Welcome to Year 5! 

In Year 5, the class teacher is Miss Wilson. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to come and speak to Miss Wilson. If she is not around at the beginning and end of the day, you can contact the school office and request an appointment. 

Please keep referring back to this page for regular updates about the children's learning. 

Homework and Reading diaries:

Miss Wilson would like the children to aim to read at least 3 times (on separate occasions) during the week, and for this to me recorded in their diaries. The children will have their weekly spellings stuck into their diaries, ready to be tested every Friday. Please encourage your child to practise these spellings at home, as well as practising their times tables on the TT Rockstars website.

Miss Wilson will ask the children to bring in their diaries every Friday for them to be checked and for their spellings to be stuck into their books ready for the following week. However, children in the class can bring in their diaries earlier to show Miss Wilson any homework or additional homework they have completed if they wish to. 

As always, thank you for your support.

PE DAYS (Spring 1)

Please note that our PE days for this half term will be: Tuesday (swimming sessions) and Thursday (indoor/outdoor).
 

County Swimming Lessons:

This is a reminder that Year 5 swimming lessons will begin Tuesday 13th January and will continue every Tuesday until 24th March 2026. Each swimming day the children must bring the following items:

1. Towel – named
2. Swimming costume/trunks - named
3. Polythene / waterproof bag to hold wet clothes in - named
4. Cap or band for those with hair long enough to enter the eyes or mouth
5. Suitable shoes and a coat will be required for the walk to the pool.

The children will put all of their kit into their PE bag to take to the pool. They will not need to bring any money with them. They will be supervised during their walk to the pool by members of school staff. Please do not hesitate to discuss any of your concerns with the school office on 01256 473791.

w.b. 19.01.26

Art: This week, we have started our new art unit: Mixed Media. During this lesson, we explored different paper craft techniques and practised using them in small groups. We learned how to origami paper, marble paper, quill paper and use paper in decoupage. Year 5 had a great time exploring these different paper crafting techniques and we can collectively say that marbling was definitely our favourite technique! 

Maths: This week, we have got our teeth stuck into our next maths unit after fractions: Multiplication and Division. Year 5 will be practising the formal written methods for multiplying 2-, 3- and 4- digit numbers by 1- and 2- digit numbers. Although no additional homework will not be set for this unit yet, any additional practise that your child could do at home would really help to strengthen their skills at school. As always, thank you for your continued support.

Science: In our science lessons this week, we built on our learning of the different properties a solid material can have and conducted our own experiment to test the thermal conductivity of different materials. We tested similar materials as last week and used thermocolour paper to test how thermally conductive the materials were (which was very exciting as we had not used this before). The class found some anomalies when we tested the materials and we concluded that this could be because different children in the group were testing them and the materials were different weights and sizes. If we were to do this experiment again, we decided that we would change these things so that the results were more accurate. 

w.b. 12.01.26

Geography: This week, we started learning about Living Rainforests, which is the title of our new geography unit. We worked in pairs to create a knowledge organisers about the flora, fauna, climate and different layers of the rainforests. We used video clips, music and extracts of books to gather the knowledge we needed to create our knowledge organisers. Year 5 will use this, and the knowledge throughout the unit to create a short documentary about living rainforests, David Attenborough-style.

Swimming: This week, Year 5 began their swimming lessons at the Aquadrome. We couldn't be more proud of how the children handled themselves during their first lesson and walk down to the swimming pool. They were polite, considerate and incredibly resilient in the lesson and I know some of the most unconfident swimmers even surprised themselves with what they were able to do on the day. We can't wait to see what they will achieve as the weeks go on. Move over Adam Peaty - the Year 5s at Chiltern are coming for you!

Science: This week, we started our new science unit: Properties and changes of materials. In this lesson, we tested the different properties of a variety of different materials. We worked in groups to test how hard (strong), stretchy, bendy, magnetic, waterproof and electrically conductive different materials were. We will build on this knowledge throughout the unit.

w.b. 05.01.26: Welcome Back Team!

Spring 1

English: This week, we read a book called The Viewer, which is our writing stimulus for the first half of Spring 1. We read the book a few times over the week and really immersed ourselves in the book. Then we explored and discussed images from the book showing significant periods in history.  Each group organised the pictures into different categories, for example: destruction, war, death and discovery.
 

After this, we used key statements about the story to sort into a zone of relevance. This was a great discussion as many of us had different opinions as to how each has an influence on the story outcome. 

RE: In today’s lesson, we reflected on the books we have read so far in our lives and what made them special to us. Then, we discussed how we felt when we read these books. 

