In Year 5 we have had a very busy but fun couple of weeks. We have had a few visits from some members of 3 Horseshoes Bowls club and we have learned how to bowl in preps for our visit to the bowls green next month. We have enjoyed playing bowls in these sessions and a few of us have managed to land our bowls on the bullseye. Last week was sports week and we took part in a range of different sports: axe throwing, clubasize, dodgeball, Fit Kidz and boxing.

This week we had science day! Our focus was on the book Armstrong: The Adventurous Journey of a Mouse to the Moon. Because of our space themed book, we made stomp bottle rockets. We had to make a launcher using a 2 litre bottle, a hose pipe and pvc tubing. Once we made the launcher, we wrapped some paper around the tube to create the template for our rockets. We agreed as a class to test how the amount of fins impacted the distance the rocket travelled. Finally we tested our rockets to see how hey compared.

On Monday, the Year 5s had an informative and fun trip to… Knebworth House!!

When we first got there, we put our belongings on the floor and sat on the carpet in the main hall. There, we learned about the timeline of the Tudors: King Henry the VII ( Seventh), King Henry VIII and his wives all the way up to Elizabeth the Ist (when the Tudor period ended) - we also learned a very interesting fact… Robert Lytton owned Knebworth house. We explored some of the different rooms in the house and we even got to try on Tudor clothes. Did you know that the colour of their clothes showed their level of class? Next, we went into a secret study that had a hidden door and tried writing with a calligraphy pen then we went back into the drawing room (which was a fancy room) and tried different Tudor musical instruments. After breaking for lunch, we went outside and explored the garden: visiting the maze, the dinosaur trail and into the vegetable and herb gardens. Once in the gardens, we were challenged to create some meal ideas to make for a queen's banquet as if she were visiting. We noticed potatoes, leeks, onions and carrots (as well as some fruits to use for deserts). It was an enjoyable trip with lots of fun and information.

Year 5 have had two fun weeks back.

In music we have begun learning to play the ukuleles. We have learnt hold to hold and strum them correctly and have identified the note of each string. Next lesson we will be learning to play chords.

In Literacy we have been looking at screen use and how much is appropriate for children. We had a special video from Mr Mark Lewis and Mrs Elson who explained their views on both the positives and negatives of the subject. We have also been fortunate to have coaches from Sharks Rugby who have been teaching us tag rugby skills.  To celebrate Earth Day, we had a live lesson about how to treat our earth right and the different ways that we could help it. We also went and looked at the different nature areas around our school. For science this half term we have started to learn about the different parts of a flower. We took some photos of different flowers and drew the male and female parts.

In Y5 we have had a lot of visitors this week: we had students from Hertfordshire University come in and teach us a song that they had written for us, we had SSFT (Stevenage Sporting Futures Team) to deliver a workshop on How to Love your Heart. They taught us what to do in an emergency (DR.ABCD) - Danger, Response, Airways, Breathing, Compressions/CPR, Defibrillator. We used dummies to practise on and were shown how to get our partners into the recovery position.

In Literacy we have been writing a narrative based on a video titled One Small Step. As part of an experience day, we made origami rockets, which was really tricky to do! It helped us to understand what Luna felt like when she was experiencing failure in the story. Also this week we celebrated World Book Day where we dressed up as our favourite book characters, read with the Reception children, had a World Book Day themed quiz and made a creative origami bookmark.

The last few weeks, we have been using a program in music that allows us to create a Grime track. We have been creating our own drum beat and bass line to make our own track. In art, we have been researching information about an artist called Chila Kumari Singh Burman. In particular, we used her work to inspire us to be creative with our own portraits using oil pastels. In Science, we have been looking at dissolving salt/sugar in water and trying to separate contaminated water which had mud, leaves, twigs and glitter to see if we could use filters to remove different parts of the mixture. During literacy, we have started our new writing unit based on the text Varmints. We generated our own vocabulary for the paradise at the start of the book.

In Year 5 we have been entering the Christmas spirit. This week we walked to St Peter's Church for our Christmas Celebration and sung a new song called Love Shone Down. We listened to Reverend Kate retell the Christmas story. On Thursday, the whole of Key Stage 2 visited the Gordon Craig theatre to watch Dick Whittington for this year's pantomime. In class we have been planning to write our own diary entry based on a BBC documentary about emperor penguins. We are writing from the point of view of one of the camera crew. In French we have been learning how to say what different pets we have. In art we have designed a monument all about ourselves. We have thought about clues to our likes and combined them into one design. Lastly, in science, we have been thinking about alternative uses for everyday objects: paper cups, ruler, books. We have then considered how we would advertise our items with their different uses.