harvest Moon. This is the full Moon that occurs closest to thautumn equinox (about Sept. 23). In two years out of three, the Harvest Moon comes in September, but in some years it occurs in October.
What are Harvest Festivals? Harvest Festivals are celebrations of the food grown on the land.
Harvest Festival reminds Christians of all the good things God gives them. This makes them want to share with others who are not so fortunate. In schools and in Churches, people bring food from home to a Harvest Festival Service. After the service, the food that has been put on display is usually made into parcels and given to people in need.
Thanks giving ceremonies and celebrations for a successful harvest are both worldwide and very ancient. In Britain, we have given thanks for successful harvests since pagan times. We celebrate this day by singing, praying and decorating our churches with baskets of fruit and food in a festival known as 'Harvest Festival', usually during the month of September.
Artist Tim Curtis 
 
Tim Curtis is a local artist from Baildon. Tim came into school today to to show us his inspirations for his art work. Tim has his own website which can be found following the link. 
http://www.timcurtisartist.co.uk/
 
Tim showed us the work by Anthony Gormley and Ai Weiwei which inspired the idea for the project which we worked on. We used Anthony Gormley's terracotta figures as our vision for our work. 
Our Isolation / Home Learning  Week
 
Sadly, our final week of half term was done in isolation with home learning tasks. We used Google classrooms to complete our work and keep in touch with other. It felt very strange not being in class and Mrs. Gould and Mrs. Grattan missed the children a lot.  The class sent each other supportive messages and helped each other out with the new way of learning. Mrs. Gould was immensely proud of how well the children accessed this new way of remote learning.
As well as doing lots of online tasks which were set, the children found other ways to keep themselves busy. Take a look at how we kept busy in our isolation home learning week.
Remembrance Day 
In 2020 we pay tribute to the men and women of the Second World War generation, and to those of today’s, who have served and sacrificed to defend our nation. We remember the collaboration of the Commonwealth and Allied nations who stood shoulder to shoulder then to secure our freedom and the communities coming together today to protect us all.

We read about Remembrance Day and then completed a Remembrance day Silhouette using colouring crayons. The dark silhouette stands out from the colourful background.  

Science 
Animals including Humans.
 
In science we are looking at how we grow and change as we grow older. 

All animals, including humans, are born, they get older and bigger and some will go on to have children. In the end, all animals die. We call this a life cycle.

Animals are small when they start life. Over time they grow bigger and their bodies change.

When they are grown up, they might reproduce and have young animals of their own. These children will get older and may eventually also have children too, and so the life cycle keeps going!

Reading

In Year 5, we believe that reading is extremely important. One of the basic reasons why reading is important is that it helps you grow mentally, emotionally and psychologically. Every book gives you an opportunity to learn new things and explore new ideas. Reading books increases your knowledge and makes you more imaginative in your own writing.

The importance of reading is not limited to just these benefits. You will be amazed to know how beneficial reading books can be for you. Mollie is the first person from 5G to complete her level 2 reading chart. This means that she has read 80 time at home. Well done Mollie.

Cora completed her level 2 chart a few week later. Well done girls!

Christmas 
 
We designed our own Christmas cards and these have now been made into cards are are available to order. We think our designs are better than the design in the shops.
Inference Skills
 
In our reading lessons, we are looking at inference skills. An inference is any step in logic that allows someone to reach a conclusion based on evidence or reasoning. It is an informed assumption and is similar to a conclusion or a deduction. Inferences are very important when reading a story or text, and is a good reading comprehension skill. 

Inference can be defined as the process of drawing of a conclusion based on the available evidence plus previous knowledge and experience. In teacher-speak, inference questions are the types of questions that involve reading between the lines. Students are required to make an educated guess, as the answer will not be stated explicitly. Students must use clues from the text, coupled with their own experiences, to draw a logical conclusion.

Students begin the process of learning to read with simple decoding. From there, they work towards full comprehension of the text by learning to understand what has been said, not only through what is explicitly stated on the page,  but also through what the writer has implied. It is this ability to read what has been implied that the term inference refers to.

