Year 5 would like to wish you a happy new year!

We’ve started off the year in a VERY positive mood in year 5!

We spent some time creating our own positive mantras to help us deal with challenging situations, whether they’re in the playground, in the classroom or elsewhere.

Every time we find something difficult or challenging we are going to think about our mantra – it’s one way we have found that we can tackle problems with positivity!

Mr Hodges’ favourite is ‘Persistence is key…’ – this is vital for us to remember when we find something difficult or challenging!

Our topic this half term has been all things Space-related.

During our science lessons we have investigated how the sun’s light affects us on Earth.  We used a torch to simulate the sun and discussed how the axis of the Earth impacts on how we experience seasons.

During the Autumn term, we have spent time using Scratch to learn about programming and coding.  We used laptops to experiment with the software and used scripts to control our sprites.

We were very excited about our production of Bah Humbug in year 5 – the children wanted to create adverts to entice our audience!

We wrote scripts, filmed each other delivering our lines and edited our films using iMovie on the iPads. Who knows, we might become famous film directors one day!

At Thomas Buxton we have been talking about our favourite books.

We believe it’s really important to talk about reading and learn from others!  Watch these recommendations from staff and children – which stories would you like to read?

Continue reading →

In Year 5 we have used logical thinking, imagination and creativity to extend a program.

A fantastic website called www.j2e.com allowed us to create a code (a set of instructions) to design and draw a repeating pattern on iPads. We also thought about technology that has been programmed to perform a function and collected a list of terminology for parts of the programming process and a list of ‘attitudes’ that make programming possible.

We had in mind Rights Respecting Schools Article 28: Every child has the right to an education, and Article 31: Every child has the right to relax, play and join in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities. Can you think of any more that apply?

Did you know that apps only exist because of code? 

How many things can you think of that rely on programming and how many of them feature repeating patterns in some way or other?

Here are some examples of shapes we created:

What did we do well? 

What could we improve?

Comment your thoughts below!

In Year 5 we have been building on our coding skills to produce algorithms that allow our sprites to speak!

We programmed the sprites using a forever loop and several blocks of code so that the output resulted in the sprite counting out loud using sound files that we recorded or sound effects from the Scratch library.

We experimented with a range of different sounds and chose the ones we thought worked best with our backgrounds and sprites.

How do you think we can develop our counting games further?

What jobs might we use programming skills in?

Year 5 have been learning about what it means to be a follower of Buddha. We have learnt about Siddhartha Gautama’s life and teaching, including the five precepts and the three jewels. We then contemplated morals and ethic codes and designed our own set of rules for life or governing principles. We finished off the week hearing a presentation from a real-life follower of Buddha. We had the opportunity to interview him, in order to find out more about our topic.

To finish our unit on ‘Power and the Tower’, Year Five have spent the past week creating magazines about the Tower of London. We have all enjoyed the learning (particularly our trip to the Tower) and are proud of the magazines that we have designed. Make sure you take a look in your child’s bag for a copy of the magazine.

Miss Fordham and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the children for a wonderful and memorable year. We wish you a happy and safe summer!

Leave a comment about your best memory from Year 5.