Oak Class
Year 5 and 6 - Miss Woodison, Miss Shaw and Mrs Stubbins
In English, we will be starting work on the book “Floodland” by Marcus Sedgwick. The story is set in a future where rising seas have covered much of England. Ten-year-old Zoe is separated from her parents and must travel alone across the water in a small boat. When she reaches Eels Island, she finds a harsh community ruled by a boy called Dooby. Zoe must use all her courage and determination to survive and continue her search for her family. We will explore the text, both through our guided reading lessons and also our English lessons, developing both our comprehension and writing. The children will build their skills over the term to allow them to write balanced arguments and narrative sections that cover both character and setting descriptions. This range of text types will allow the children to explore their writing skills and think about the appropriate information to include in a variety of different pieces of writing. We will be using the text to develop and improve our grammar skills by focusing on identifying imaginative vocabulary and techniques, as well as thinking about how we can construct complex sentences that create interest for the reader.
There will be a weekly spelling test with the expectation that spellings will be practised at home. These will start from the second week and will continue throughout the school year.
In Maths we will work on our place value skills, which will include reading, writing and comparing numbers and rounding. We will be developing our understanding of multiplication and division, as well as extending our knowledge of fractions and their decimal equivalents. We will also be looking at how we can convert between different units of metric measure and how we can apply what we have learnt to look at money. To tie this all together, as we work through, we will be applying everything we learn to word based problems, which will help us develop our reasoning and deeper understanding of the concepts we cover.
There will be a weekly times table test with the expectation that these will practised at home. This will help with fluency and automatic recall when solving multiplication and division problems.
Our Science for this term has a focus on biology, looking specifically at the human circulatory system. We will begin by looking at the function of the heart and how it is constructed. We will then move on to looking at the work of William Harvey and thinking about the function of blood vessels and how they transport various nutrients around the body. We will deepen our understanding of blood pressure and heart rate, before carrying out an investigation about the impact of exercise on our body and circulatory system.
In Geography, we will be learning about North America as part of our wider study of world geography. We will locate countries including the United States of America, Canada and Mexico, and develop our map skills using atlases and online mapping tools. We will also explore the continent’s varied landscapes and biomes, from tundra and permafrost in the north to grasslands, forests and tropical regions further south. We will study the importance of major rivers such as the Mississippi and consider how people interact with and depend on these environments. As part of the unit, we will compare a region of North America, such as Anchorage in Alaska, with an area of the United Kingdom, looking at similarities and differences in climate, physical features, population and daily life. This will help us understand why North America is described as a large and diverse continent.
In Art we will be learning about styles in Art. We will look at: the Rococo style, Modernism, Abstract art and Colour Theory. We will explore the work of Rachel Jones in more depth and use what we have learnt across the term to develop our own final pieces of artwork. The children will be taught to develop their techniques, including their control and their use of materials, with creativity, experimentation and an increasing awareness of different kinds of art, craft and design. We will continue to develop our use of sketch books to record observations and use them to review and revisit ideas.
Finally, in RE, the children will be exploring in greater depth, key Christians’ teachings and texts relating to what it means to be human. We will start by exploring the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century before moving on to apply our learning to the lived example of Anne Askew, a 17th century Protestant Christian who was eventually executed for her beliefs. Using questions and methods drawn from theology, history and philosophy, we will then begin to consider continuity and change in Christian worldviews over time.
