Welcome to Year Five.

We are really looking forward to working with both the children and yourselves as parents and carers this year.

Teaching structure / PPA Cover

Mrs Lbieb teaches the class Mondays, Tuesdays and alternate Wednesday mornings. Mrs Jenkin teaches alternate Wednesday mornings, and all-day Thursday and Friday. We communicate daily and work extremely closely, with a full handover on a Wednesday.

In addition, Mrs Ellmer will be with us every morning of the week and we join together for a Year Five planning meeting on a Monday morning.

Self-organisation

We encourage the children to take responsibility for their belongings and to bring the equipment they need as appropriate each day. Please remind them to check that their water bottles, PE kits, school clothing and personal items are named to save confusion. They will each have a peg in the classroom and a personal tray.

Homework

Weekly tasks

This year, we will be using a half termly grid of tasks for weekly homework. The grid will be added to Google Classroom at the start of a half term. Children should choose one of the activities from the grid to complete and hand in, either on Google Classroom, or to Mrs Lbieb on a Monday morning each week. All of the tasks on the grid are connected to different curriculum areas that relate to our learning for that half term.

Reading

In addition to this, the expectation is still that children read daily, and either they, or an adult, record this in their reading records. They will once again be issued with a reading passport. Our rationale behind this is to encourage children to read from a wider range of genres, and ensure they are stretching themselves to read age appropriate material. We would also like to encourage children to read genres which they have not read before, hoping they will find a genre they love, and will be keen to explore more.

These will come home with the children at the beginning of each term, and the idea is that the children need to read a book from each of the categories. They will then rate their book and once they have achieved all of the sections their teacher will have a conference with them to discuss their enjoyment and engagement in what they have read.

One of the categories you will notice will be based upon the specific year groups recommended reading lists. These will be available on your Google classroom page, and on the school website for you to browse. Some of these brilliant titles can be found in our school library or on our class bookshelves, but others will be available at the local library. This is a brilliant opportunity for the children to go and explore their local library and see what they have on offer. Durrington, Goring and Worthing library are all very good at ordering in books if you ask them to.

If your child is reading colour banded books we will be encouraging them to try and pick their colour banded book to fit into one of the categories, but if this is not possible they may come home with 2 books. Please do continue to read the colour banded book, and perhaps share the reading of the reading passport choice.

These passports are not to be rushed through, it is to empower the children as readers, and to let them gain breadth of knowledge around what they are reading, and for them to explore and enhance their love of reading. For this reason, it should take the children the majority of the term to finish their passport.

Once they have finished, and they have had their conference with their teacher, their name will then be put into a pot. At the end of each term a child’s name will be picked out and they will win a prize!

Every child who completes their passport will also receive a reading certificate.

Spellings

We will be continuing with our multiple-focused spelling approach this year.

This allows children to investigate and learn about spelling patterns and rules as well as really explore the phonemes (sounds) within words, marrying well with the ‘Song of Sounds’ phonics programme used in Key Stage One.

In week one of the spelling programme, children will test a spelling hypothesis abut a spelling rule, looking for patterns and also examine words with the same phoneme (sound). The following week, they will have 10 minute spelling sessions where they recap patterns, explore common errors and focus on a range of different phonemes. Through a cycle of examining and reviewing patterns, children will embed learning to their long-term memory and create spelling strategies that can remain with them for life.

To allow parents/carers to be aware of the spelling patterns and rules we re focusing upon, we will add them and a list of words that follow that pattern/rule to Google Classroom every two week. As before, we will not have formal weekly spelling test we are learning to spell more accurately in all of our writing.   

Maths

Learning the Times Tables need not a tedious chore! Learning them can be fun through multiplication and division games that you can find on https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/multiplication-and-division.  We would like your child to practice these daily.  

The Curriculum

This year we shall have a range of topics: Earth and Space, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings (under the title of the Fight for Power in the Kingdom of England) and The Thrill of Brazil . We look forward to showcasing lots of our learning at our parents/carers afternoons. (Dates to be communicated very soon!)

We cannot wait to begin another exciting school year with your children and celebrate their many successes.

From the Year Five Team.

Welcome meeting for parents - please find the PowerPoint used for the meeting attached below: