Year 5 children are proud to present their completed trenches.
Year 5 have begun working on their summer term Design and Technology project to build model of a WW1 trench. Last week we designed our trenches, discussing layout an resources we would use and have been collecting resources from home all week. Today we started to build the land of our trenches by recycling paper and PVA glue to build it up. Have a look at the beginning stages of our project below and make sure you keep checking for updates.
This term in science, we have been looking at forces, last week we explored the difference between a push and a pull. We also looked at the different forces acting on an object at any one time and this week we looked at one force more carefully, gravity. We explored how gravity is measured in newtons, mass is measured in kilograms. We then conducted an experiment into the relationship between the two, to find out if there is any link. We found out that the greater the mass of an object resulted in greater weight, we think gravity has to apply more force to heavier objects so they will weigh more.
St. Peter performed their Easter Assembly today and it was absolutely fantastic. We have been working on our drama, speaking and singing for two whole weeks and it was clear all our hard work had paid off. We put on an amazing performance that absolutely stunned the audience and made our teachers, Miss O'Toole and Mrs Keskin, very proud. We would like to say a very big thank you to Mr Gamage for all is help preparing us and for coming in to play the piano for us.
As part of art we used clay to make crosses that we will be selling as part of our Lenten fundraising. St. Peter decided to make cards and crosses as we felt they could be wonderful symbols of Christ's love for us. Our finished products will be on sale after our Easter assembly, you can have a sneak peek below.
Today we were joined by Olympic medal winner, Steve Frew. The gymnast came in to speak to us about inspiration, working hard and achieving a dream. Then we had a HIIT session to work on our fitness. We had four very hard exercises to do for 60 seconds before going straight into the next one. It was great fun but quite hard work!
Today, St. Peter cooked a very tasty vegetarian pasta sauce as part of PSHE, this was linked to our science (animals, including humans) as well as our topic (hobbies). In order to make this we had to work very hard chopping up a lot of delicious vegetables. We all had a great time preparing it, but an even better time eating it!
Reported by Megan S and Millie
Today St. Dominic's joined in the celebration of World Book Day. As always, year 5 was very keen to dress up and show off their creative sides. Lot's of us dressed up in a range of fantastic costumes, but one person stood out for exceptional effort and one our class prize for best costume. We also enjoyed a range of book day themed activities throughout the day from the day from book themed maths puzzles, to tasks to unlock different books.
Year 5 had a fantastic visit to the CLC where they used very sophisticated software to make their own music. We were very focused the whole day and used our musical knowledge to help create beats and rhythm. We had a fantastic time with Rod, our teacher for the day, whilst we creating some fantastic music.
You can listen to our masterpieces on the CLC website:
http://camdenmusic.wixsite.com/musictech/st-dom-y5
This week in English we have been learning all about procedural texts and how they are used to explain and instruct people on how to make, play or cook something. We will be writing a procedural text about playing pok-ta-pok, an ancient Mayan we learnt about in our Hero Twins narrative. So today we actually got to play pok-ta-pok, it was really fun but quite tricky to get used to. Some of the rules are; not being able allowed to use hands or feet, not to cross the dividing line and how to score points.
We will be using what we learn from this game to write our procedural text.
Reported by Nicky
Following on from our learning about Parliament last half term, year 5 and 6 visited Parliament to have a look inside the House of Lords and the House of Commons. It was really exciting to have a chance to actually step into Parliament and see it in action. We had to go through a lot f security to get in, luckily we passed, then we met our fantastic guides who took us on a tour of the building itself.
We visited the lobby first and many of the side rooms, before going into the great hall, which was the inspiration for Hogwarts. Along the way we saw a lot of interesting aspects of UK history represented through artefacts and art. Then we visited the House of Commons and observed a debate on legal aid from the gallery, one group was lucky enough to spot the Prime Minister as she walked through. We quickly travelled to the House of Lords which was much more full and they were having a discussion about fire safety following the Grenfell Tower fire. Afterwards, we had a workshop on Laws and Debating and acted out creating our own bill and taking it through each step before it could become a law. It was a brilliant day and we feel very privileged to have had such an opportunity.
Reported by Joshua, Megan S and Brooke
Megan A - It was the best trip I've been on! It was amazing to actually watch the MP's and Lords debating issues. Some of us even got to see Theresa May as she passed through the commons, she looked very busy.
Nicky- My favourite part was the workshop at the end that was all about laws and debating. I especially enjoyed the quiz which was all about the political issues around the world.
