Year 5 had a fantastic trip to The Museum of London – much enjoyed by all.
Among many other activities, we have also been working on translating shapes in our Math’s lessons. We used peg boards and elastic bands to play a game where one partner made a shape and the other translated it and discussed the move in terms of right/left and up/down.
We finished off some practical science work which we could not complete  in the Spring term. The children filtered a mixture of soil and water to find out what happened and we explored magnetism and how magnets can be used to separate some materials.
Miss Nahar and the children have also been busy making tie-dye T shirts for the end of term.  

Year 5 had a fabulous time on their school trip to Mountfitchet Castle. Formerly an Iron Age hill fort, this historic site was also a Roman signals fort and later a Saxon and Viking settlement before being attacked in 1066 by William the Conqueror who built a wooden Motte and Bailey castle here. The castle provided an interactive experience for the children with real fires burning and animals roaming freely. 
 
It was lovely to watch the children explore the castle grounds and experience life in Anglo Saxon times – food, clothes, living arrangements, religion, warfare etc. They had a great time, but also learned so much about their History topic.
 
The children were very well behaved and a credit to their parents and the school. Well done Year 5!

​What an amazing time Years 1-6 had during their sports days this week! We were very lucky with the weather as the rain held off.
It was a fantastic morning or afternoon, with the pupils performing brilliantly. They displayed determination, perseverance, team spirit and a great amount of effort.
 
Class teams were awarded points for each activity and then all the activities combined for a total score.  The team with the most points in each class were the winners.  The children will find out the winning team in each class on Tuesday.
 
We would like to extend a huge thank you to Coach Smokie and Josh for making it such a fun event after a hectic year.

​We have also learnt about Anglo Saxon Art and illuminated letters. The pupils then designed their own artwork using these ideas – illuminated letters often include plants and mythical creatures. The children created some beautiful artwork using these ideas.

​Miss Freeman has appointed some Gardeners, who are helping with weeding, planting and watering duties!  They hope to harvest some peas, tomatoes. Swede and courgettes later this year. 

​This week we have started reading Beowulf – Year 5 are learning about the monster Grendel!! We are very much enjoying the story – it is exciting and links to our Anglo-Saxon topic perfectly. Please see the picture of our display showing our analysis of Grendel’s character.

Our main focus this week has been History and we are beginning our journey learning about Anglo Saxons and Vikings. We have researched why the Romans left and looked at where the Anglo-Saxons came from. We also found out about their lives.
In Religion we have been looking at the importance of prayer and pupils created some beautiful ‘Wordles’ to express how they feel about prayer. 

​Year 5 have had a very busy week. We collated data about the planets and then the children looked for patterns in the data that they could investigate. Some good suggestions included:  Do larger planets have longer days? Do larger planets have more moons?   Children then used the data they had collected to answer these questions and draw conclusions. 
 
We also learned about Katherine Johnson, a black African American woman, who overcame so many barriers in the 1950s and 60s to become an important figure contributing to the success of the space program at NASA.  We discussed the importance of Science and Maths and the children wrote about how her story can inspire them today.
 
We are writing some lovely Sci-fi stories in English using our book from last term Boy in the Tower to inspire us – I will post some work once we have finished.

​We are delighted that Mr and Mrs Oliva have been working with Year 5 and teaching the children Coding this term.  The children have benefited from their expertise in this subject and are absolutely loving the lessons. They have been creating a game that has increasing levels of difficulty and keeps score.

This week we used Alexander Calder paintings as our inspiration and made some beautiful prints. This technique using polystyrene is very effective but also quite tricky. The children had to create a design, etch into the polystyrene and then roll the ink on to their work and print onto paper. To create different colours they had to remove parts of their block and then over print onto the original.  They worked very hard to achieve some lovely results.