PRATCHETT (Yr 5)

Welcome to Pratchett Class

Welcome to Pratchett Class! We are named after the British author Sir Terry Pratchett and will be working on several texts by this author through out the year.   

The adults who work in our class are: 

- Mr M.Bolton

- Miss E.Stanham

We also work very closely with: 

- Miss S.Wilson

- Mrs J.Hill

- Miss H.Wilson

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any queries throughout the year. 

Dinner Menus

We are currently reviewing the school dinner systems. Please be aware that menus will now be sent home on Wednesdays and must be returned to school by Friday morning at the latest.

Many thanks for your continued support.

Science - investigating dissolving

This week we investigated materials that dissolve. We discussed reversible and irreversible changes and how to make our investigations fair. 

PE in the sunshine

We took advantage of the sunshine and spent the afternoon outside on the field. In our lesson, we were preparing for our sports day in June. Run! Throw! Catch!

Science - Separating Mixtures

This week we have really enjoyed finding out about mixtures in our science lessons. We worked in groups to create mixtures and tried to separate them using a range of equipment. Each group evaluated how successful they were and we researched how we could improve the investigation in the next lesson.

Paired maths challenges

This week we have been focusing on decimals. We worked really hard in pairs to solve very challenging problems.

Publishing our work

During our English lessons we have been working on formal letters to persuade. We completed these this week and decided to type them up on the laptops to make them look more official. Afterwards, we checked each others letters and evaluated them.

New school library. 

This week, we went to the new and improved school library to explore the layout and new books. We had a chat about the changes and all selected a book of our choice as well as a reading scheme book. We look forward to using the library more frequently and having the responsibility of changing our own home reading books. 

Reminder: Children must read at home at least 3X per week.

Eggtastic competition

Well done to Ellie Fox and Lilly Worrell for winning the year 5 egg competition. Check out their entries below - they are eggcellent! Also, a special well done to Mrs Thornton who won the parent competition with her McDonalds themed entry. 

Spring Term

Comic Relief Fun

Enjoying our games time on the MUGA to raise money for comic relief. Thank you to all who dressed up and donated money. 

Democracy in real life

This morning we watched a live debate in the house of commons. We discussed what was happening and compared this to democracy in Ancient Greece. The children asked a lot of sensible questions and showed a great interest in politics. 

Music - Steel Pans

We had our first music lesson with our specialist teacher Jermaine this week. He split us into 3 groups: steel pans, chime bars and drums. We discussed the names of the instruments, names of each steel pan and lots of technical music terms. As a result of this, we now understand the terms chord, base, pitch, melody and rhythm. By the end of the lesson, the children could play a short tune. 

Ancient Greece - Democracy

This week we have been focusing on what democracy is and how decisions are made in this country. We then worked on an issue that the children selected themselves. This was: 'Should there be an equal number of male and female teachers in a primary school?'. The children were then split into three groups - for, against and balanced. In these groups the children were given specific roles and created a speech for debate. Finally, we got together as a class and shared our speeches and voted on the issue. 

Cockburn John Charles Academy - Trip

Year 5 thoroughly enjoyed their trip to watch the production of 'Little Shop of Horrors'. We were impressed with the acting, singling and overall performance. The story also allowed us to generate ideas to help us with our English work this half term.  

Scooter Training

As part of our work on Air Quality, we have had scooter training this week. This is to encourage us to be more active and hopefully scoot to school. We needed to make sure that we understood and followed the rules about scooting near to a road. It was a lot of fun.

Fun with Fractions

Year 5 have been looking at fractions this week in Maths. We had many children, in both classes, that were nervous and not overly confident when we mentioned the word fractions on Monday. Through hard work and perseverance we now have two classes of children who are confident fraction savvy children.

English - Instructions

We had a lot of fun evaluating different sets of instructions to play card games. Some of the instructions included all of the features and were very clear - this made it easy to play the game. However, some sets of instructions were really unclear, jumbled and brief. This made it hard to follow.  We now know how important it is to be clear and concise when we write our own instructions.

Relay Race - Text features

How many features of instructions can you remember? We had a lot of fun working as a relay team to find as many features as we could in 2 minutes. 

