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 have been sent to all parents.
• 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.
• We are focusing on writing recounts in English this half-term. Recounts are a non-fiction style of writing (so not a story), where you recall something that has already happened (in the past). Recounts are also full of facts. Think of a newspaper article – that’s a recount and it needs to contain facts. To prepare for this we need to begin gathering facts about the rainforest. There’s an information sheet here to get you started, but you are encouraged to also use you own information (from books or the internet) to gather as many facts as you can. Focus on the rainforest layers, the weather, the animals, and the dangers the rainforest face. We practiced how to create slides in class (with pictures as well), so you could present your facts in that way. If you are finding that hard, you could type something in Word, write it with pen and paper or present your findings in any way that makes sense to you.  
• Each week we are set spellings to learn. Click here for guidance on strategies you can use to support your child in learning these at home.  
• 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. 
• Make sure you keep fit at home with a bt of Cosmic Kids Yoga or a Joe Wix workout!    

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, we have been 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 experiments 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 - This half term we are learning to write recounts, with a focus on newspaper articles. A recount is a piece of non-fiction writing, so we will first look at the different types of non-fiction and discuss their uses. Having done that we will learn what makes a recount (past tense, chronological order etc). We will also continue to develop our ability to analyse and infer from a text through our reading lessons. Finally, we will be working on improving our spelling every day - in Year 5, our focus is on adding suffixes to root words.

Maths - We will continue to follow the Herts Essentials framework. Over the coming weeks, we will be focussing on written strategies for multiplication and division, with most of us learning to use short and long division to quickly solve problems. In addition, we will be developing our understanding of fractions, ensuring that we all have a really clear idea of what fractions are and what they mean. This will lead to us comparing, ordering, simplifying, adding, subtracting and multiplying fractions, as well as learning how to interpret negative numbers in a variety of ways.

Science - We will begin by completing our Electricity topic, developing our ability to draw conclusions from results and learning about the lives and work of famous scientists like Faraday, Maxwell and Franklin. We will then move on to investigate evolution, learning about the way that animals around the world have adapted over time to suit their environment.

Humanities - This half term we will carry out a focussed study of Brazil. We will begin by completing a map study of South America, locating different countries and capital cities. Following this, we will then explore the culture and human geography of Brazil, researching things like the flag, language, currency, cuisine, arts and sports. We will look into the economy of Brazil and how the country makes money. Finally, we will draw together everything we have learned about Brazil to compare life there with life in the UK.

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