Year 5

Welcome to Year 5 2024-2025

Click on the crayon to find a booklet all about your new year group.

Have a look at what the Year 5 children got up to last academic year (2023-2024)...

Welcome To Year 5

Friday 12th July 2024

The penultimate week! This week, Year 5 have been learning about reading and using timetables in Maths. In English, we have been considering how characters would have felt after the death of Romeo and Juliet. We have also hosted our annual Swimming Gala, where the children produced an excellent display of swimming techniques.

Friday 5th July 2024

STEM Week!!! What an incredible week it has been! A Federation-wide project named 'Mission to Mars' combined all year groups in producing an aspect of a mission to Mars - ours was Mars rovers. We created wooden frames and circuits to all the buggies to move independently. We also created some artwork about the first female computer programmer Ada Lovelace. Using Green screens, we became scientists in our very own laboratories producing marvelous experiments. We as the Year 5 team are very proud of all the hard work the children have put in this week and hope they are inspired to maybe one day go to space!

Friday 28th June 2024

During this week, we have continued exploring reversable and irreversible changes in Science by separating several materials. In English, we have produced our balanced arguments - should Romeo and Juliet get married? We also went over to John Hanson for a taster morning where we took part in a variety of lessons and activities!

Friday 21th June 2024

What a brilliant week! With Sports' day at the end of the week, preparation began early with children completing a variety of sporting events. This included sprinting, lacrosse, badminton, and cricket! As well as these sports, the children completed their regular learning. In Maths, we completed our measurement topic. In English, we began to plan our balanced arguments about Romeo and Juliet's betrothal. 

Friday 14th June 2024

This week in Maths, we have finished our work on fractions for the year! In English, we have considered whether Romeo and Juliet were truly meant to be or were they doomed from the start - this is leading to us writing a balanced argument. In Music, we have been looking at the song Shosholoza and the music from Africa. 

Friday 7th June 2024

What a wonderful first week back! In Maths, we have continued our learning about fractions - how to add, subtract, and multiply them with whole numbers. We have begun to learn about Romeo and Juliet in English and how Shakespearean people would have spoken. In Science, we have begun learning about reversible and irreversible changes. 

Friday 24th May 2024

We are officially half way through the summer term! This week we have developed our knowledge of improper fractions and mixed numbers in Maths. We have also written wonderful biographies about paralympians. In music, we have performed our remixed versions of 'Somewhere over the rainbow'. The Year 5 team hope you have a lovely half term and look forward to seeing everyone back afterwards.

Friday 17th May 2024

What a wonderful week we have had! Our first swimming sessions of 2024 took place with some excellent swimming skills being shown. In English, we have developed our knowledge on the variety of past and present tenses. In Maths, we have considered the value of digits within a decimal number. In PE, we have played our first game of rounders. Next week we will be competing in the Balksbury Year 5 championship.

Friday 10th May 2024

With week 4 coming to a close, we can look forward to a sunny weekend! This week in Maths, we have been solving problems using the four operations, factors and multiples, and cubes and squares! In English, we have analysed the biographies of some inspirational people such as Arunima Sinha and Terry Fox. We also managed to take the learning outside for Free Reading Friday! 

Friday 3rd May 2024

We are already 3 weeks into the Summer term and it has flown by! This week in English, we have completed our final diary entries which has included: magical crayons, kind kings, and purple dragons! In Maths, we have been learning about addition and subtraction words problems as well as decimals in Mini Maths. We have also developed our coding knowledge in computing.

Friday 26th April 2024: Week 2

What a brilliant week we have had! This week we have been looking at Roman Numerals in Maths; written diary entries using complex punctuation in English; and been painting in different styles in Art. Scan the QR code to watch some of our presentations in Science. 

Friday 19th April 2024: Week 1

What a start to the Summer Term! In Maths, rounding was the focus for the week where we wrote number line on tables to help us demonstrate our thinking. In English, we read our new text driver 'Return' and used our inference skills to consider how the characters were feeling. In RE, we began to discuss what a sacred place is to us and what they may be for different religions. 

Friday 29th March 2024: Week 6

We can't believe Spring term is over - what an amazing term it has been! This week, we enjoyed playing some matches in tennis so we could combine all the skills we have learnt over the last 6 weeks. We look forward to the Summer term! 

