Year 5 Blog 2024/25

 Today in Computing, Year 5 have been learning how to use a condition (in this case a button being pressed) to control an action (a light turning on/off). We had great fun learning how to use the ‘do until’ block and even got to experiment with modifying the code to achieve different outcomes. 

 What a fantastic PSHE lesson where the children carried out role play activities to illustrate how they can respond to their friends both sensitively and insensitively. As a class they discussed how they need to think about how they talk and respond to their friends so they can support each other when things are going well or not so well. 

  Each year the European day of Languages is celebrated on 26th September. Year 5 found out about Italian culture, food and some facts about Italy. They also located Italy on a map of Europe and had a go at pronouncing some greetings and counting  in Italian . They then created a visual fact file of everything that they had found out.

One of the children brought in some memorabelia from Cowes including a plaque that was on the Blyskawica and an old photo from 1942.  This week, the children have planned the question they would like to answer about their local area as they will be heading into Cowes on Tuesday to collect their data.  Alongside this, the children were introduced to a risk assessment and taps a class they made a risk assessment for Tuesday. Such great ideas and discussions about risks and how we can keep ourselves safe when we go outside of school. 

 We designed some very interesting biscuits today.

 We had fun at the end of the maths lesson around rounding. We had fun rounding numbers with a variety of numbers.

Today in Computing, Year 5 have been exploring how 2 outputs can be controlled by programming the Crumble microcontroller. We used our skills to combine lighting up an LED with making a motor spin. We then made a mini disco by coding a ‘dancer’ and adding some flashing disco lights. We finished the lesson with a digital disco party!

 The lesson this week, were inspired by the children’s questions about how Cowes has changed over time as last lesson we spoke about how Cowes used to have a train station and a pier. One of the children went home and spoke to his grandma who has a book with lots of old photos of our local area. Grandma sent them in so we analysed them and compared them to the are today. This then led to the children being introduced to J.S. white as well as Saunders-Rowe, two companies that were very important in the maritime\ boat building industry in Cowes. The children identified that Cowes was famous for designing and making ships both for the navy and other countries as well as building sea planes. Furthermore, they identified how the floating bridge has changed over time and the design of the hovercraft. Finally, they looked at BAE Systems in Cowes who now design and test radar for the navy and other maritime industries. 

What an amazing experience the children in year 5 had as they met Katherine Rundell live. This event was run by Waterstones as their book of the  month is Katherine’s new book : Impossible Creatures. . Katherine talked about how she became an author and what truly inspired her. She loves food and this inspired her writing. Whilst in the Amazon she tasted lots of different foods such as paranahs. Katherine says that good writers need to talk about foods in their writing as it brings the story to life and people can relate to the characters. She was so inspirational that all the children and adults were mesmerised.