New Zealand Class Year 5

New Zealand Class Blog October 2023

It’s been a busy start to the autumn term in New Zealand class. Here is a flavour of what we’ve been doing this term.

We have been reading the Iron Man by Ted Hughes. We all enjoyed the story and were inspired to write our own alternative resolution and endings as well as descriptions of the scrapyard and the Space Bat Angel Dragon.

We also used the Iron Man as a springboard for some exciting Art drawing the Iron Man in the style of the illustrator Chris Mould.

Next, we tried to mix the colours of rust – ready to use on our final Iron Man piece.

For Maths we’ve been focussed on place value with numbers up to six figures and we’ve now started to look at decimals and fractions as well as keeping our arithmetic skills sharp with our daily skills sessions.

We’ve enjoyed starting to learn how to play Flutes. We’ve learnt about the different parts of the instrument and how to accompany a piece of music.

Geography has seen us finding out where Yeovil is in the world, understanding how to read the symbols on an OS map and read 4 and 6 figure grid references.

We’ve all enjoyed our new double PE day on a Tuesday. We have our indoor session in the morning and then an outdoor session in the afternoon, dodging a few showers along the way! We’ve worked on our ball handling skills and how to be a good team member.

Our Scarf Workshop this week was all about being a good friend and how to be assertive. We used role play to try out the techniques that we learnt during the morning.

Spring 2023

Highlight of the half-term was our visit to Paignton Zoo. The weather, and roads, were kind and we had a really enjoyable day looking at all the zoo had to offer. We also had a talk from a member of staff at the zoo.

We have enjoyed studying the narrative poem The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes in English this term. It’s a poem full of drama and we practised it in our groups before reciting to the class. Here we are preparing for the performance.

We also read and compared the poem to The Listeners by Walter De la Mare

Our main focus for Maths this term has been fractions. We looked at equivalent fractions, ordered and compared them and finally added and subtracted fractions.

We have also looked at area and perimeter.Here we are checking the perimeter of the playground. We estimated first how many metres we thought it would be then went outside and measured! Our estimates were pretty good!

Science Day was a chance to try out some different science. We all enjoyed the whole school challenge of which biscuit was the best ‘dunker’ and found out about the science behind fingerprints and how to take our own.

Our art topic is on Cherry Blossoms inspired by artist  Damian Hirst. Here are some of our pictures.

December 2022

This has been a really busy half-term for everyone in New Zealand class. The highlight was our visit to Mill-on-the-Brue which proved to be the challenging and exciting experience it always is; even the rain didn’t stop us from enjoying ourselves!

English has seen us looking at newspapers and looks like we  have some future reporters in our class asking their classmates and adults questions about our temporary move to Huish and then writing reports using all the features of a newspaper successfully.

Maths has seen a focus on Factors, Multiples, square numbers and multiplying and dividing by 10, 100, 1000. Our daily times tables continue and our speed of recall and times table knowledge is increasing each week. We’ve also introduced Goal Free Maths - where the children decide the questions that could be asked of a set of information - they’ve been creative and original in their chosen questions.

Art saw a focus on Remembrance Day and all the children worked hard to create some stunning ‘poppy art’.

We’ve also enjoyed Children in Need and Christmas Jumper Day in the last couple of weeks. Thank you to everyone for participating so enthusiastically!

NOVEMBER 2022

During the past few weeks, we have looked at written methods for addition and subtraction in Maths as well as understanding the place value of decimals. We have started reading the Wizard of Oz as our class book and re-written the opening chapter as a newspaper report. Geography has seen us looking at mapping skills and understanding how to read an ordnance survey map. We’ve also looked at the location of Yeovil in Somerset, our neighbouring counties and where Yeovil fits into the wider UK map.

We’ve really enjoyed continuing our Iron Man art and used illustrator Chris Mould’s Iron Man drawings as an inspiration. Dodging the showers, we’ve moved from Basketball to Netball in PE.

 All the children attending Mill-on-the-Brue are looking forward to the experience and those who are not coming will be taking part in a Design Technology project at Huish. We look forward to telling you all about it next time!

October 2022

This term NZ class have been working on the story of The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. We've looked at the characters and retold the story in our own words. We've also linked our Art Topic to the Iron Man. 

We have been concentrating on place value and decimals in Maths and explored the Solar System in 

Science.

We enjoyed a PSHE workshop all about friends and what it means to be a good friend.