Friday 22nd March 2024: Week 5

This week has been our favourite yet! The highlight of our week was cooking spaghetti bolognese in D&T (we loved having a second lunch!). We got to see the seeds we planted in Autumn had grown into salad, which were able to enjoy with our spaghetti bolognese. In Music, we performed our vocal and body composition pieces - follow the QR code to watch. In P.E, we enjoyed practising a volley with our partners. We had a special visitor this week and thoroughly enjoyed having Test Valley Brass in for a taster session. 

Friday 15th March 2024: Week 4

This week has been full of reading! From reading about Mount Versuvius in Geography to performing poetry in Guided Reading! We love Free Reading Fridays the most in Year 5 - we love to sit with our friends and enjoy a good book! 

Friday 8th March 2024: Week 3

We had a wonderful week this week! We absolutely loved World Book Day, especially reading with the Year R children. We loved creating Mothers Day cards too. In Maths, we enjoyed measuring objects around the classroom to convert between different units of metric measure. 

Friday 1st March 2024: Week 2

What a week! A highlight of our week was using the cameras in Computing to try out different camera angles, we had so much fun being creative. In Geography, we made mini volcanoes so we could demonstrate our understanding of the key features. Our learning journey in Guided Reading working with the book The Station Cat has come to an end but we loved creating our own version of the cat, as well as performing some of the text (follow the QR code). In Maths, we learnt about volume using multilink. 

Friday 23rd February 2024: Week 1

The first week back has flown by! We started our Human Life Cycle unit in Science by researching the six stages and creating a poster with our teams. In English, we discussed and evaluated some sentences, and we applied our knowledge of relative clauses to edit them. We enjoyed learning about videos in Computing, we're excited to see how to create an effective video to eventually create our own. 

Friday 9th February: Week 6

We cannot believe it is the last week of term! We loved seeing everyone in their wonderful Greek costumes! We had the best day participating in Greek cooking, the Olympics and making our own masks. 

Friday 2nd February 2024: Week 5

This week we have loved using the greenscreens in English to demonstrate show not tell emotion through facial expressions and body language. We got to create our Hundertwasser houses with clay this week - we can't wait to paint them! In Science, we tested everyday materials to identify their properties and most suitable uses. In Music, we used the glockenspiels to improvise our own blues music. 

Friday 26th January 2024: Week 4

Wow - what a brilliant week! We really enjoyed our investigation to determine whether tinfoil or felt was a better thermal insulator in Science! We learnt about the Battle of Marathon in History and we had to order key features of the Ancient Greeks from most important to least. In P.E, we practised different rolls on the mats, focusing on slowing down to gain control. Lots of us loved painting our nature themed tiles, we cannot wait to create our Hundertwasser houses! Using the glockenspiels in Music is always a great way to finish our week!

Friday 19th January 2024: Week 3

This week, we have thoroughly enjoyed developing skills to manipulate clay to create a nature inspired tile. We cannot wait to create our Hundertwasser inspired houses. In Guided Reading, we learnt all about the fable of King Midas and the golden touch - we even played a game of fact finding bingo! In P.E, we continued to develop our balances, focusing on technique this week. 

Friday 12th January 2024: Week 2

This week we have had lots of fun in Music learning how to play a chord on the glockenspiel. In History, we looked at artefacts from Ancient Greece to try and find out more  about life in the ancient civilisation. We found out that Ancient Greece has influenced many areas of society today, including sport and entertainment!  

Friday 5th January 2024: Week 1

First week back! We have had so much fun this week learning all about Greek myths and legends - we visited the Tipi to hear a few of the most famous fables. In Maths, we have been developing skills to estimate and measure angles. In History, Year 5 began learning about Ancient Greece by mapping out the key events of the Greek civilisation on a timeline. We also enjoyed exploring symmetrical and asymmetrical balances in gymnastics this week. We were so excited to find out that in Computing this term we will be coding programmes to run circuits! We got to create a circuit this week to make a sparkler flash different colours!