Science - Animals including Humans
 
In science so far, we have looked at the different stages of human life including baby, toddler, child, teenager, adult and elderly. We have discovered that we do a lot of our growing as a baby. We have looked at data of how baby boys and baby girls grow. We have made presented the data in a graph. 
National Maths Week
 
We are taking part in a national maths week. As part of this week, we are competing against other schools on the TT rockstars programme. The children are completing maths challenges to earn points both for our school and for our class. We hope that the children will continue to earn points at home. 
Remembrance Day
 
We will be marking Remembrance Day with a 2 minute silence. We have decorated our classroom window to remind us of the soldiers who risked their lives to save ours.
Lest we forget. 
SPaG.com
 
To support our online learning, we have subscribed to SPaG.com. This is an excellent resource where children can practice their spelling, punctuation and grammar learning from home. Weekly homework will be set on SPaG.com and this will also be used should be have to return to home learning. 
The children enjoyed using this today as it marks the work and gives them a score. 
Djembe Drums
 
As a part of our Black History Month work,  we have looked at African music. We have learnt how to play the djembe drums and done some African chanting. The children enjoyed using the instruments and learning about how they are made. 
Life Cycles
 
After looking at the human life cycle, we have looked at life cycles of other animals including frogs, chickens and butterflies. We compared animal life cycles to the life cycle of plants. We went to look at the parts of a plant and how they produce. 
Gestation Periods - science 
 
In our science unit, we have looked at the different gestation periods of different animals. We identified that larger animals have longer gestation periods. We used our maths skills to record our findings in bar graphs.
Ruby Bridges - The problems we all live with
 

The Problem We All Live With by Normal Rockwell stars Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old African American girl, on her first day of class. Clutching school supplies and clad in a clean white dress, Bridges looks like any other student starting the first grade. What surrounds the young girl, however, is not typical. Surrounded by US Marshals and strolling before a wall covered in racist graffiti and a recently-thrown tomato, Ruby walks in to school for her first dat.

Following the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Bridges was one of a few students selected to start the desegregation process in New Orleans. Bridges was the only one of these children sent to William Frantz School.

We have looked at recreating this piece of art work and Niamh has done an amazing job of it. 

Maths Day
 
After completing a TT Rockstars challenge week, the children came to school dressed as rock stars. They look amazing.
Christmas is coming!
 
To add a bit of festive cheers to our classroom, we have decorated our classroom door to look like a Christmas tree. 
Secret Santa Appeal 
 
Mr Cavalier-Lumley did our morning assembly via zoom this morning about the Secret Santa Appeal.

Every year JCI Bradford gets together with all kinds of organisations such as schools, businesses and shopping centres to collect Christmas presents via pop-up collection points or running mini appeals within some of these organisations. Blakehill are always very keen to take part. 

JCI Bradford leads the way with this annual Secret Santa Appeal starting originally in 1989. The appeal provides a great opportunity for JCI members to learn and practice skills in project management and people management as well as being active citizens.

The appeal collects over 6,000 presents each year. This project is one of the largest of its kind in the country and we would like to thank each and every person who has donated a present via our Secret Santa Appeal stand in the Kirkgate Shopping Centre, Bradford, Queensgate Market, Huddersfield, Eureka! the national children’s museum, Halifax and The Mill Outlet, Batley as well as the many businesses, schools and organisations that have helped to make a needy child’s Christmas that bit more special.

The appeal runs between the end of November and mid December.

Science - The Solar System
 
In Science, we are looking at the Sun, the moon and Earth. In our first lesson, we have drawn and named the planets of the solar system. 
Working Walls
 
We are coming to end of our units of work in both Maths and English. We have shown our journey on our working walls. Our working walls have helped us to remember key vocabulary and key facts. 
Day and Night 
 
In Science, we are learning about Earth, The Sun and The Moon. Today we identified that the Earth rotates ad this caused us to have day and night. 
Black History Month
 
To end the Black History Month topic, we have made a display of all of the different work work we have done about Ruby Bridges. We have enjoyed this topic and have learnt so much about how Ruby changed the lives of many other people. 
Food Technology 
 
In food technology we have looked at making fruit scones. We have tasted and evaluated scones and looked at what we liked and disliked about the different flavours. Some of us preferred the sweet scones whilst some preferred the savoury. 
Spanish 
 
In Spanish we have been learning numbers to 10. We have learnt the Spanish word for each number and worked on the pronunciation. After we had played some number games in Spanish, we did a number song. 
Break The Rules Day
 
On 14th December, we are having a break the rule day. 
How Planets Orbit the Sun.
 
