Welcome to 5SJ's class page

Welcome 5SJ!

Welcome to our class web page where you can find out about our 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:

5SJ have outdoor PE on a Tuesday and indoor PE on a Thursday. 
 

Drop off and collection is at the front of the school by Reception. 
 

Children are encouraged to read for pleasure at least 3 times a week and complete TT Rock stars frequently. Maths, spelling and TT Rockstars homework is set every Monday and due the following Monday.

14th March- Mixed media art

This week, 5SJ have had so much fun as all of our afternoons have been full of wonderful art lessons. We started the week by looking at the artist Chris Ofili, learning about the type of art he creates and even recreating a famous piece in our sketchbook. We then became inspired to create our own piece of mixed media art work based on an inspirational person in the world. The children had lots of fun using the sharpies to create their outlines and add detail, as well as using so many amazing resources to produce beautiful backgrounds and add colour to their chosen figure. Below are some pictures of us getting stuck in and some finished pieces. I am so proud of every child in 5SJ for being incredible artists.

World Book Day 2025

Oh what a day of fun! This year for World Book Day we had to dress up as a reading hero and we had some amazing heroes in 5SJ. Our day was jam-packed full of amazing activities planned for us by the amazing Miss Nicholas. We started by creating a class hero: his name was Eclipse and he had a pigeon sidekick, super-sonic hearing and a magical spray can that made him invisible. We also created our own graphic novels which we all loved... especially as we were listening to the 5th Dogman book in the background.

In the second part of the morning we had a wonderful author come in to talk to us about writing a book and what it was likke to be an author. The children were very curious and asked lots of great, insightful questions. In the afternoon we hosted a character battle! Each child in 5SJ made their own hero Top Trump card creating their owns statistics. They then spent some of the afternoon battling their heroes against each other until we ended up with the last hero standing, leaving them as the champion of heroes!

We had such a great day and thank you to all who made it possible.

Climate zones- 28th February

In enquiry today, we hve completed the final piece of learning in our 'What makes Earth, Earth?' over-arching enquiry. In one of our lessons, we were learning about Earth's many climates and how they make Earth unique. We learnt about 4 climate zones: Arctic, sub-Arctic, Temperate and Tropical. We watched a video and went into greater detail with Miss Janes who explained what each climate was like and what weather patterns they would experience throughout the year. 

In our enquiry books, we coloured in our own world maps, highlighing, with coloured pencils, which countries were in particular climates and created a key to ensure clarity. We then wrote a short summary of each climate in our books to pair with the map.

We had so much fun learning about the different climates on Earth and we can't wait to present this information in our ambiition.

Enquiry 14th February- Earth art

This afternoon the children spent some time finishing off their art work from the engage lesson of the second half of our forces enquiry. The second half is called 'What makes Earth, Earth?' where we link the forces we have learnt about in the first half to how the Earth moves in space. When we started this artwork last week, we looked at some satelite images of different places on Earth such as volcanoes, oceans and salt desserts. We then watched some clips from David Attenborough documentaries, showing scenes of our Earth on a closer level.

We also spent a little bit of time looking at different techniques we could use to add texture to the paint and they have come out amazingly. The children have put a lot of effort into these to get them finished this afteenoon and I can't wait to put some on our enquiry display in the classroom...It's going to be really hard to choose only a few!

Thrive- 29th January

This term in Thrive, our focus is trying new things. Today, our goal was to learn a new skill by the end of the lesson. We started by talking about what a skill is and then related these ideas to oursleves and identified skills we possess. The children were able to list many skills that they are good at and have perfected. The new skill that we were eager to learn was an element of first aid. This is an incredibly important life skill and to help us with our leanring we watched a video of a paramedic performing the procedure and we had a go ourselves after. The children really enjoyed this activity and made sure that they followed the steps perfectly. 