After this, we read a Sikh traditional tale and discussed what lessons we have learned from this story and how this could be similar to other stories from other faiths such as Christianity and Judaism.

w.b. 15.12.25

RE: Over the past few lessons, we have started to investigate our understanding of what ‘true’ means to us. We then recapped our understanding of the Christmas story and mind mapped everything we knew about this religious story. After that, we read different versions of the Christmas story from the Bible (chapters from Luke and Matthew. We were given a version to story map and discussed with another group what the similarities and differences were. Then, we started to discuss what might or might not be 100% true and why we thought this. At the end of the lesson, we discussed why there might be differences and whether that was important or not to Christians.

w.b. 8.12.25

Computing: This week we have been practising our digital drawing skills by creating vector drawings. We use Google drawings to create our drawings and experimented with the different tools that the program had to offer. We worked in groups to fill in space with different colours, copy and paste identical drawings and select different shapes to layer and order in our design. We had great fun and I have been so impressed with how quickly the class mastered how to create vector drawings. 

Geography: In the last week before term, we looked at how we could be sustainable and how often factories find it hard to be sustainable; due to using fossil fuels, wasting natural resources and using cheapest methods of production possible. We understood that supply and demand often contributes towards this. We looked at the solutions factories are starting to apply to leave a smaller carbon footprint and matched these up. We then played the memory game with a partner to learn these solutions.

w.b. 24.11.25

Maths: In our maths lessons this week, we have continued to build upon our learning of factors and have started to develop our understanding of squared numbers. We created our own arrays to show our factors and prove whether a number was a squared number or not. Great work team!

w.b. 17.11.25

Art:  This week, year 5 continued to build on their understanding of line drawings and started to incorporate different shading techniques to our line drawings. First, the class practised four different shading techniques that other artists, including the famous Van Gough, have used in their own artwork. These techniques were: contour lines, stippling, scribbling, and cross-hatching. Next, we practised these different techniques on our own line drawing of an apple with a cut out section to show the areas of light and dark. WOW - I'm one incredibly proud teacher. Great effort Year 5!

Maths: In our maths sessions this week, we have been learning about common factors and multiples as well as prime numbers. In order to identify whether a number was a prime number, we used concrete resources such as Diennes and counters to create arrays, and visual resources such as our multiplication grids. This helped us to identify the amount of factors a multiple had and we found out that if we could not make another rectangular array using the manipulatives, other than a single row horizontally or vertically, then the number was prime. We will be using this knowledge to begin to identify square numbers.

w.b. 10.11.25

Art: This week, we continued learning about continuous line drawings and focussed our research on lfinding out more about the famous Spanish artist: Pablo Picasso. Once we had learned more about his life and artistic style, we started to replicate some of Picasso's famous line drawings. We drew multiples attempts of the same image to encourage the children build on a edit their sketches to help them create an accurate replica. WOW - great work team 5!

History visit: Portals to the Past

This term, Year 5 were visited by a Greek warrior named Nikimedes. During his visit, he told many tales of the different battles that he and the rest of the Greek army were a part of and shared some exciting Greek myths that kept us on the edge of our seats.

He explained to the children what he would have worn during the long yet successful battles he was a part of, and some of the children were even allowed to try some of this on! They were in awe of the ancient weapons he also brought along with him.

The class also had great fun delving deep into Greek culture, exploring sources of information about everyday life, the jobs people had, the fashion, the music they listened to, as well as famous Greek heroes and philosophers.

Towards the end of Nikimedes’ visit, the children had the opportunity to take part in some warrior drills that the armies would’ve taken part in as well as some of the games that would’ve been played at the ancient Olympic games.

Year 5 would like to thank Nikimedes for taking the time to visit us and the valuable knowledge he has given us.

RE: In our RE lessons this week, we introduced our new topic: The Christmas Story in Christianity. First, the class drew everything they knew or could remember about the Christmas on whiteboards. Some of the children recalled the story from some carols they remembered singing and the nativities that they have been a part of. Then, the children to watched a clip with no sound and then on whiteboards, they had two minutes to write their eye-witness account. We shared some of our accounts with the class and started to discuss which accounts were the same, similar or different and why. We then we watched the news clip again this time with sound and then discussed if our original version of events matched their eye witness account. Towards the end of the lesson, we discussed how eye-witness accounts are subjective and even though we have all witnessed the same event, we each see things through our own lens. We will be building on this line of thinking throughout the rest of this topic.

w.b. 03.11.25

English: It's great to see the children returning from half term rested and enthusiastic to begin our new leanring topics! This week, we started our new writing unit where the children will be writing a newspaper article for the Greek Gazette. To kick things off, we learned about the importance of a catchy headline for a newspaper report and began to create our own for Hercules' battle with the Nemean Lion. We focussed on trying to use alliteration and 'puns' to generate our headlines in small groups. Great work year 5!

