Welcome to the Summer Term!

It's a new term and we have a new classroom!  Please have a look at the photographs to see how much our classroom has changed.

This is the final term of Year Five and we will be working hard to make sure that everybody is ready to make a strong start to Year Six.

We are looking forward to continuing to watch all the children progress and grow throughout the year. Check out this page weekly to see photo updates of all the fun learning taking place. 

Please see below a link to the Year 5 Curriculum outlining all the exciting learning opportunities your child will experience this academic year.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact either of us.

Mrs Kent and Mr Murphy

Science Day - Predicting and Observing

We began our Science Day by predicting what would happen when we put raisins into a fizzy drink.  We then observed the results and were quite surprised!  We were able to explain what happened using scientific vocabulary.

Science Day - Scientist Speeches

We continued Science Day with speeches about famous scientists who have inspired us.  It was fascinating and we all learnt so much.

Science Day - Marble Run Teamwork

The final activity during Science Day involved working in a team to create a marble run.

Time

We revised telling the time to five minute intervals in Maths this morning.  We played a matching game and then drew times on the KS1 playground to help the younger children learn.

Macbeth - Day Two

We started learning about the play "Macbeth," by acting out scenes where the Thane of Cordaw first fought along side his friends and then betrayed them.  We completed some excellent writing following the role plays.

Fun Science!

We thought about all the different skills that a scientists uses when we carried out two investigations this afternoon.  Firstly, we tried to make paperclips float and then we investigated and observes what happens when you add bicarbonate of soda to frozen vinegar.

Shakespeare - Day One

We began our new English unit of work by looking for clues about a Shakespeare play.  Once we had found props and vocabulary, we decided that the play was about a prince in Scotland, who went to war.  We then used the props to create and act out our own stories.

Mandarin Lesson

We were delighted to welcome Miss Lei to our class today.  She gave us an introduction to Mandarin, which was fascinating and so much fun!

Desk Drumming

We had great fun trying out desk drumming with swimming noodles.  Some of us will be joining the new club next week!

Cricket Workshops

We have a wonderful cricket workshop with a trainer from Middlesex Cricket Club.  It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon and we all tried and learnt some new skills.

Maths -  Negative Number Lines

We began the new half term by learning about negative numbers in Maths.  We created our own number lines on the Key Stage One playground. 

Careers Week - Dress Up Day

Careers Week - Model Making

We made 3D models of ourselves in our future careers or something to do with the job that we would like to have.  How many can you guess?

Careers Week - Paramedic Visit

We had a visit from two inspirational paramedics who told us all about their job.  One member of our class even had the opportunity to try on their jacket!

Careers Week - Fire Service Visit

The pictures say it all!!!

Careers Week - Budgeting Maths

In Maths, we were each given a career with an annual salary.  We then had to calculate our monthly pay and our take home pay after tax.  Once we knew how much money we had, we chose a home and a car that we could afford.  There were also some surprises which we hadn't budgeted for!

Kidzania

We had a wonderful day at Kidzania.  What a great preparation for Careers Week!  Here are some photographs which show some of the different jobs which we tried.

Road Safety Workshop

We were lucky to have a visit from Reb and Caz from The Riot Act who performed a workshop about road safety and active travel.  We learnt so much and were entertained at the same time.

Coronation activities - Thursday and Friday

Coronation Week - Wednesday

During Maths, we looked for angles in royal buildings including Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey and Sandringham House.  As a challenge, we designed a playhouse for Prince William's children and made sure that our design included acute, right and obtuse angles.  This afternoon, we visited Years One, Two and Four to teach them the actions to our coronation song.  We then watched a video about the Queen's coronation and learnt all about the coronation regalia by researching facts for a quiz.  Our next activity was to listen to different styles of music which will be performed during the coronation and to draw pictures showing what we thought about.

Coronation Week - Tuesday

We had a great start to our Coronation Week activities.  During our Maths lesson, we designed a new crown for the King.  Each design had to include shapes drawn with certain dimensions and properties.  Before lunch, we helped Year Three to learn the actions to our coronation song.  This afternoon, we completed a treasure hunt which taught us facts and dates about previous monarchs.  We ended with a quiz.  Congratulations to Leopards who were the fist to find the correct answers!

Maths - Creating Tables

We worked in pairs to create tables of information to show the different colour and shape of objects in our cups.  We checked each other's work and set questions.

Caritas In Action

This week in RE, we looked at the theme of stewardship and how we can better take care of God's creation. This marks the beginning of our work on Catholic Social Teaching. 

The Year 5 class planned and build sustainable green schools using Lego pieces and talked about how their schools were environmentally friendly. 