Friday 8th December 2023: Week 6

We all had a lovely lunch time today sharing our Christmas Lunch whilst listening to Christmas songs. This week we have also been finishing our DT projects of using mechanisms to create a pop-up book and we are sharing them with the children in Year One next week. In Science, we learnt about the orbit of the Moon and we went onto the playground to demonstrate this using different sized balls to represent the Moon, Sun and Earth. We have also performed in Balksbury Come Dancing and we can't wait to share that with everyone at home soon! 

Friday 1st December 2023: Week 5

This week, we have continued to practise our dance for Balksbury Come Dancing and we are looking forward to sharing with our families soon. A group went to John Hanson to take part in the Andover Schools' Hockey Tournament and played very well.

In Geography this week, we have been looking at topography and the highest mountains in the UK. We located them on maps using atlases then using potatoes, drew the contour lines onto the map to show the height and steepness of the mountains. 

Friday 17th November 2023: Week 3

This week we have continuing to look at our Solar System and ordered the planets in relation to the Sun. We discussed the sizes of the planets and made them using plasticine. In Geography, we enjoyed visiting Mount Everest on the Virtual Reality Headsets and found out lots of interesting facts about it. 

Friday 10th November 2023: Week 2

This week in Year 5 we have been very busy creating our Christmas cards and learning more about space! We have also been writing some brilliant poems about the light using figurative language- we hope you enjoy listening to some of them! 

Friday 20th October 2023: Week 7 

We have completed our first half term in Year 5! All the staff in Year 5 are so proud of how hard the children have worked over the past seven weeks and they have all settled in to their new classes and routines so well. We have enjoyed learning about the ancient Egyptians, forces and drawing using perspective in Art. 

Enjoy your half term breaks and we look forward to seeing you all in a weeks time! 

Friday 13th October 2023

Over the past few weeks, we have been learning all about the ancient Egyptians. We have had a visit from Open Box; learnt about the ancient Egyptian social classes; and more recently, mummified a tomato in the same way that the Egyptians mummified people. We enjoyed learning about the process of mummification and look forward to seeing what has happened to our tomatoes after we have left them. 

Friday 6th October 2023: Week 5

This week we have enjoyed showing off our hockey skills in P.E. when playing matches against each other and  making music by reading and writing musical notations. We had two visitors in to speak to us about how to ensure we are being kind to all and how the law protects us. 

Friday 29th September 2023: Week 4

During our Science lessons this half term we are look at different forces and this week we investigated water resistance. We had to make different shapes out of play dough and then see how their shape changed the speed at which they travelled through water. We are really enjoying all the practical opportunities we have had during this unit of Science!

Friday 22nd September 2023: Week 3

We started this week with a visit from Open Box which we all really enjoyed. We learnt a lot more about the Ancient Egyptians and had lots of fun too! In Science, we carried out an investigation into how the size of a parachute effects the speed at which it falls. We made parachutes and then tested them, counting the time in which they fell to see the effect air resistance has on different surface areas.  

Friday 15th September 2023: Week 2

This week we have been learning about air resistance in Science and had a great time on the playground experiencing the effects of air resistance using parachutes before planning our own investigation. On Thursday, we were able to enjoy the swimming pool and everyone was impressed by our wonderful swimming skills and we used different materials to create tone in Art.  

Friday 8th September 2023: Week 1

What a lovely week we have had to begin Year 5. We have been able to spend lots of time outside looking at information about Leonardo Di Vinci in Art and making memory sticks as one of our Wellbeing activities as we begin our new year together. We are so proud of how well all the children have done this week- they have quickly settled into our new classroom routines in a such a polite and mature way. Well done, Year 5!!

Friday 7th July 2023: Week 5

Arts' Week! 

We have has such a brilliant week taking part in workshops around the federation and completing all our Arts' Week activities. Our work has been focused around that of Henri Cartier-Bresson, a french photographer. We really enjoyed our visit to John Hanson to take photos and then editing them using a software on the computers. 

We hope you enjoyed seeing our work at The Arts' Festival. 

Friday 23rd June 2023: Week 3

Sports Day was a lovely way to end another busy week in Year 5. This week we have continued our DT work on bridges by making truss bridges using spaghetti and been writing as different characters from Romeo and Juliet. We hope you enjoy having a look at some of the pictures from this year's Sports' Day. Well done, Year 5: we were so impressed with all your hard work today and also the kindness you demonstrated towards each other. 