Maria R - I really enjoyed it, we were very lucky as only 250 schools get to go during the year. I learnt a lot and was really happy to walk in the same room that Guy Fawkes had walked. Everything was really interesting especially getting to step foot in the actual houses and see a vote taking place.
Joshua - I was amazed to get to step inside and see a day inside Parliament, it was really busy with lot's of MP's taking part in debates and votes. The building was huge and we had to do a lot of walking but it was worth it.
This week in English we have been exploring our Mayan myth, The Hero Twins by studying the setting and the characters and describing these elements of the story in our own writing. Today we used drama to help us plan our own narratives of the Mayan heroes. We worked in small groups becoming the characters and acted out each part of our story in detail and recorded our ideas to help us with our writing. In the next week we will be using these plans to write our stories of 'The Fire House.'
In the meantime have a look at our drama session below.
Today in science we learnt about electrical circuits, particularly simple circuits. We connected the wires and batteries to make the light bulb light up. Then we added a second light bulb, then we realised that the battery did not have not have enough power to light up both the light bulbs, so after we added a another battery to make it very bright. We really enjoyed this lesson and hopefully we can do it again!
Reported by Ava-Marie
Today was Christmas dress up day in St. Peter and we all had a great day. From a visit from Santa, to lantern making and of course a fantastic Christmas dinner served by Dan and the kitchen staff.
Have a look at our day below!
Today we had a competition held in years 5 and 6 for the best speech. We have been writing and preparing speeches for the last few weeks as you have seen on our class page. Today we got together and heard the best speeches from both classes. They were all fantastic, I'd rate them 10 out of 10!
At the end we had to vote for the best one in each class. Year 5 got together and chatted about the best year 6 speech and voted on a winner and year 6 did the same. It was a very hard decision but we feel confident the best speakers won and were rewarded with audiobooks of Tom Gates.
Christmas jumper day was really fun and enjoyable because we got see everyone's brilliants jumpers. It was great to raise for money for such a good cause, Crisis supports the homeless in London. At this time of year we were very happy to help such a deserving charity in a really fun way!
Have a look at us in our Christmas finest below!
This week we have been preparing for Christmas by creating our own Christmas tree decorations. We linked this to our learning in Religion which is all about Advent, we each represented an aspect of the Christmas story on tracing paper and then laminated them. This means that light can shine through them and brighten them up, have a look at this very fun lesson below.
This week some of us visited the Almshouses to entertain the residents with some carol singing. We had a lovely time singing some of our Christmas songs and some classics for the amazing audience. We were joined on the piano by our very own music man Mr Gamage who has worked very hard with us to help us practise and prepare. We are very proud to represent our school in this way and have made our teachers very proud.
Year 5 have been working hard on their speeches and have just completed their final draft. Which means we have now started to practise how we may say our speeches. We looked at some of our other favourite speakers and observed the strategies they used to deliver their speeches. The techniques we liked best were:
We then started to look at our own speeches and how we might incorporate these techniques into our delivery.
Have a look at this in action below!
Today was a great day because we got a bunch new of brilliant new books! We were able to get these books with the money raised from the book fair. Our class got many great books that are going to keep us reading for a long time. Our two personal favourites are 'World Football Records' and the 'Goosebumps' pack. We want to say a big thank you to our very supportive parents, who were so generous at the book fair.
Reported by James and Nicky
For the past few reading lessons our class have been preparing powerpoints on our favourite authors. Today we shared each of our presentations with the class. Everyone managed to present lots of interesting information about these different storytellers and used wonderful voices and presentation. We are hoping to get better at this next week when we begin to practise our speeches.
Today we had a very exciting lesson, cooking. We prepared veggie burgers (chickpea and coriander) in groups and created our very own patties. The best part was mixing all the ingredients as it was really fun but quite messy! The worst part was cutting the onions, we had a very tearful class.
Ava-Marie: This was my favourite lesson of the week. It made me feel like I was in secondary school and very responsible, it wasn't an easy thing to prepare so we were really challenged and at the end we got to eat some delicious and healthy burgers!
