Welcome to Fox class! Our teacher is Mr Hollingsworth, who has been at Bedwell ever since he started teaching. He is really good at history and geography, and he says his favourite things are sports (especially American Football), dogs and Star Wars. He doesn’t like cats. very much, and although he’s not scared of many things, he does find bats a bit creepy!

• All about Year 5 - our class presentation
• Our curriculum map - find out about our current topics
• Our latest class newsletter
• Meet our school councilors, Ruby and Devarni

Home learning ideas:

• We have started using Google Classroom in class, so we will be familiar with it as a platform for learning beyond school. Login details will be coming home soon.      
• We are regularly set maths tasks and challenges via Mathletics, and should all know how to log in - let your teacher know if you can't get on. We've also started using Times Table Rock Stars to support us in learning our tables facts.
• In geography this term we are learning about the rainforests, which provides lots of opportunities for learning beyond the classroom - try investigating the weather, finding out where rainforests can be found on maps and globes or making posters, picture or models of rainforest environments. There's lots of information, video and links to get you started available on the BBC Bitesize webiste, here.
• In science, we are exploring electricity, focussing in particular on drawing accurate circuit diagrams. There are loads of resources and ideas to support this topic available through the Oak National Academy, here.      

Our latest news:

• We started the term with a DT project that saw us constructing motorised vehicles. We used saws and glue guns to build a wooden chassis, then added motors, batteries, gears and pulleys to make them race across the carpet (and crash into the wall!)
 
• In science this term, exploring electrical circuits. We have revised the features (and components) that are needed to build a working circuit, and have learnt to draw and interpret circuit diagrams. We also constructed a variety of different switches and planned experiements to find out how you can change the brightness of a bulb in a circuit.  
 

 
• School Council elections - One of our first tasks this term was to elect our new School Councillors. We thought carefully about the skills we thought a good class representative should have, what we liked about our school and how it could be improved further. Building on this, we then drew on all our understanding to write speeches, ’selling’ ourselves to the rest of our class and showing why we’d be the perfect Councillor. It was a tough choice, with loads of us making fantastic speeches, but once voting was complete and all the ballots had been counted, we elected Ruby and Devarni. You can read their speeches here.     
 
• To support our learning about the Ancient Greeks, we visited the British Museum. We spent a busy day looking at and learning about historical figures and times that have shaped the world of today. We took notes, asked questions and discussed the nature of different artefacts and their origins - all the skills that good historians need to use when confronted by evidence from the past. As well as learning about life in Ancient Greece, we snapped up the opportunity to learn about the Egyptians, Roman Empire, Ancient Asia and elements of African traditions, too.
 

We have been learning about... 

English - This half term we have worked on all thing persuasive. The term began with a spy-themed assault course, followed by a secret message from MI6. Our model text was a letter of application to join the secret service in order to capture the infamous Dr Black. After weeks of learning about the features and structure of persuasive writing, we wrote our own application letters. Needless to say a handful of us wanted to apply to work in Dr. Black’s evil organisation instead, which we did with great relish and enthusiasm.

Art - In the Spring, we spent time in our English and Guided Reading lessons exploring the story Wonder, by R.J Palacio. This brilliant, inspirational book has allowed us to see the world through the eyes of August Pullman - a boy battling to be seen as more than his facial differences. At the start of the unit, we spent time creating art work using the front cover of the book for inspiration. To achieve this, we also spent time reflecting on the words that stand out to us. Below, you can see some fantastic examples of our finished pieces.

This term's topics

English - Our next English unit will see us focussing on discussion texts. We will be working on looking at issues from different viewpoints, and considering what it means to present a ’balanced’ discussion, before collecting ideas and writing discussions of our own. We will take part in class debates and consider the devices that good speakers and writers use to make their arguments more convincing and persuasive.

Maths - We will continue to follow the Herts Essentials framework for maths. We will be continuing to develop our understanding of fractions, before moving on to explore measures. We will learn to calculate perimeter, area and volume, to compare metric and imperial units (miles, pints etc) and to estimate quantities using both systems. Drawing all of our understanding together, we will then learn to solve a wide variety of problems involving measures of mass, capacity, length, area and time.

Science - We will be learning about the Earth Sun and Moon. We will discover how they each move relative to one another, and begin to understand the forces responsible for this. We will learn how the Earth’s orbit creates years and seasons, and how its rotation creates day and night. We will also be building our own 3d models to represent all of this and support our learning.

Humanities - Our geography focus will shift to mountains next half-term. We will learn to locate the world’s major mountains and mountain ranges on a variety of maps and globes, and look for patterns in the areas where they are found. This will then lead-on to exploring the different ways in which mountains can be formed by movements and ‘hot spots’ within the Earth. To round-off our topic, we will be examining the crucial relationship between rivers and mountains, and the effect that they have on human life around them.

Take a look at our curriculum map for more information on our topics.