Working with Buxton Fringe
Over the last few weeks, Year 5 have been working with a composer and performer from Buxton Fringe called Paul Cromford. Paul has written a set of songs all about the Moon and has been coming up to school to share the songs with us. The children have had a chance to sing along with the songs and have some wonderful question and answer sessions with Paul as well. Such a great experience.
Butterflies
When we came into class today, we found out that our butterflies have hatched! We are very excited. We have given them some apple to keep them healthy until we release them and they can get to nectar.
For us to use in class next week!
Mrs Parkes' Year 5 Class
Welcome to our class page. We hope you enjoy seeing some of the wonderful things that the Year 5 children have been doing this term. Mrs Parkes
Earthquake proof buildings
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Today we have been making multi-storey buildings from marshmallows and cocktail sticks. We tried to make buildings that could cope with an earthquake! We created our earthquake by putting our structures on top of jelly! When we were ready we gave it a good shake to set it vibrating and watched what happened! Look further down for videos of our testing.
Carnival of the animals
Year 5 have had a great day making fish puppets from Willow frames ready for a procession based on the Carnival of the Animals which will take place during Buxton Carnival joining with other schools to represent all of the animals Saint Saen wrote music for. We had great fun making fish along with Babbling Vagabonds theatre company. We will send information home about how children can join in on the day nearer to the time.
Science forces
This term in science we are learning all about forces including gravity, buoyancy, air resistance and friction. We are really enjoying carrying g out some practical investigations. Last week we looked at how the weight and size of an object affected the size of the crater it made in flour as gravity acted on it in different ways. This week we looked at how different shapes had different buoyancy.
Volcanoes and earthquakes
This term our topic in Year 5 is all about Volcanoes and Earthquakes. We have learnt about the structure of the earth and how tectonic plates float on the liquid mantle. We have also made our own tectonic oranges and completed a tectonic jigsaw of the world. We have found out all about the structure of volcanoes and we are going to practise our explanation writing from last term by writing all about volcanoes.
Carnival of the animals project
Over the next seven weeks, Year 5 are working on a project all about a piece of music called Carnival of the Animals by a composer called Saint-Saens. Buxton International Festival are organising the project with a group of local Buxton schools. We will be listening and reacting to music, creating and composing music and creating art work related to the music. Today was our first session and we had great fun composing our own music using chime bars. As you can see we took it very seriously and showed great concentration!
Making penguins!
The children have been fascinated by the fact that Humboldt Penguins live in the Atacama Desert in South America. Yesterday they asked if we could make penguins. A group of children looked at Pinterest with me and we worked out how we might do it and had a go. Today those children acted as teachers and ran a workshop to show the rest of the class how to make them. They were very popular and as usual 5P showed what characters they are by going one step further and making penguins with babies on their feet, penguins with tiny penguins inside them, penguins with brains inside their heads and finally an alien penguin with one eye!! Such creativity!
year 5 South America parent event
We were fortunate enough to be joined in the hall by a good number of parents who were intrigued to find out what our children had been learning in their topic lessons this term about South America. We started out with a fun family quiz where our parents (and ourselves) were pleasantly surprised at the knowledgeable and articulate responses from the children in answering the questions. We then tasted different foods and drinks which are exported from South America. The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves and more importantly enjoyed having parents around. It was particularly nice to see the parents helping and interacting with other children, as well as their own, making them feel a part of the event. For this and for your attendance, a huge thank you from Mr Redman and Mrs Parkes.
Andy tooze - Poetry for year 5
We were very fortunate to welcome into our school the poet Andy Tooze. Andy spent time with the year 5 boys and girls creating quick poems. It was great to see the children, especially the less confident writers, really engage with this and produce some fantastic, short poems. With the themes chosen as diverse as friends, animals and body parts, you can imagine the weird, wacky and wonderful poetry the children managed to produce! We can't wait to develop these poetry skills in other areas of our curriculum in the future.