On Tuesday we visited the Scholastic Book Fair which is in school all week. We host a book fair to raise money to buy books for each class. We visited as a class so we could pick books out for our book corner and had some wonderful suggestions:
Nicky- The F2 Freestyler's Book
Freddie - The Christmasaurus
Ava-Marie - Biscuits, Bangs and Very Big Plans
Frida - The Nutcracker
Joshua- Ratburger
Keiran - Goosebumps
This week in reading we have been researching the authors of some of our favourite books, Anne Fine, Anthony Horowitz, Philip Pullman, Gillian Cross and Michael Morpurgo. Today we used our collected information to create a power point presentation about our favourite authors life and work. We will be practising delivering these presentations over the next week so make sure you ask us about our favourite author in the meantime!
Today in writing we learned all about 'The Hook.' The hook is something people use in speeches to really get the audiences attention for their speech. Hook devices we explored are:
My favourite hook was imagine if because I am writing a speech about poaching and I can really hook the audience by getting them to imagine world without these endangered animals and then tell them they won't have to imagine for much longer.
You can see some of the hooks we've been working on below.
Today in English we began researching our chosen topics for our speech. We started off by writing our topic title in the centre of the page, we then scrunched those pages into balls, which we then threw into the air (just like throwing snowballs) and picked up a new ball. We opened that up and added new ideas to each topic we found. After repeating this a few times every topic had a lot of ideas so we handed them back to each other and used those ideas to begin our own research into the topic. It was a really fun activity and meant we all had a lot of ideas to inspire us and begin our research, no one was stuck!
Reported by Olivia and Oliwier
We have been learning about speeches so we looked at some issues the planet faces today. These are the environment, multicultural world, education and animal rights. People were really interested in animals rights. We used laptops and ipads to research these issues and found out some shocking information like the belief lions could be extinct by 2050 and 94%of people believe it should be illegal to use animals in a circus.
This week year 5 began a new topic in English, speech. We were introduced to our topic today by exploring our initial ideas about a speech, before watching some. We watched a speech from a London school boy and Barack Obama and explored the different strands which made these speeches great.
We then looked at the four strands in greater depth and how these very different speech maker used very similar strategies to compose and deliver their speech.
After the whole class had a good understanding of the four strands, we created actions to help us remember what each strand entailed. Have a look at the strands and our explanations below.
Physical
Keiran : The physical strand is how a speech maker uses their body and voice in their speech. They can use their body by acting things out (characterisation) and change the tone and volume of their voice.
Linguistic
Maddy: The linguistic strand is all about the vocabulary and language they use to make their speech. They use words that are going to fit with their speech and the point they are trying to make!
Cognitive
Millie: Is all the thought and planning in the speech, they don't just make it up as they go along. They plan it beforehand by using content to make their point clear, they have a structure and they give reasons for their point of view. In his speech, Daniel Edwards had thought of good examples that we all relate to in order to make his point.
Social and Emotional
Megan S: Is all about how the speaker appeals to the audience and relates to them, Barack Obama by telling a funny story. It's also about being confident in standing up and speaking with flair, both speakers clearly practised their speech so they knew exactly what to say and how to say it so people would pay attention.
Our cohort is known for their wonderful singing, we have always been a very musical year group but have shone in the last year as the school choir. This year we will be performing in the Camden Cluster Musical Festival again and we have already begun learning our songs. Mr Gamage, our wonderful music teacher, has been helping us practise.
I got my pen licence and I felt really happy that all my hard work, practising every day and trying so hard, I have finally earned it! - Keiran
When I got my pen licence I was really happy because I worked really hard to improve my handwriting and it worked. - Mikel
Earning my pen licence makes me feel like an adult, I am really proud of myself as I knew if I worked hard I could do it and I did. - Sammy
I have been trying really hard to improve my handwriting and take my time. It took me a long time but the more I practised the better I got. I was really surprised I got my pen licence but I am amazed I have! - Malachi
Today we visited the CLC for day of coding robots. We learnt how to control robots, we made them go forward, backwards and even turn. We were able to use sensors to make them stop before they hit the wall, we had a challenge to see which team could get closest to the wall without hitting it.
The winners were:
1st Place - Lily and James
2nd Place - Malachi and Teddy
3rd Place - Millie and Freddie
Have a look at our photos below and some of the videos as well!
Reported all of St. Peter
This week we learnt about multiplying by 10, 100 and 1000. We started our lessons by using counters on place value chart, this is called concrete phase and we act out the math we are learning about. We quickly spotted a trick that makes multiplying by these numbers really easy, you simply add on the amount of zeros in the number. For example 34 x 10 = 340, this is because each digit will move one column larger on the PV chart and a '0' is inserted into the ones as a place holder, or you can just add the zero at the end. Some of us have explained out learning below.