Hello and Welcome to Year 5!

We are Mrs Bairstow and Mrs Yemm, and we are the Year 5 class teachers.  Mrs Bairstow will be teaching from Monday - Thursday and Mrs Yemm will teach every Friday. Also supporting Year 5, we have Mrs Johnson, Mrs Sims and Mrs Allen.

Below is some information on what we will be learning about, our topics and some ideas for how you can help your child at home, which we hope will be useful.

If you have any questions or queries about your child’s learning at school or at home, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best wishes,

Mrs Bairstow and Mrs Yemm

Information for Year 5 Class

English: Our first class text is ‘The Promise’ by Nicola Davies before we move onto ‘Hidden Figures’ by Margot Lee Shetterly in Term 2. In the first term, we will be working on writing an alternative version of the story ‘The Promise’ and we will also write instructions for how to improve a city. In Term 2, we will retell the story of ‘Hidden Figures’ from one of the women’s perspectives and we will write a biography based on one of the four women. In Term 3, we will be reading 'How to Live Forever' by Colin Thompson and we will be writing an alternative ending to the story and a formal discussion. Term 4's book is called 'Gender Swapped Greek Myths' by Karrie Fransman and we will complete a sequel and a non-chronological report about Ancient Greece. In Term 5, we will read 'Wisp: A Story of Hope' by Zana Fraillon and we will describe an alternative character and write a persuasive argument. Finally, in Term 6 we will read 'The Man who Walked Between the Towers' by Mordacai Gerstein and write a prequel and a newspaper report about this fascinating real-life event in New York City.

Mathematics: In Maths, we will start by recapping place value before moving onto addition and subtraction. We will use the column addition and subtraction methods as well as learning how to estimate, use inverse operations and select efficient strategies for calculations. We will also study multiplication and division and children will be practising the written methods of short multiplication, long multiplication and short division. Throughout the year, it is essential that children practise all of their times tables, as they need to know them at speed and be able to apply them to different areas of Maths, such as division, fractions, decimals and percentages. Some useful websites for children to access at home are Topmarks, BBC Bitesize, Times Table Rockstars, Corbett Maths and IXL (found at https://uk.ixl.com/maths/year-5. We will also be studying fractions, decimals, percentages, area, perimeter, statistics, shape, position and direction, negative numbers, volume and converting units of measure throughout Year 5.

Religious Education (RE): In Religious Education, our topics are called Creation and Covenant, Prophecy and Promise, Galilee to Jerusalem, Desert to Garden, To the End of the Earth and Dialogue and Encounter. We will be following a new Religious Education scheme this year and are looking forward to observing the children extend and deepen their knowledge and understanding of the Catholic faith.

Science: Year 5's Science topics are Materials: Mixtures and Separation, Materials: Properties and Changes, Forces and Space: Earth and Space, Forces and Space: Imbalanced Forces, Living Things: Life Cycles and Reproduction and Animals, Including Humans: Human Timeline / Making Connections.

History: In History, children will be learning about what life was like in Tudor England, and will be studying the life of Henry VIII, whether he was a fair ruler or a tyrant, his six wives and why he had so many of them! Children will learn why Anne Boleyn was executed, how Queen Elizabeth I used a royal progress, what inventories can tell us about Tudor times and what John Blanke had in his inventory. Years 5 and 6 will also be visiting Henry VIII's former home of Hampton Court Palace on a very exciting school trip in November! In Year 5, children also learn about the Vikings and whether they were raiders, traders or something else, and they lastly study the Ancient Greek civilisation and the legacy that they have left for us today.

Geography: In Geography, children will learn about why oceans matter and they will study how we use our oceans, what the Great Barrier Reef is, why our oceans are suffering, what we can do to help our oceans, and how littered our marine environment is. They will also study what life is like in the Alps and how different this is from our local area, and they will finally learn about the desert and whether they would like to live there or not through studying biomes, desert locations, physical features of deserts, how deserts are used and what their threats are.

Physical Education (PE): Our PE will mainly consist of our weekly swimming lessons on a Wednesday at Tockington Manor. On a Wednesday, children may come to school wearing their PE kits and will also need to bring their swimming kits in a bag. We will have a very short PE session on some Friday mornings, so children may wear trainers to school on a Tuesday. During these shorter sessions, children will complete a range of tasks such as yoga, fitness, dance, athletics, tennis and rounders.

Homework: Please ensure that you still hear your child read as much as you can at home and write a short comment in the children’s yellow Reading Record. Please ask your child questions about what they have read, and in particular ask them to summarise their text, make inferences and predictions, and comparisons to other books they have read. Reading is not restricted to levelled reading books- children should read a variety of text types such as magazines, newspapers, instruction manuals, information books and comics. Each term, a homework grid will be sent home with different coloured activities for different subject areas to complete. Homework books will be collected in at the end of each term and children should aim to choose and complete at least six of the tasks (all of them if possible!) There will also be some extension and challenge questions included in the grid.

Long Term Plan - 2025 - 2026

Please click here to view our Long Term plan for this Year.  This document details our topics and focus for each subject for Terms 1 through to 6 for this academic year.