We have been learning about how the planets orbit the sun. We acted this out on the play ground and we ended up with some very dizzy children. 
 

The Solar System includes the Sun, the Earth (where you are now!) and all of the other planets, asteroids and comets that go around and around it.

You may think that the Earth is a pretty big place, but the Earth isn’t even the biggest planet in the Solar System. The biggest planet is Jupiter – you could fit 1,321 Earths inside Jupiter. The Sun is even bigger than Jupiter – it would take 1.3 million planets the size of Earth to fill the same volume as the Sun.

It takes just over 365 days for the Earth to travel all the way around the Sun. We call the length of time it takes to go around the Sun a year, but to make life easier, most years have 365 days and every 4th year has 366 days. We call a year with 366 days a leap year. The extra day is February 29th. 2012 was a leap year, and 2016 and 2020 will be leap years.

The same force that holds you on the surface of the Earth so that you don’t float away when you jump, is what keeps the Moon revolving around the Earth and the Earth revolving around the Sun. This force is called gravity and the first man to discover that it existed was Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century.

Earth is the only planet on which we know that there have been plants and animals living. On some planets there is no air to breathe and on others it is either too hot or too cold. Some scientists think that creatures may have lived on Mars millions of years ago, when Mars was warmer and had more air – they try to find evidence to show this is true.

Until 2006, people thought that there were nine planets in the Solar System. The ninth planet was Pluto and it is even further away from the Sun than Neptune. Astronomers decided that Pluto was too small to be called a planet, so now there are only eight planets.

Computing - E-safety 
Use blocking / unsubscribing / reporting mechanisms appropriately.
 
We have looked at what to do if we receive any inappropriate or bullying messages. We have looked at different social media platforms and found ways to block and report any inappropriate messages. Layla gave some good advice. 
Wham Last Christmas 
 
We have learnt the song 'Last Christmas' and then used the green screen to help us make our video more realistic. It was lots of fun making the video.
E-safety 
Understand the terms plagiarism and copyright and be aware of the implications of copying and sharing content without permission.
 
We looked at the rules for copyright and plagiarism. We found out that it is like copying someone else's work or answers in a test. We can research and find information on the internet but we can not copy it as our own work. 
Art - Banksy
 
We looked at some of Banksy's work and discussed whether his work is art or graffiti. We discussed the bright eye catching background and the colourful graffiti tag which he includes. We are going to make our own Banksy style portrait but first we had a go at making a graffiti tag. 
Break The Rules Day
 
Today was break the rules day and the children made their own rules for the day. We have had lots of fun but it will be nice to go back to the school rules tomorrow. 
 
 
Carousel - Food technology 
 
This half term we have been making makingscones. We have tried different scones and evaluated them to help us make our own recipe. Some of the class liked sweet scones whilst others liked the savoury ones. We have measured the ingredients and made our own recipes.
After each batch of scones we evaluated them and suggested ways to improve them. 
3D cards and decorations
 
We have made 3D cards and decorations using paper. We folded the paper and stuck the folded circles together. Once we had folded lots of circles and stuck them together, it made a 3D bauble. We used the same design for the cards and the decorations. 
Banksy Art 
 
After working on our graffiti tags, we made large Banksy style graffiti art. This took us several sessions as we had to outline our graffiti letters on A3 paper, blend the colours, do a thick black out line and then do a contrasting colour in the background. We are really proud of how the work turned out. 
We wish you a Merry Christmas
 
What a strange year we have had but we have done and have worked extremely hard. Today is our last day of the term so we have enjoyed a Christmas dinner and worn our Christmas jumpers. We are ready for well deserved break and we look forward to returning in January.
Merry Christmas everyone.