This week we visited West Stow, an Anglo Saxon museum, to investigate how people in this era would have lived. 

We got to handle and interrogate different objects that were found at the site and replicas of tools and equipment that they used. The cow jaw bone drew a lot of attention with some at first thinking it could have been a person. We then looked around the museum and looked at things such as swords, shields and clothes (we even got to try some of them on!) 

After lunch we visited the village. We went round in groups looking at how they were built and what materials were used. We found out that sometimes up to 10 people would live in a house with only one room and one fire. At the end of the day we all gathered in the 'Great Hall' and our group leader gave us some extra background information on the site and we got an opportunity to ask her questions about what we had experienced. 

We had a great day out and it was fun to actually see and experience how the Anglo-Saxons lived.

Year 5 have made a great start to the year. We are really enjoying our summer reading book Kick and we are now finding out more about child labour and making clothes ethically. This week we have started writing a persuasive letter to a famous footballer, John Stones, asking him to make certain his sponsored kit is manufactured in a Child Labour Free Zone. 

In science, we have started our unit on forces by looking at how different forces may act on objects. We carried out a number of experiments and found some interesting results. One of our favourites was a bottle filled with rice. We inserted a pencil into the bottle and had to push it in and out of the rice continually. Eventually, we were able to hold the bottle with just the pencil. We think this happened because the little pockets of air between the rice started to reduce as the pencil was pushed in and out. As the grains of rice got pushed closer together, there was a lot less air between them. The grains were also rubbing against each other and friction allowed the pencil to get ‘stuck’ in the rice. 

Year 5 have had new topics coming in from all angles! (You'll see the pun later) 

In literacy, we have started our new literacy topic based on the book kick where we will be writing a letter to a professional sportsperson to try and persuade them to wear clothes with a label that show their clothes come from child-labour free zones. We have completed our research and will begin starting our writing process. 

In maths our new topic, you guessed it, is angles! 

We have been looking at the different types of angles and have been practising using a protractor to measure the angles accurately.

Take a look at our books and us practising using our protractors. 

Year 5 have been busy this week with our DT topic all about structures. Our focus was on bridges.
We looked at questions such as; which shape is the strongest for a bridge? What materials would make the best bridge? We looked at arch, beam and truss bridges. We practised the method of creating a truss bridge using spaghetti and masking tape which created quite a lot of mess
and was a good challenge. We all agreed after that a bridge of spaghetti was not the best choice as it isn’t a suitable material for the purpose of a bridge.
Over the last 2 days of term we have been using a number of skills and different pieces of equipment to build our very own truss bridges. We sawed our pieces of wood into the correct
length and angles. We used glue guns to put all of our pieces together to create our final products which we will then evaluate at the start of next term.

In Year 5 we have been continuing our science learning on materials and this week we were looking at the best ways to separate different materials using their unique properties. As you can see, we had a lot of fun using different pieces of equipment to sort out the mess left by the adults. 

We have also planned our writing of a non-chronological report about an animal that lives in an extreme habitat. We used Chromebook’s to research an animal of choice and collected as many facts as we could! We will start writing these up next week and can’t wait to see and share the final pieces of work.

What a lovely start to the new year we have had in Year 5! In science, we have been investigating materials and the differences between the particles of solids, liquids and gasses. As you can see in the pictures, it was a tight fit for some! (pictures for this will follow) After looking at this we sorted a number of different things into each of the 3 states. Do you think cream is a solid or a liquid? 

In maths, we have started our new topic focused on reading and understanding timetables and graphs. We have got off to a great start in this topic, working well in groups and pairs to find answers and investigate the line graphs.