Science: This week, year 5 were lucky enough to be invited by Queen Mary's College (QMC) to visit their Science Centre. Our new science topic is Earth and Space, and year 5 had a brilliant time conducting practical experiments about this topic. They worked in small groups to complete an investigation about how the length of our shadows changed depending on the time of day, created our own model to show the different phases of the moon, learned about the different orbits of the planets in our solar system and learned more about the orbit of our planet around the sun and the moon around the Earth. This was a fantastic way to kick off our new science unit and I know they will have a great time learning more about this topic. Too infinity and beyond...

Art: In our art lesson this week, we started our new topic: Light, line and shadow. In this lesson, we learned about continuous line drawing and some of the artists that have adopted this style of art. We then had a go at practising how to draw images with a continuous line with a selection of sketches. Some of the children even challenged themselves to show shadow and shade using a continuous line. It's clear to see that we have a few Picassos in the ranks - well done team!

w.b. 13th October 2025

English: This week, we have been practising writing speech using the correct punctuation that we learnt in Year 4. Before completing the task in their books, the children created an imaginary conversation between two objects or people and worked in groups to write what they would say. They used this learning to help them write what Hercules would say and how when he was fighting the Nemean Lion. 

Music: In our music lessons this week, we explored the sounds that different percussion instruments make. We worked in groups to practise how to use them and experiemented with the different sounds they make. We will use this learning to help us create a story behind the music in the next lesson. 

w.b. 6th October 2025

PE: In PE this week, we continued to practise a variety of different balances that we could put into our own gymnastic sequence at the end of half term. We focussed on ensuring our fingers and toes were pointed in true 'gymnastic-fashion', and challenged ourselves to hold the balance between 5-7 seconds. Year 5 did a great job and expertly performed their balances. Not only this, but during the lesson, we began to think about and practise different ways of travelling between their balances. We will continue to practise these to make sure our routines are as effective as possible. 

Maths: During our maths lessons this week, we moved onto our next block: addition and subtraction. This week, we focussed on practising our mental strategies in order to solve addition and subtraction calculations. In our maths lessons, we have been using concrete and visual resources such as place value counters, diennes and number cards to help us to visualise the problems and the exchanging within the calculation. 

w.b. 29th September 2025

English: This week, Year 5 have been getting stuck into our new writing unit: Hercules, a Greek myth. In this unit, the children will write their own Greek myth using narrative writing techniques. Before writing our myths, Year 5 read a Hercules graphic novel that tells the story of Hercules' 12 labours, which will be using as our stimulus for writing our own myths. They all enjoyed reading the graphic novel and had fun acting out different scenes from it. 

Music: In music this week, we have been learning about tempo, rhythm, dynamics and pitch in music. We listened to a classical piece of music and began to identify these features within the music. During the lesson, we thought about how the music made us feel and collected our ideas. These were then shared with each other and we spotted some similarities in the adjectives we chose to write. 

School Councillor Votes: This week was a very important week at Chiltern - it was time to decide who will be our school councillors. In Year 5, we have been learning about all the different British Values, especially democracy. Before the vote, we were lucky enough to be visited by our local MP, Luke Murphy, who explained more about democracy. During the week, we visited our very own voting station in our school library and voted for who we wanted to be our Year 5 school councillor representative. Congratulations Mason, who is our new Year 5 school councillor. 

w.b. 22nd September 2025

Maths: During our number and place value unit, we have been using place value charts and counters to help us create numbers and the value on its digits. One of the questions we were asked to answer required us to create different numbers using only 5 counters and we had great fun finding out how many different numbers with different amounts of digits we could make. 

History: During this week's lesson, we used our historical enquiry into the Dark Age and Archaic period by asking questions that we would need to answer in order to find out more information about these periods in history. We were then asked to compare the Dark Ages to the Archaic Period within the Ancient Greek civilication. We listened to a podcast and played our version of Bingo where we had cross off any facts that we could hear whilst we were listening to the podcast. 

w.b. 15th September 2025

P.E: This week, we began our new gymnastics unit that focusses on balances and sequences. In this unit, we began practising level 1 balances indpendently, while our partners gave us feedback about what we did successfully and how we could improve next time. We will be building on this learning later in the unit where we will be practising level 2-4 balances including partner balances. 

R.E: In today's lesson, we discussed the meaning of the word commitment and sort examples of commitment into low commitment (doing a little) and high commitment (putting in lots of effort) based on our personal response. Then, we wrote our own example of commitment and what it means to us.

w.b. 8th September 2025

English: During our first full week back at school, we have got stuck into our new writing unit about Leo and the Gorgon's Curse. We worked in groups to find synonyms for some adjectives and nouns that we could use in our writing, and then began to rank them on paint strips. They were ranked from general vocabulary that we could use in most sentences to specfic words that we would be only be able to use in specific contexts or sentences. 

Art: This week, we also began our new art unit: Tints, Tones and Shades. We created our own examples of these art technique to help us to remember how to create them later on in the unit.