Friday 16th June 2023: Week 2

London: what an amazing day we had! We saw so many famous landmarks and enjoyed visiting Borough Market, The Tate Modern and looking at the Houses of Parliament. The children were amazing and we are so proud of them all. 

Friday 9th June: Week 1

We have had a lovely first week back: we began our Shakespeare unit on Romeo and Juliet by retelling the story- with some very dramatic portrayals of the characters! We have also begun our new History unit of Benin and looked at classifying different materials by their states of matter in Science.

Friday 26th May 2023: Week 6

We wanted to share some pictures of our year group Rounders Tournament this week. All the children were involved as batters, fielders or umpires and they demonstrated the skills that we have been learning this half term. There was a lot of competitive play and rounders scored! 

Have a lovely half term and we look forward to the start of the final term in Year 5. 

Friday 19th May 2023: Week 5

The sun has finally shone this week and we have loved having the opportunity to spend more time outside. We really enjoyed our PE lesson on Monday when we all went out and practised our rounders skills in preparation for our year group rounders tournament next week. A highlight of the week has to be making our bolognese in DT. We were so impressed with how carefully you prepared and cooked the ingredients needed for our sauces- unfortunately Miss Nield wasn't as successful cooking the spaghetti! 

Friday 12th May 2023: Week 4

This week may have only been four days but we have managed to fit a lot in! We began the week by finishing our persuasive writing. We then really enjoyed recording it using the green screens and our school digital cameras. We have continued our music unit of work on looping and remixing by playing fragments of 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' on the glockenspiel- we are a very talented year group! This week we were also pleased to begin our swimming lessons, especially when the sun appeared! 

Friday 5th May:  Week 3

What a busy week we have had! In Music, we have been learning how to play 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' on the glockenspiels, ready for us to start remixing it next week and in PE, we have continued to improve our rounders skills; during this week's lesson we were focusing on how to stump a batter out. This week, we have also been putting out French skills to the test when reading and speaking about different types of habitats. We have learnt lots of new words and are doing really well at translating sections of text using this new vocabulary. As well as this, we have continued writing our persuasive reviews of Gravenhunger Manor which we look forward to sharing soon! 

A highlight of the week was our celebration of the King's coronation where we enjoyed a street party lunch before making our own crowns and taking part in the federation's Crown Parade- whilst showing off our excellent royal waves. 

We hope you enjoy the bank holiday weekend- well done on another amazing week, Year 5!

Friday 28th April 2023: Week 2

This week has been another very busy one. In Music, we really enjoyed using the iPads to created music using different notes and octaves. We have also been tasting different pasta sauces before we created our own bolognese recipe in DT- we are really looking forward to making these soon. Finally, our English learning journey is well under way now and we are becoming very persuasive writers!

We hope you all have a lovely bank holiday weekend!

Friday 21st April 2023: Week 1

What a brilliant first week back we have had! We created sacred places outside in RE; thoroughly enjoyed our visit from Andover Tennis Club and the start of our Rounders topic in PE; and have been scientists investigating different types of materials- including using the Makey Makeys to test materials conductivity.

Well done Year 5 on such a brilliant start to the Summer Term! 

Friday 31st March 2023: Week 6

Wow! What a wonderful week we've had here in Year 5. We have have written setting descriptions to create tension in English; created our own videos in Computing; we have been inspired by Henri Rousseau to recreate photographs in Art, focusing on brush techniques; in Music, we became composers of our own music to express how we can hear colour (using our voices); in PE, we were inspired by Greek dancers, and we have had an arithmetic week full of exciting competitions. 

Thank you for all your hard work this week Year 5, have a lovely Easter. We look forward to seeing you in April. 

Use this link to find a few examples of our final Computing videos!

Year 5 Computing!

Friday 24th March 2023: Week 5

This week in Computing, we designed our videos - to showcase how brilliant Balksbury Federtation is! We had to think about where we would like to film in the federation, the most suitable camera angle to use and we wrote our own scripts. Next, we went outside to film and we (just) missed all the rain. We can't wait to edit them together next week.

In Computing this week, we experimented with different camera angles to discuss which was the most effective for different purposes. For example, when using dialogue, you may want to consider using the Close Up shot, as this records audio best. We can't wait to create our own videos in the following weeks.

