
Welcome to our class web page where you can find out about our amazing learning journey. You will find
information about our activities, examples of our work and comments from us! Please visit often to see our learning journey develop.
Key information:
5BW have outdoor PE on a Tuesday and indoor PE on a Thursday.
5BW's entrance and exit point is the main gate next to the car park.
Please wait on the playground area to collect your children.
Year 5 will be continuing to develop their knowledge of the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons this term. Having already read their class text, 'Viking Boy', the children will develop a greater depth of knowledge and key elements of Viking life whilst exploring details of the Anglo-Saxons. When 'Being Writers', the children will use 'Arthur and the Golden Rope' as a stimulus before using their enquiry knowledge to write their own information texts.
Year 5 will also be swimming this term, each class having the opportunity to practice and apply key skills.
As Theologians, Year 5 will use their knowledge of the Easter Story to reinforce the importance of the school values within their own lives. Of course, Year 4 will perform during the Easter service later in the term, a time for the school community to come together.
Term 3
This term the children will focus on being Geographers in their enquiry, 'How are some children prevented from going to school?'. This will explore key place knowledge using atlases and allow the children to develop an understanding of the barriers many children face in education both in the UK and across the world. Research will be made of key facts and information before writing persuasive speeches to encourage every child to be given access to a good, quality education.
The children will be artists as part of their ambition, using their thoughts and emotions to produce a thought-provoking piece of work to illustrate some of the reasons children face these barriers in accessing school. A busy, fun-filled term ahead!
Being Artists
This week, the children completed their final pieces of artwork, which represented one or more reasons why children are prevented from accessing education. The children used the knowledge they had gained over the last term's enquiry and writing units, as well as techniques learnt in art lessons, to complete some wonderful, emotive pieces!
Being Athletes
This week, Year 4 and 5 were lucky enough to be treated to a fantastic cricket workshop put on by the Gloucestershire Cricket Foundation! The children (and of course Mr Wright) took part in a game of cricket dodgeball! The engagement in the session was amazing to see and there was also some fantastic sportsmanship on show.
Being Artists
Being Geographers
Year 5 have been incredibly busy so far this term. The children have started with lots of learning by 'being geographers'. This has involved using atlases to identify key locations whilst recognising key facts, figures and flags. We have also explored Google Earth to understand the proximity of these countries to the UK. As part of this, the children have been exploring key case studies of children from these countries and considering the barriers they face in accessing school.
Term 2
'It's the most wonderful time of the year....' As the song goes, we are heading towards Christmas and the term is likely to be filled with lots of interesting learning providing opportunities for curiosity and intrigue. The children in Year 5 will be exploring a number of questions about different enquiries, starting with their local environment. This question is 'How can we improve our local ecosystems?'
Not only will this term be busy with learning, there are a number of other events too; from the visit of the Old Vic, to the Christmas Fayre and the Annual, St. Stephens has talent. A busy but fun-filled term. Keep up to date as the term progresses.
Being actors
A fantastic local drama group were kind enough to deliver an engaging workshop in our classroom after performing a wonderful version of Alice in Wonderland to the school in the morning. The children were treated to a variety of games and activities which they all threw themselves into with great enthusiasm!
Being scientists
This week, we were being scientists by looking at the different parts of a plant. In order to do this, we dissected plants apart and labelled them based on our prior knowledge.
Term 1
Year 5 have a busy term ahead with multiple questions to explore and answer. We begin by 'being scientists' and exploring the lives of humans and animals, considering how they change over time.
The term has started by 'being artists', building on previous drawing the skills, the children have been drawing their self-portraits considering techniques to add detail to their work before evaluating their pieces.
Alongside this, the children will be busy learning new knowledge and skills in other subjects including RE, PE and Music. All of Year 5 will continue to learn a new language in French lessons with our specialist teacher, Mrs Hayes.
National Poetry Day 2025
All of St. Stephens celebrated National Poetry Day by taking part in activities and tasks that engaged their creative thinking about words and poetry. The theme was 'play'.
In Year 5, the children focused on a poem by Lucinda Jacob, titled, 'Rules for a good walk'.
This was a really interesting poem to read. It provoked some interesting conversations about our use of technology and how it can often get in the way of important time together. Once the poem had been read aloud, the children wrote their own versions, considering the key thoughts and ideas of playing outside.
Innovation
In the innovation phase of their learning, the children are encouraged to practise a skill that they are going to use in their ambition and receive feedback on what they did well before considering how they could improve this skill. In Year 5, the focus on is on presenting. Each group received a different animal to present information to other groups in the class. We first explored what makes a good presentation before attempting to share this with others. It will be great to see what wonderful presenters we have in the class.
Engage and Explore
Starting our enquiry, the children explored pictures of key individuals from yester year and guessed who they were. The the children were given two well-known celebrities to try and identify - amazingly it was difficult to work out that these were Taylor Swift and David Attenborough. This highlighted the amazing changes that we experience throughout our lives.
The children then started exploring how we compare to other mammals when being born. Using google classroom, there was paired research to find out how long other animals were pregnant. This provoked some really interesting conversations about the size of animals compared to length of pregnancy and also life expectancy.
We then moved on and the children considered how age can be a factor in growth and also in key activities such as running, jumping and throwing. Firstly, the children ordered themselves in age order and then compared height. The children then discussed how it is not a linear range, as some children are younger but taller. Classes had some excellent discussions about why this might be such as genetics and factors through chiildhood e.g. injury.
Following this the children worked in groups to record how far, quick and long two children could throw, run and jump. Two children in each group, the youngest and the oldest, completed before the others in the group recorded the results. Discussions then followed about who and why the results before recording conclusions in their books. Some fantastic conversations as Scientists.