Spring term Mayans
In this first half of the Spring Term, Year 5 have been finding out all about the ancient civilisation of the Mayans. As part of our learning we looked at where and when they lived and we were fascinated to find that they existed at the same time as as the Vikings that we studied earlier in the year. We found out all about the beliefs of the Mayans and how they worshipped multiple Gods. We researched Mayan masks and designed our own, thinking about whether they were death marks made of green jade, battle masks based on animals or event masks to celebrate things like weddings. We also found out all about how Mayans used writing and numbers. As part of our Literacy unit we wrote the story of how the Mayans believed the world was created.
Sharing Learning with parents
Today we welcomed parents into Year 5 to share our learning about Anglo Saxons and Vikings. We were able to show them our work and explain what we had been learning. The whole year group sang some Viking sagas which told us all about Viking Gods. Finally all of our visitors helped us to paint the pendants we made when we visited the Anglo Saxon village at Tatton Park.
ANGLO SAXONS AND VIKINGS AT TATTON
Year 5 have spent the day visiting an Anglo Saxon village set up at Tatton. This has helped us understand what life was like at the point in history where the Vikings had invaded Britain but were living alongside the existing population. We have spent the day being trained as slaves because the Tax money sent by the village to the Vikings had gone missing! We learnt to make flat breads and we learnt to fight! We also found out about bartering and how deer hide and antlers were used. As an added bonus we saw lots of deer as we drove through the park.
Indian Dancing
Today we had a visit from an Indian dancer and we all got to take part in a dance workshop. 5P has a great time and were extremely good! They were fascinated by all the different hand gestures and how they linked to different animals. Ask them to show you the crab or the turtle!
LEARNING ABOUT CAREERS
Today we have been thinking about what jobs and careers people do. We thought about the jobs we know about and made a massive list. Then we sorted them into different groups like caring jobs and mending and making jobs. Then we thought about some important skills like being organised, being helpful and being friendly. We tried to think which of those skills were most important in different jobs.
LINKS TO SCIENCE
Yesterday we talked about what would happen to the leaves that had fallen on the playground. The children were fascinated to find out that they would slowly rot and would become soil for new plants to grow in in future years. Once they knew how to help leaves rot more quickly, they suggested that we should go and collect the leaves, put them in bin bags and puncture the bags so we would have lots of good soil for the new vegetable gardens being dug at the front of the school. We wrote all about our afternoon in our Science books.
VARJAK PAW AND BUNS!
5P are reading a book called Varjak Paw at the moment. It is all about a cat with special powers who comes from a far away land called Mesopotamia. The books describes the air as smelling of cinnamon and dates. The children weren’t sure what they were - so this week we passed them around for people to see (and smell!). Mrs Parkes made some cinnamon and date buns for them to taste them too.
Chocolate rocks
As part of our year 5 science topic, we investigated the properties of Igneous, Metamorphic and Sedimentary rocks. The children used white and milk chocolate to replicate the rock and used pressure, heat and cold to replicate how this happens. The children grated the chocolate to show erosion then split the gratings into 3 packets. They applied pressure to make sedimentary, heat, pressure and cold to create metamorphic and longer levels of heat and cold to create igneous. They then got to the truly exciting bit... they ate their 'rocks'.
Year 5 trip to Macclesfield forest
As an engaging learning hook for our application week, year 5 visited Macclesfield Forest to take part in a day's worth of activities exploring different types of rock and their origins. In the afternoon the children learned about soils and even made their own soil. A big thank you to all our children and the staff at Macclesfield Forest for making this a fun and educational day.
Contour hill modelling
In this application week, year 5 have been studying geography including OS symbols, mapping skills and contour lines. To show their knowledge they worked from plans to produce 3D contour maps of different types of hill structure.
Year 5 Rocks and soils - Science.
This term Year 5 are investigating how rocks and soils are created and their properties. We have been identifying the rock cycle for Igneous, Metamorphic and Sedimentary rocks.