Did you know that a frog can lay up to 4000 eggs at one time? This is just one of the many facts we discovered during our investigation into the life cycle of an amphibian. We even got to observe a tadpole under the microscope! 

This week, we had a practical lesson interpreting scales and converting between different units of measurement. 

We celebrated World Book Day this week by reading with the Year 1's! Year 5 had such a wonderful time being able to share their passion for reading with the younger children. What lovely costumes too!

We transformed into film crew this week when we used the greenscreens and cameras to try out different camera angles! We definitely see some future cinematographers amongst the cohort!

This week, Year 5 Balksbury Federation children were asked to support the European Space Agency on their journey to space! Whilst transporting through the glorious Milky Way galaxy, the children were lucky enough to witness how scientists believe our Solar System was formed. Wow - what an exciting day for Year 5!

In Art this week, we used wire, cardboard and mod roc to begin to create our Greek architecture, inspired by Hundertwasser.

In Music this week, we used glockenspiels to play the song 'Shosoloza', which is a traditional South African song. 

Follow the QR code to watch Maple class singing the song.

In Science this week, we conducted an investigation into which shape is best for a shark (sharks must be agile and be able to move quickly through water to catch their prey!). We made our own salt dough sharks and tested the water resistance by dropping them into water and recording how quickly they sank. From this, we concluded that the best shape for a shark to be was narrow with sharp edges, as these cut through the water quickest. 

In Health and Wellbeing, we discussed the importance of Fairtrade by looking at the roles involved in the production of bananas. We debated how much we thought each job should be paid, based on how long they worked, fees they had to cover and how crucial their role was. 

Wow what a brilliant first full week back! Time has flown by and we can hardly believe all the exciting things we've learnt about and all the amazing work created. 

This week we had a special visitor from Ancient Greece, who travelled far and wide to read us the story of Medusa and the Minotaur - what a treat!

In Science, we collaborated to create parachutes to test air resistance. Using our observation skills in Art, we were able to create beautiful artist profiles on the wonderful work and life of Friedensreich Hundertwasser. We were transported to Ancient Greece whilst creating beastly and ferocious creatures to annotate and describe, using a variety of expanded noun phrases and relative clauses. 

Well done Year 5, you've smashed it! 

Tree Planting Trip 16.11.22

Year 5s had a lovely morning (despite the weather) at Bury Hill on Wednesday to support with planting more trees in one of our beautiful areas we have here in Andover. All the children enjoyed being a part of it and it will be amazing to go back in the future to find our trees. 

First Week Back

Look how fast this week has gone! We have been so busy and it has been jam-packed with learning. We have used the VR headsets to explore the Himalayas and Mt. Everest; we have started our longitudinal study in Science involving some rotting pumpkins... and we have enjoyed reading our new text driver in English - The Dark. We can't wait to start writing some poetry with all of the vocabulary we have been gathering this week. Well done to everyone in Year 5, it's been a busy week but we are so proud of you all. 

To test this we set up an experiment using oil, washing up liquid and vinegar to test whether other liquids (not just water) can be used to dissolve substances to form a solution. We found that the answer to this question was no - washing up liquid does not dissolve sugar!

WB 19/09/22

What a week! It may have only been four days long but it has been a brilliant week. We were lucky enough to have Open Box join us for an Ancient Egyptian workshop and later visited the Balksbury Art Gallery to view some of Leonardo Da Vinci’s most famous art work. We have started a portfolio in our sketchbooks and we can’t wait to share these when they are finished!

Will it dissolve?

In Science we tested which substances dissolved in liquid. We used water to test these and wanted to find out if all the substances were soluble (does dissolve) or if some were insoluble (does not dissolve). We made predictions and reasoned these using our existing knowledge to back up our ideas. 

We tested: flour, granulated sugar, brown sugar, coffee, tea and salt.

Our Egyptian Adventure!

This week we have started our exciting learning journey on the Ancient Egyptians! We began with an archaeological dig where we set up an excavation site and found a variety of interesting artefacts which led into our English learning. In History we used the VR headsets to find more clues to try and infer some more information about the Egyptians. We travelled through ancient tombs and observed the great Pyramids of Giza from close up! We all loved it and have so many questions about the Egyptians now that we can't wait to find the answer to.