What we are doing this week in Lilac Class

WB: 6.9.21

Welcome back!  I am so impressed with the way the children have settled in to the new term.  It was a real pleasure to meet everyone last Friday.  In Maths in Lilac Class, we are starting our new block of learning entitled ‘Place Value’. This week we are working with numbers up to 10,000 using concrete manipulatives and pictorial representations.  We will also be revising our work that we covered in Year 4 about place value.  This will begin with adding and subtracting 10, 100 and 1,000 when working with numbers up to 10,000 exploring what is happening to the place value columns.  We will then move onto rounding numbers to 10, 100 and 1,000.  Our Mathematical Talk will include such questions as ‘Which place value column do we need to look at when we round to the nearest 1,000?’ and ‘When is it best to round to the nearest 10? 100?  1,000?’

For English this week, we are focusing on ‘Quest’ by Aaron Becker.  This book is the sequel to ‘Journey’ that we covered last year and like ‘Journey’ this will be a text that the whole school will be covering and accessing at their own level.  Our task this week is to plan, draft and level up a piece of writing that is a prediction and explores character based on what we already know about the plot and characters in ‘Journey’. 

Our Whole Class Guided Reading text this term is ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by C.S. Lewis.  We are reading Chapter One and will be particularly examining the relationship between Lucy and Mr Tumnus, the faun. 

 In RE, our new unit of learning is ‘God’ and our key question is ‘What does it mean if God is loving and holy?’ This week we are going to discuss the question ‘What would a god need to be like if people are going to worship him?’.  We will be thinking about what we already know about God from reading and our knowledge about the Bible. 

Our Year 5 Science Topic this term is ‘Earth and Space’.  For Science and ICT this week, we will be researching information about Earth and Space and developing our knowledge about this area of learning.  In Topic, our area of learning for Time and Place is ‘The Ancient Mayan Civilisation’. This week will be thinking about the facts that we would like to know about this subject.  Lilac Class are then exploring where and when the remains of the Mayan Civilisation were discovered in the tropical rainforests of Mesoamerica.  In Art, we are creating our own whole class Mesoamerican tropical rainforest frieze. 

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or queries.  I have also attached to this weekly blog my letter to parents that explains Homework that will be set next week.