'What do forces do?' engage:

On Friday, we started our new enquiry topic 'What do forces do?'. As our engage task, we created balloon rockets. This consisted of putting a straw onto some string, taping a balloon to the straw and letting the balloon go, ideally making the straw travel quickly along the length of the string. This task was an introduction to air resistance and the children had to try and idenitfy which force was impacting the straw to make it move. Many children were able to identify that the air from the balloon was making the straw move.

This was a very successful first investigation and we cannot wait to conduct more interesting experiments across the term!

Our Viking declarations

In enquiry this week, we have moved on from Anglo-Saxons and we are starting to learn about how The Vikings took over the majority ruling of Britain. Today (Friday 15th November) we were learning about  the impact that their invasion had on Britain. We looked at how the kingdoms were split across England and we picked apart some factfiles that allowed us to learn the impacts, both positive and negative, of their actions. Our task was to make our own promises for what the Anglo-Saxons should expect. We pretended to be Vikings and we wrote a declaration with five promises on how we would affect Britain after our invasion and we wrote a warning to the inhabitants of Britain at the time. Our favourite part was tea staining our declarations to make them look old and 'Viking-like'.

Anti-bulling week 2024

This week, our collective worship focus has been based on the Anti-Bulling Alliance theme of respect for this year's dedicated week. This afternoon, we have taken part in some activites centred around respect. In 5SJ we made a 'web of respect'. This is where we had a ball of string and one child started with the end. They said something respectful to somone else in the circle and we passed the string on. After a while (as you can see in the photos) we managed to start creating a beautiful web in the centre of the circle that connected us through being respectful to one another. I will say, it was not fun being a teacher stuck in the middle of the web at the end!

Interfaith Day 2024

Yesterday (12th November) it was Interfaith day. This is where we learn about different religions from around the world. Every year group learned about a different religion and Year 5 did some work all around Hinduism. We conducted some learning about Hinduism and learned about some aspects of Diwali (The festival of light). We decided that we were going to create some colourful Hindu art. The children used oil pastels to create patterns and add colour to their individual templates. Here is some of our artwork in progress.

Year 5 Gurdwara Trip

On Friday the 8th November, Year 5 went to the Gurdwara to round off our RE learning from Term 1. When we arrived, we went to the dining room where all of the children sat on rugs and asked questions about the Gurdwara and the things that they could see within it. They also put their learning to the test with the great people giving us the tour asking them lots of questions about prior learning. After the question session, we went up to the first floor and entered the room in which is used for their Sunday service and where prayers take place. The children learned a lot about the many requirements of the religion and asked many insightful questions as the morning went on. Our morning was jam-packed full of learning and we had a great first trip as a Year 5 cohort!

'How did the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings change Britain?' engage

We have officially started our new enquiry all about the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons. As our engage for this enquiry, we looked at Viking and Anglo-Saxon weapons and thought about why they might have needed weapons in the first place. We went on to make some predictions as to whether they were invited to Britain or if they invaded it. Based on these discussions, we made some traditional patterned Viking shields. We used resources like cardboard and bottle tops generously brought in from home and we created the metallic part of the shield using tin foil. The results turned out fantastically and it really made the children excited for the new learning about to take place.

'What makes us all the same?' ambition

We saw out our first enquiry with a bang at the end of term one. The children's ambition this term was to deliver a talk to the year 2's about the similarities between us as humans and birds, amphibians, marsupials and other mammals. They had to accumulate a terms worth of learning and organise it into a talk suitable for younger children. Some children in the class chose to use visuals such as pictures, whilst others wrote speeches in order to deliver their infromation. 5SJ did such a wonderful job and created some really amazing and informative talks. We consider this ambiton a success and we cannot wait for our next enquiry!

This week in 5SJ we have had a lovely week. The highlight of the week for us would be our Thrive lesson on Friday. Our focus in Thrive this term is learning to work positively with others. This week we have collaborated with 5JW in order to work with children we wouldn't usually work with. The added element to our lesson was that we were also considering emotions and how we can all feel differently on a day to day basis. The outcome of the lesson was to be able to create a mood dance/walk to a piece of music. We chose the happy emotion and the children produced some amazing pieces and demonstrated working positively with others incredibly well.