Inklewriter-Computing

In Computing we are using a programme that allows us to make a choose your own adventure story. We started by making a flow chart, branching database on sugar paper, a plan of our adventure.  We will use Inklewriter to input our plan and manage the decisions that we can make. We need to use lots of computing skills: debugging, tinkering, perseverance and logic to successfully create our adventure. We will see how we get on over the next few weeks, we may be able to publish some of our adventures to the website.

Topic - Maps

Our topic this half term in 'Marvellous Maps'. This week we have been exploring maps and looking at compass directions. We then had an opportunity to work outside. We looked at the compass directions in relation to the school buildings.  We also spent some time drawing sketch maps of the school and its grounds, we were looking at human and physical geographical features.

Autumn Term

Class Assembly

Well done to all of year 5 for a fantastic class assembly. The whole assembly was created by the children - including the script. Can we also say a huge thank you to all of the parents who came to watch. 

Assembly Friday 7th December

Morpurgo & Pratchett class would like to take this opportunity to invite you to our class assembly, on Friday 7th December at 1:30pm. We will share photos, videos and tales from our recent visit to Robinwood.

Cinema Trip

On Thursday, year 5 enjoyed a trip to Vue Cinema as part of Leeds Film Festival. Goosebumps 2 was exciting and a little bit jumpy at times. It was also really, really funny! We plan to use ideas from the movie in our computing and English lessons this half term.

Topic - Group Work 

This week we have been researching the questions we still have about space. We have paired up with children from the other class and used the laptops and books to create group learning logs. We have displayed our findings in any different ways and look forward to sharing our logs with the rest of the class. 

Mystery Stories

The chill shivered them as they left the arena.

“What a performance.” exclaimed Zack. He rubbed his arms and then put on his coat. Kylar, his little sister, did the same.

“We need to get home or we’ll be late for dinner.” Kylar said concerned. Kylar set of at a good pace down the aisle, Zack followed protectively behind. Suddenly, a menacing shower of hail plummeted down.The chill shivered them as they left the arena.

“What a performance.” exclaimed Zack. He rubbed his arms and then put on his coat. Kylar, his little sister, did the same.

“We need to get home or we’ll be late for dinner.” Kylar said concerned. Kylar set of at a good pace down the aisle, Zack followed protectively behind. Suddenly, a menacing shower of hail plummeted down.

By Tyrell

Stumbling forward, the arguing siblings drowned into the cold, raw pool of hail.

“I don’t like where this is leading to,” whispered Shannae catching her brother’s hoodie. With a flicker of bright coloured lights, an old rusted spinning top span around Rio and Shannae’s feet like a hypnotizing illusion. As the spinning top strolled down into the gloomy distance three ragged edged lights appeared spinning like an illuminated boomerang. Abruptly, the spinning object got greater and greater in size. Suddenly, blackness, pitch dark blackness.

By Tiarna

24 hours later, Tiffany awoke with a start. Bella lay beside her and they were both shivering. They were still in the forest, the grass had been flattened and the trees were burning and had lost their colour. All the girls could remember was the lights flickering and they had collapsed. But who were they going to tell? No one would believe them, not even their mum would believe them.

By Kia

Science - Planets

This week we have been thinking about the planets in our solar system. We found out how far each planet was from the sun and represented this on the school field. Neptune is further away than we ever thought possible! We then thought about how the planets orbit around the sun and the time it takes for each planet to do this.

More reading buddy fun

Once again, we were joined by our year 3 reading buddies. We shared books together and had lots of fun. We were very impressed with the year 3 reading ability and were really proud of the year 5 children who helped them.  

Problem Solving in maths

The children worked in groups to solve tricky maths problems. We tried to show our understanding in more than one way and prove that our answers were correct. 

Wonderful Writers

Sharing our amazing story openers with the children from Morpurgo class. We have thought very carefully about how to structure our writing and include descriptive features. We have also focused on how including dialogue can move our stories forward. 

Polite Reminder

Please ensure that your child has returned their consent forms to the class teacher by Friday 28th September. Can we also remind you that all monies owing should be paid by Friday 16th November. If there are any problems please contact Miss Wilson the Headteacher.

Reading buddies

This week, year 5 teamed up with year 3 to read a selection of books. We are going to do this every couple of weeks to help improve our reading skills. The children enjoyed reading with the younger children and sharing their books with them. 

Computing

During computing sessions this half-term the class will learning about algorithms. We will be using various programmes to help us write algorithms and we will also be using HTML code to write an algorithm from scratch.

Class Documents