Spring
Conductive music with Miss Yui
Miss Yui came into Year 5 from Conductive Music to work with us on coding and music combined. We played Baby Shark with a microbit and in the afternoon created a theremin using the microbit as a light sensor. We played different notes depending on how much light was detected from the sensor. It was a great workshop!
More dancing
This week we have continued with our dancing sessions with Olivia. We have progressed in our dancing from freeze frames to travelling and this week we added formations to start and end our dance routines. Our dances have still got a sporting theme and we show the different sports through our statues and our movements. We are working well in our groups now and we have made great progress since the start of our dance topic.
Tudor Day
Today Michael and Olivia from Durham University came into class to help us with our Tudors topic. The day was busy from start to finish. We looked at the Tudor period on a timeline, we found out about the Tudor coins that existed and even used funny actions to help us remember each one. Before lunch we became historical investigators. We had to work like archeologists to investigate the artefacts. We had to think about what they would have been used for during the Tudor period and what materials were used to make them. Some of the artefacts included rings, drinking vessels, rosary beads, shoes, coins, ruffs, games and weapons.
After lunch we looked at part of an inventory of a Tudor home. We located key words in the text and looked at the handwriting and spelling of some words that we already knew. We then discussed which room the inventory would belong to. Afterwards, we tried creating our own inventories with feathers and ink. It was not easy!
The day finished by looking at a painting from the Tudor period which we analysed as a class. There were many hidden objects in the painting that were showing the feeling of the artist and the time at which it was painted. We then created our own self portraits as a Tudor ambassador and tried to hide clues in the painting to show things about our own personalities.
A wonderful day!
Rockpool Creatures
Nicola from Rockpool School worked with Year 5 on Thursday afternoon and talked to them about rockpools. She read 'Sharing a Shell' with the class before telling the class all about the creatures she had brought into school. The class made arts and crafts of rockpools, they sorted what would and wouldn't be in a rockpool and even got to hold some rockpool creatures including hermit crabs, starfish, dog whelks and periwinkles.
World Book Day - dancing freeze frames
This week we had our first dance session with Olivia. Lots of the class were dressed in World Book Day attire so we looked at creating freeze frames of different sports in our groups. We then performed our movements with music to the rest of the class. We look forward to seeing how our dance technique improves over the coming weeks.
Art week - Painting
This week the class have been mixing primary colours to create secondary and tertiary colours. They have also mixed paints to try colour matching the colours in a piece of art work. This was not easy but the class all tried incredibly hard to get as close to the colours as they could. The class looked at the impressionist painter, Claude Monet and tried copying parts of his paintings in his style. They also looked at how Impressionists worked, trying to capture a moment and showing the effects of light on their work. At the end of the week pupils then created their own sky scene...they were very effective!
Attendance Party
Year 5 achieved their attendance award this week by completing all of the letters and numbers of '100% Attendance'. They celebrated their achievement today with a DVD and some treats: popcorn, sweets, crisps and chocolate. The class had a brilliant afternoon and even brought in some cushions to make themselves comfortable. Hopefully this won't be the only attendance party we have this year.
Sewing week - Day 3
Today we finished sewing our soft toys. We used an overstitch to attach the two pieces of fabric together and added stuffing into the centre to make the toy nice and soft. The results were fantastic. Mrs Gill was incredibly impressed with the perseverance shown when things became tricky. Well done Year 5!
A visit to Newcastle Buddhist Centre
Today the class met Amaradaya at the Buddhist Centre in Newcastle. They found out about the life of Buddha, what it means to be a Buddhist and even had a go at some meditating. The class had a wonderful morning, learning lots of new facts and were very enthusiastic to share their new found knowledge back at school.
Sewing Week - Day 2
Today we used our skills from yesterday to continue making our soft toy. We used our card template to create an outline of our toy with two pieces of fabric. Then we focused on the front piece and started to add buttons and felt to the face using stitches we had practised yesterday. Some children created a smile using a running stitch and others added buttons for eyes using the needle and thread. They are beginning to take shape and tomorrow we will be joining both pieces of felt together to create our soft toy. Watch this space...
Sewing Week - Day 1
Today we started our Design and Technology week. Our topic this week is all about sewing. By the end of the week we will have made rainforest themed animal soft toys. We started today by researching other soft toys that are already out there on the market. We looked at the materials that are used and how the products are made. We then started thinking about our own designs. Our topic is the Amazon rainforest in Geography so we decided to create rainforest animal toys. We talked about keeping our design simple so that it didn't get too complicated when we came to the sewing process. We then created a final design and drew this on to card to use as a template for drawing onto the fabric. This will be tomorrow's task.
In the afternoon, the whole class had the chance to practise some different stitches. We practised a running stitch, an overstitch and a blanket stitch. Some children had a favourite stitch by the end of the day...some liked them all. Lots of children were sewing for the first time and Mrs Gill was incredibly impressed with the resilience when working on their skills and the precise stitches the children were making. A great first day!
