Welcome to Class 5 - Foxes

We had a marvellous Poetry slam competition this week. The class had written their own poems either individually or in pairs, rehearsed them and then performed in front of the class in a knock out competition.  The performances were judged on the quality of the poem, rhythm, use of gestures and props and eye contact. Everybody performed brilliantly and after a close fought battle, Safi and Isabella were crowned the winners!

As part of our topic DT lessons, we learnt about and investigated making our own pulley systems before we make some theme park rides next week. The children were all given the same objects to use as creatively as possible!

This week in Science, we investigated the effects of water resistance. Each group made 3 shapes from Plasticine to test how fast they travelled through water! Great fun!

We explored the idea of moving images and how you show that something is moving in your artwork. We studied photos and images of fairground and theme park rides, analysing the use of blurring, smudging, facial expressions and arms and hair in the air!

F1 Stem Day at QE

DT –F1 Car Designing, testing, evaluating

Class 5 attended the Q.E Grammar school to take part in a fantastic STEM Day. The day was all themed around the F1 in schools challenge and the children competed in teams to design, make and test their own F1 car model. Initially, within their teams they discussed and created team names, logos, colour branding and initial car designs. We then made prototypes and discussed the physics behind making a fast, aerodynamic car. The children’s ideas were amazing and so creative – team names included: Leaping Leopards, Solar Speed, Blue Wolf and the Fast Falcons – the bold bright team branding was very clear. For the next stage, we explored different body shape designs, types of wheels, extra features such as wings and spoilers. After, the teams constructed and built their models they tested them in the smoke air tunnel, edited and tweaked their designs and made some wonderful team posters to help promote their teams. The day culminated in a competition to see whose car was the fastest –getting the chance to test them on their air powered track. After a very exciting competition there were two teams left to fight it out for the title – Devil Killers (Ethan R and Hugo) and Solar Speed (Summer and Florence) and the Devil Killers were victorious. Some other awards were handed out too: Overall Champions – Phoebe and Esme, Best Design – Isabelle and Helena, Teamwork Award – Ethan H and George.

After learning about the aborigine culture and how they represented this using earth colours and symbols, we had a go at creating our own.

We used different techniques to represent shade, tone and texture. Only using a range of sketching pencils, we produced drawings of a variety of landmarks from the continent of Oceania/Australia. We tried to focus on capturing shape and proportion.

The class have loved having Mr Daintree teach them Music over the past two terms. This term, we used the Bon Jovi song, 'Livin' on a Prayer' to learn about tempo, dynamics and pitch. We learnt the lyrics and accompaniment on the glockenspiel to the song and composed our own pieces.

This term in our Computing lessons, we have been using Scratch to code our own adventure games. During this process, they have planned and designed their games, made prototypes and coded all the elements and then played and improved them.

Having studied all about Easter Island and the Moai statues in our Topic lesson, we embarked on making our own versions from clay. We used techniques of moulding, sculpting and attaching different bits together effectively.

We looked at the Tinga Tinga African art work and focused on the use of colour and pattern. Inspired by the African animals, we created our own pieces of artwork.

These adventurous chefs all had a go at making the delicious teriyaki chicken noodle recipe at home!  Brilliant effort and it all looks really yummy! 

We thoroughly enjoyed our session with Darren, from Roots to Food this week. The class learnt all about the nutrition in food, a variety of cooking techniques and all made and ate their own Chicken Teriyaki Noodles. I even got to try it and it was very tasty. Take a look at the recipe and give it a go at home.

This term, we have been learning the skills and techniques to play netball. We have focused on passing and shooting with control and accuracy, to learn and apply the footwork rule, to develop dodging and defending skills and to apply these in game scenarios.

We completed an experiment to see what happened to light when it was passed through a prism. We discovered that it was refracted and split into the seven colours of the rainbow as each colour had a different wavelength. In our experiment, we passed torchlight through a variety of glass and plastic prisms and through coloured overlays.

Throughout this term, we have been planning and making our own interactive adventure stories using PowerPoint. We planned out the theme of our stories and then created them using hyperlinks to jump to particular sections of our stories.

In small groups, we used the class set of iPads to go outside and take some pictures that we thought were interesting and then we wrote a poem about one of them. After this, they rehearsed there poems and recorded them on the iPads themselves - great fun!

We had a large amount of entries into the Poetry Slam competition and we really enjoyed listening to everyone's brave performances. After a tight results count, we crowned our winner... Ethan H.

We read some list poems for inspiration and then had a go at writing our own.

We explored a huge range of poetry including; list poems, non-rhyming poems, haikus and rhyming poems. We then performed them to each other, read some to trees and shouted them at each other, we wrote our own individually and in groups, we created a class poem inspired by the poet Gary Studley and we filmed our our performances using the iPads! A very fun and jam-packed week!

After studying the Ancient Greeks all term, we designed and then made from clay our own Greek vases. We modelled them from clay and then painted intricate and authentic designs on them.

We learnt all about the importance of Greek temples and how and why they were made. We then had a go at making our own making sure we chose either Ionic or Doric columns and had a statue to the god or goddess we were dedicating it to.

In Maths, we have been learning about 3D shapes and their properties. We had a go at making our own prisms or pyramids carefully labelling their vertices, edges and faces.

Geography and DT Day

We focused on ‘where are food comes from?’ We looked at the idea of harvest and the food we produced locally in Kent. We went for a walk to see the local harvested fields of wheat, barley and oil seed rape. We also studied seasonal fruit and vegetables and made a seasonal food calendar. In the afternoon, we made apple crumble. We developed our grating, cutting, weighing and mixing skills. We then designed a label for the container.

