Sycamore 5 Autumn 2025-26

Welcome to Sycamore 5!

2025 - 2026

Mrs Oz/Mrs Davis - Class Teachers

Mrs Williams, Mrs Komuszynska, Mrs Crosby - Teaching Assistants

Autumn 2

The Solar System

We enjoyed making and writing our Christmas cards today, spreading Christmas cheer alongside the traditional sprinkling of glitter. We know our families will love them!

Sycamore 5 had a wonderful time opening their winter books this week and the children were absolutely delighted. A huge thank you to Team Birchwood for their kindness and generosity.

Key Stage 2 had lots of fun at the pantomime of Dick Whittington. ‘Oh no they didn’t!’ From beginning to end they enjoyed singing along with Idle Jack and booing the evil Captain Blood. What a great way to end such a busy half term!

Sycamore 5 enjoyed making and decorating cupcakes as their DT project this half term.

After tasting the delicious ones made by Mrs Fisher earlier in the week, we each decided on the flavour and design we wanted to make. We then sold them at the Christmas fair to raise money for Team Birchwood.

Year 5 have enjoyed a fun-filled DT day designing, building and creating their moving toys. They had to measure, saw, cut, colour and create their designs from their plans they had made. We had some wonderful creations!

On Wednesday 19th November, Year 5 had a wonderful day creating a piece of artwork with Darrell Wakelam. Pupils in Sycamore and Teak created a clockwork piece and knight based on the book they had read in Autumn 1 ‘Clockwork’ by Philip Pullman. They also worked hard in the classroom on their own Peter Thorpe inspired Space artwork. They used chalk and painting techniques to create some fabulous pieces of artwork.

Year 5 are continuing to learn all about Space in science and this week they have enjoyed modelling the Solar System. They used different size balls and looked at the distance from the Sun and the position of the different planets. They used a trundle wheel and metre stick to measure the distances.

Autumn 1

Marvellous Mechanisms

As our first half term is drawing to a close, we've had time to reflect on what we have learnt and the enjoyment we have had. This is what some of Sycamore class had to say.

'Our Guided Reading text, Clockwork, had so many twists and turns with a scary story,' William.

'I loved learning about forces. It was really interesting to learn about why we don't float in the air,' Sophie.

'I would like to do more experiments in class like the one when Mrs Davis dropped a parachute off the apparatus,' Billy.

'I liked reading Clockwork and writing a setting and character description about Dr Kalmenius,' Nathan.

'I enjoyed our protective behaviours lessons and when Loudmouth came in to perform,' Maddison.

'I liked doing the fact page about forces because it was fun that we got to write down all the facts we know about forces,' Isla-Jayne.

'In Hockey we learnt different tricks and had mini matches. Also in PE we did orienteering activities with challenges, jumps and obstacles,' Hattie.

'I loved writing the character description for Dr Kalmenius because Mrs Williams used AI to make a picture of him. It was soooo fun,' Mia.

A huge well done to Sycamore’s overall dojo winner for Autumn 1! Your hard work and brilliant attitude has really shone through. Keep up the amazing effort — we’re all so proud of you!

Sycamore 5 have enjoyed completing a non-chronological report about forces, including gravity and friction, combining their English and Science learning.

To investigate water resistance we tested different shapes of plasticine to see what would happen when we dropped them into the water, and to see which shape had the least amount of water resistance and therefore hit the bottom of the bottle the quickest.

Year 5 have done themselves proud this week with their fantastic Harvest performances. They took their audience on a whistle stop tour of where our food comes from and the many people that are involved in the along the way. We heard from Farmers, Bakers, Fishermen, Truck Drivers, Supermarket Workers and the people that prepare our meals. We then found out about different ways Harvest is celebrated across the globe and of course there were songs and poetry included for good measure. What has been so amazing to see though, is the commitment and teamwork of the children. Not only have they learnt their lines, song words and poem, they have shared props and costume ideas with each other and even stepped into roles when others have been unable to be there for the performance, some with only one day's notice. They have done it all with a smile on their faces and we couldn't be prouder. Well done Year 5, a great first Class Assembly of the year!

In today’s lesson, Sycamore class investigated the effects that the texture of different surfaces has upon the amount of friction that is created when an object travels across it. They did this by dragging their shoes, filled with a 1kg weight across a range of surfaces and measuring the amount of forces (N) it required to do this.

To investigate the effects of air-resistance that act on falling objects we created three different sized parachutes from paper for a scientific enquiry.

Our whole class shared conclusion

We found out that the bigger parachute (A3 paper) fell to the ground slower, whereas the smaller parachute (A5 paper) landed more quickly. We decided that this is because the bigger parachute has a larger surface area and therefore creates more air resistance (drag) and this is pushing against the moving object (parachute). Gravity is a force pulling the parachute down and acting against the opposing force. More air particles are being trapped in the A3 parachute than the A5 parachute.