Our Classroom

The builders and decorators were busy during the holidays and we have come back to a new and improved classroom!

Maths - Measuring Perimeter 

We used metre sticks, tape measures and rulers to measure the perimeter of quadrilaterals in the classroom.

Geography - Earthquake Survival 

We learnt about how to react in the (unlikely) event of an earthquake in North London.  We learnt to drop to the floor, seek cover, grab on to something stable and wait for the shaking to stop.  If it is then safe, the next step is to move outside and away from buildings.  We created posters to inform others of this.

English - Plastic Pollution

We are starting a new unit of non-fiction work in English, learning about how we cause pollution through our use of plastics.  We were astonished to enter the classroom and find that it had been littered with plastic rubbish and it made us think about how pollution makes us feel.

Kew Gardens

The rain didn't stop us enjoying a wonderful day out at Kew Gardens, where we learnt about the life cycle of plants and explored the different environments in which they grow.  Here are the photographs from Mrs Kent's group . . . .

Art and Geography - Mount Etna

Our Geography topics this term include Italy and Volcanoes.  We combined both of these in an Art lesson and created pictures of an active Mount Etna by using layers of tissue paper and glue to create the night sky and lava.

World Book Day

We had a wonderful World Book Day. Here are some photographs from the day. Year 5 enjoyed taking part in an online book quiz followed by a draw along with illustrator Sheena Dempsey. In the afternoon, we watched a pantomine and visited the younger Year 2 children for a read along.

NSPCC Workshop

Year Five took part in an excellent workshop about Speak Out, Stay Safe, with the NSPCC.

Maths - Decimals and Fractions

We have been learning about decimals and fractions in Maths.  We used cubes to show tenths and one hundredths and played a fraction and decimal matching game to improve our knowledge and understanding.

Benin Day - Making Musical Instruments

During the afternoon of Benin Day, we made thumb pianos, based on traditional African instruments from the area.

Benin Day - Bronze Bracelets 

The Benin people were famous for using bronze to create works of art, weapons and farming tools.  We made our own bronze bracelets and carved Benin patterns into them.

Benin Day - Fun Learning Activities

We began our Benin Day by learning all about this fascinating kingdom.  We ordered key events in a timeline and then learnt new vocabulary in a treasure hunt.  After reading more about the Ogisos and the Obas - the Kings of Benin - we took part in an online quiz to test our knowledge. 

Safer Internet Day 

We began Safer Internet Day with a wonderful assembly by Mr Murphy and the digital leaders before taking part in an online coding workshop.  Mrs Broderick, our Chair of Governors, then joined us for an interesting and informative discussion about online safety.  Our next activity was to create a word cloud online, using important words about internet safety.  We then worked together to create a "diamond nine" of the words we thought were most significant.

Safer Internet Haikus

We combined our knowledge and understanding of a safer Internet with our talent for poetry writing and created Haikus.

Class Liturgy - Forgiveness

We started the day with a beautiful Liturgy in our chapel.

Cups!

We have been using red, orange and green cups to show our teachers how well we understand our work and how confident we feel.  We shared this idea with Year Three and Year Four, who are keen to start using them too!

Investigating Remainders

In Maths, we used straws to make shapes and investigate remainders when we divided by the numbers of sides or edges in each shape.

Science - Day and Night

We investigated how day and night are caused by the rotation of the Earth and its relationship to the Sun using balls to represent Earth and torches to be the Sun.

English - Transmission from Mars

We started our new topic by reading and arranging sections of the focus text.  We then identified themes which run through the story.  Next we created freeze frames for key moments in the text.  As you can see, some of it is very dramatic!  Finally, we created story maps.

Maths Week - Brilliant Bird Feeders

We used a range of Maths knowledge, skills and understanding including measuring, mental maths, division and fractions to make bird feeders which we then hung in the school grounds.  We'll be able to compare how much food there was at the start of the project with what is left at the end of the week.

Roots to Food

We had a great afternoon preparing a Thai-Indonesian red curry with Chef Darren.  Keep an eye on the Google classroom page for the recipe and post a message if you try this at home.

Maths Week - Tuesday - Excellent Estimating!

For our second lesson in Maths week, we took part in some estimating activities where we worked in pairs and teams to estimate length, time and amounts.

MATHS WEEK - Monday Multiplication

We began Maths Week by playing different multiplication games and puzzles to help us remember what we learnt last week.  It was fun and we had lots of opportunities to try multiplying two digit numbers by two digit numbers!

Science - Sun, Moon and Earth

We started our topic by creating models to show how the Earth orbits the Sun and the Moon orbits the Earth.