Wow!! What absolutely fabulous homework you all created - I have been totally blown away by all the effort and time you have put it! Each Pandora's box was so unique and well thought out with descriptions to match.

After learning about the ancient Greek alphabet in our Topic lessons, we had a go at writing our own names in Greek.

In groups, we rehearsed and performed a section of the Greek myth Pandora's Box. We had some very entertaining dramatic performances and enjoyed watching each version of the myth.

We have been exploring our understanding of place value up to million numbers. We enjoyed playing a place value dice game in pairs - everyone eager to beat their opponent.

2021-2022

 (Please right click to open the hyperlinks within the presentation)

We studied the colour wheel and focused on what we interpreted as warm and cold colours. We then used these to compliment and contrast each other when completing our Aztec Sun Art.

We had a wonderful morning yesterday with Ian from Mexicolore, learning about all things Aztec. He was exceptionally knowledgeable and full of energy and the class enjoyed playing traditional instruments, dressing up in authentic costumes and completing a team challenge based on the Aztec calendar and its symbols. We learnt about their culture and day to day life, their religious beliefs and the calendar system they created.

Sports Week - Commonwealth Games

We have had a fun filled, very energetic week learning about the Commonwealth and which countries are in it, playing sports that will feature in the Commonwealth Games and just having a fabulous time. We took part in sessions from external sports coaches in basketball, golf, archery, boxing and athletics which we all really enjoyed. Throughout the week, we also played a variety of other Commonwealth sports such as netball, tag rugby and badminton which we competed in mini tournaments. During the week we also had an emphasis on the sports values of determination, honesty, passion, self-belief, teamwork and respect.

In our English lessons, we listened to then planned and wrote our own performance narrative poems inspired by Roald Dahl. We all then rehearsed and performed them in front of the class.

We had a wonderful time celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee - spending the afternoon playing traditional games such as charades, shunt a penny and the tray memory game. We then joined the rest of the school for a lovely community celebration. We sang the national anthem and enjoyed eating lots of lovely party food items, finishing with a refreshing ice lolly.

The class were thoroughly engaged with preparing for and film their own film trailers. We had a variety of props appear and full on make up and hair being done! We are now in the editing process so watch this space for the final things.

For History Day, we started by learning about the Queen and her reign, having a great discussion about the Commonwealth, the line of succession and some of the things she had encountered in her reign. We then focused on our decade of her rule – the 1980’s. We watched a BBC video about Prince Charles and Diana’s wedding and wrote descriptively as if we were there. Mrs Maw even gave us her first-hand experience of being on the Mall enjoying the momentous event. We moved on to focus on some of the key historical world events of the 1980s and produced some wonderful timelines. To conclude, we produced new stamp designs that encapsulated an event from the Queen’s reign in the 1980s.

The children were challenged to select suitable measuring equipment and then use it to measure the length and width of a variety of objects in the school grounds. Following that, they then calculated the perimeter and area too.

In our athletics sessions, we have focused on sprinting: reacting quickly, maintaining our pace and running technique. We have also learnt the standing long jump and shot putt. The focus has been the correct technique for throwing safely and effectively.

For MFL Day, our focus was learning some Spanish. We started by introducing some greetings such as hello, good morning, my name is... and then we researched information about Spain itself, using it to produce some wonderful fact posters. Next, we had a session with Mr Wallace (who speaks fluent Spanish) whereby he taught us numbers 1-10 and played a fun game of 11's in Spanish. In the afternoon, we learnt the Spanish parts of the body vocabulary, learnt how to sing 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' and made some vocabulary magnets. 

After studying the work of Andy Warhol, we had a go at creating our own 'pop art' style portraits of film actors and actresses.

This term's music unit has seen us listen to and appraise a range of film music, learning and recognising the impact and effect of music on scenes. We identified changes in pitch, tone, volume and tempo in different scenes and the impact it had on the viewer. Then we created our own graphic scores for different pieces of music.

During our Topic lesson, we learnt about the history behind the moving image and discovered that a series of inventions led up to the first recorded moving image in the late 1800s, beginning with optical toys that give the illusion of movement. The thaumatrope, a Victoran toy used winding strings to rotate a card with images on both sides which when unwound looked to be moving. We had a go at making our own!

Over the course of last term and this, we were writing and developing our own web pages about E-Safety. We have been using a website called Replit to write the code for our web pages which has included adding images and weblinks, introducing paragraphs, headings and line breaks. 

For Fantastic Friday this week, we enjoyed spending time playing board games together. There was a multitude of games on offer including: Jenga, Twister, Chess, Connect 4, Mastermind and Uno, which I loved playing too!

We all had a wonderful Geography field trip day. We went for a 6km walk around Sheldwich, crossing fields, finding chalk pits, exploring the valley and looking at the cherry trees. We focused on our map skills trying to work out our route on an ordinance survey map of the area and then creating our own maps in the afternoon. We explored the different types of land and how important the area is for farming. In the afternoon, we made our own maps of the area and listened to some informative talks from Mr Gaskain, a local apple farmer and Mr Dean, a game keeper for the Lees Court Estate.

This term in our Music lessons we concentrated on the lyrics of songs and writing our own. We listened and appraised a range of folk songs and sea shantys and then focused on writing songs about the Titanic disaster which we then rehearsed, added in percussion and performed!

This term we are looking at street dance and have been learning particular moves to go along to the music Beggin'. This week we learnt to pop and lock!