MrJennings

In this last full week of term, we have been finishing off some of our topics, including our science work on life cycles. We have also spent some time doing our Year 5 updates for our individual Records of Achievement which will be put together into special booklets at the end of Year 6.

We have also spent time making sure that our automata have been completed. We have then undertaken an evaluation exercise on these. The finished automata have been photographed and videoed and these images have been included in reports and PowerPoint-style presentations about them. These have included a description of how they were made and some element of evaluation.

One of the highlights of the week was our school talent show. Our class, along with others in the school held auditions to find a class representative - our winner was one of the boys doing some shadow-boxing.

In English this week, we have been writing advertisements for various simple products - trying to make them sound amazing while, in maths, we have been learning to draw and interpret scale drawings. We have spent two afternoons working on our automata. Most of us have almost completed making the various parts of our models and some of us have finished the construction as well.

We have had our summer music concert and went swimming on Tuesday afternoon.

We have had a busy few weeks with may activities taking us out of the classroom.

We had our school Sports Day followed by two INSET Days, then some of us had a day preparing for an attending a concert given by the Halle Orchestra (during which we played along with two items and sang two others). This week ended with our school Summer Fair, so it has been our Enterprise Week during which we made and costed items to sell in order to raise money for school. We made greetings cards (re-using old paper and card scraps), covered notebooks with a ribbon bookmark and animal face fridge magnets made with coloured foam sheets. Another special activity has been to finish organising our "buddy groups" with children from the infant school who will be joining us in September as our new Year 3s.

We have had some time for the normal curriculum - working on perimeter and area in maths and features of persuasive writing in advertising texts in English. We have also spent time on our technology projects and on computing, creating a racing game and a ping-pong game using Scratch.

We have had a week full of investigations!

We have done a series of maths investigations including ones based on permutations and combinations as well as number sequences and patterns. We have also reviewed calculations and multi-step maths problems.

We had a special day on Thursday when we set up our own CSI lab. We had to test and describe five different powders and use chromatography to investigate the ink from four pens. We then had to compare our results with those of a powder and ink found at the crime-scene and using a table of evidence found at suspects' homes, suggest the name of the individual most likely to have committed the crime.

In addition, we spent some time on our design and technology project, making our axle/cam mechanisms and making progress with the figures that will move on top of our structures.

In this first week after our half-term break, we have undertaken a variety of English tasks. We have done some further character study on personalities in the Grandpa Chatterji story, used a text from the second Grandpa Chatterji novel (when the family visit India) as the basis for some reading comprehension work, reviewed some of our year's grammar work and starter to think about persuasive writing in advertisements. Our main maths work has revolved around the theme of multiplication. We have worked on multiples and factors, specifically finding prime factors, and then moved on to multiplication sums. This work has focused on making estimates (and using them to check answers), mental calculations and, today, long multiplication,

Two major pieces of work this week have been about Nottingham Castle and the Five Ks of Sikhism. In history, we learned about the building and development of Nottingham Castle from Norman times until the 16th century, creating an information sheet by sequencing pictures and information. In RE we investigated the five Ks - examining artifacts first hand, describing them and researching their meaning and significance for Sikhs.

We also had an extended session using Sketchup (to produce 3D models of buildings) and our first  swimming session together.

This week has been our Arts Week at school.

We have taken "India" as our theme and the majority of our activities have been linked to this during the week. We have continued reading our "Grandpa Chatterji" book in English, thinking about the aspects of Indian culture addressed in the story and thinking about the  development of the characters and some techniques used by the author. We also read some "Readers Theater" plays based on traditional Indian folk stories.

Bhangra drumming and Bollywood dancing were two of the exciting activities of the week. Both of these were provided by visiting specialist teachers. We also studied some traditional drumming rhythms in class and improvised on top of these.

We also did a range of art activities. These including sketching, creating rangoli patterns and developing designs based on the theme of the peacock which is a national animal of India.

This has been our "test week" at school with our "end of year" tests in English (reading and spelling) and maths. However, there has been plenty of time for other activities too.

In our RE topic, we have learned about the Langar meal, kitchen and hall, thinking about how this activity reflects the beliefs of Sikh people. We have done some more "sketchup" graphics work in ICT and studied flowers in art and science - drawing flowers as well as dissecting and identifying the main parts of a flower.

We have also started a study of the novel, Grandpa Chatterji, in advance of our "India" theme of work for next week's Arts Week.