English - Contrasting Experiences

To start our news English topic, we played games inside, alone and in silence on the i-Pads before playing games in teams outside.  We then compared the two experiences and most people agreed that the team work on the playground was more fun, although some people liked the tranquility of the inside activity.

The Twelve Days of Christmas Maths

How many gifts did my true love send to me?  We sang the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and then answered Maths questions about the number of different gifts.  It was quite tricky and we used different strategies to calculate the answers.

Christmas Fun!

We wore our Christmas jumpers and enjoyed eating Christmas dinner together.

Science - Investigating Friction

We investigated friction by rolling a cotton reel down a slope and measuring how far it went on different surfaces (carpet, concrete, wood floor, grass and Astroturf).  Which surface do you think produced the most friction?

Advent

We started our Advent celebrations by attending Mass at Five Precious Wounds and we were very proud of the two members of our class who were altar servers.  We have changed the cloth on our prayer table to purple to signify Advent and we shared a class worship in our new chapel, where we took the time to think about the light that Jesus brings to our lives.

World Cup Fever!

Did you know that each class at OLOL has picked the names of four countries to follow in the Men's Football World Cup?  Year Five are following Senegal, The Netherlands, Australia and Canada.  We spent our Geography lesson researching the flags of each country and locating them on a world map.  We then created posters with pictures and interesting facts and shared them as a class.

English - Zoo by Anthony Browne

We have been reading the book "Zoo" by Anthony Browne.  We began by designing posters to show if we were for or against zoos.  We also created freeze frames of key scenes in the book and imagined how we would feel if we had to wait in a long line with parents who embarrassed us! 

Our Chapel

We held our first class worship of the week in our beautiful new chapel.  It was a wonderful location in which to reflect and pray together.

Jewish Museum

Here are some of photos from our trip to The Jewish Museum in Camden last week. The children learned a great deal about Jewish festivals such as Shabbat, Passover and Hanukkah and got to experience these through good tasting and crafting. 

Judaism Week - Learning about Mitzvot

As part of our learning for Judaism Week, we learnt about the mitzvot - the rules by which Jewish people live their life.  Each group researched one mitzvah and presented their learning to the class.

St Luke's Day - Tuesday 18th October

We all celebrated our class saint's day with a special day of activities.  These included:

- A fact treasure hunt

- Reading the Bible and acting out parables from St Luke's Gospel

- Presenting parables as stories, comic strips and posters

- Writing a prayer to St Luke

- Designing a logo for St Luke

- A special tea party

It was an amazing day and we learnt so many new facts.  Did you know that St Luke is the patron saint of doctors and artists?

Black History Month Trip to Tate Britain

We had a wonderful morning visiting the Tate Britain Art Gallery.  We spent most of our time viewing the installation "The Procession," by Hew Locke.  This is a fantastic, vibrant, colourful and thought-provoking exhibition, as you can see from the photographs!  The artist aims to explore themes including slavery and cultural identity.  While we were there, we also viewed the art of Mark Rothko and J.M. Turner.  After lunch, we had a lovely walk along the north bank of the Thames to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.

Black History Month Poetry

As part of Black History Month, we have been enjoying reading "Overheard in the Tower Block," a book of poetry by the Children's Laurate, Joseph Coelho.  We were inspired by his poem about a pumpkin, and after creating a bank of vocabulary and phrases, we wrote our own poems about the life cycle of an apple.

Shape Poetry - Art and English

Year 5 created self-portraits during art. They then transformed those self-portraits into some shape poems about themselves. Here are some wonderful examples.

Ancient Greeks Assembly

We performed our assembly for the whole school.  We enjoyed re-telling the story of Thesus and the Minotaur and we hope that we informed and entertained!

Science - Acids and Alkalis

We used litmus paper to test if different liquids were acids or alkalis and we recorded our results on a pH scale.

RE and Art

On Friday, we created models of the first humans, as created by God in Genesis.  Here are some examples of our great work.

London Fire Brigade - Fire Safety Visit

We were lucky enough to have a visit from Kaival from the London Fire Brigade.  He taught us the importance of installing a smoke alarm and creating a fire evacuation plan with your family.

English - Drama 

We have been reading the book "I Believe in Unicorns," by Michael Morpurgo.  During an English lesson, we went outside to work as a class and act out key scenes.  We had to imagine that we returned to our village to find that it had been destroyed by bombs during the war.  We also re-created an important part of the story in which children worked together to save books from a library.

Science - Testing Materials

We began our first Science topic - "Materials" - by designing and conducting an investigation to test how hard different materials including viscose, plastic and foil are.  We used a paper clip to scratch the materials and recorded how long it took for each one to scratch.