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!

Teak 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.

A huge well done to Teak 5, Pine 4 and Maple 3 classes for their brilliant performance in our Christmas production, ‘Twas the night before Christmas’.  You all worked so hard, and your enthusiasm shone through every moment.

Thank you for filling the room with Christmas cheer!

Teak 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 Tuesday, Teak 5 enjoyed a chilly walk down to Polesworth Library. Wrapped up warm, we ventured down into the village, using a map from 1886 to identify some landmarks still there today. We will learn more about this in our Local History topic in Spring 1. Upon entering the Library, we had a warm welcome from Julie and then the children enjoyed exploring the Library, getting cosy with a book. Some of us even enjoyed looking in more detail at the maps section of the Library and locating places in the local area. The children were wonderful ambassadors for Birchwood and made us very proud. Well done Teak!

This week, Y5 had the fantastic opportunity to work with Darrell Wakelam, our resident artist. They worked collaboratively to create a piece of artwork based on the book Clockwork by Phillip Pullman, a story we have really enjoyed in our English lessons. The children worked amazingly together and thoroughly enjoyed creating their masterpiece.

Teak 5 have worked hard in the classroom on their own Peter Thorpe inspired Space art work.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.

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 Teak class had to say.

‘I loved learning about forces. It was soooo fun!’ Eden.

‘In computing we did online safety and it helped me stay safe in the virtual world,’ Louie.

‘I liked our PE lessons because I loved playing hockey when we did little matches,’ Erin.

‘I really enjoyed when we had an air resistance experiment and Mrs K stood on the apparatus. I got to write the recordings,’ Finn

‘I loved writing our story about Dr Kalmenius.  I really got to express the dark, creepy side of him.  It’s probably the best story I’ve written so far!’ Kairi.

‘I really enjoyed Geography and Maths because in Geography I really enjoyed learning about time zones because if I called someone from another time zone, it would be a different time for them.  I also really enjoyed Maths because long multiplication was fun and sometimes challenging (which I like too!),’ Fletcher.

‘I enjoyed doing the cup music to ‘What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor’,’ Ollie.

‘I liked reading Clockwork and about Sir Ironsoul coming to life,’ Paddy.

‘I love every lesson at school especially Geography, RE and English,’ Chloe.

‘In Geography we learned about Florida and found out so many cool and interesting facts, which was AMAZING!’ KC-Lee.

‘I really enjoyed when we were writing about Dr Kalmenius. It was so good when Mrs Williams put them into AI to make him look realistic,’ Cohen.

A huge well done to Teak'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!

Teak 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.

In today’s lesson, Teak 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.

This half term, Year 5 will be learning about forces and mechanisms, conducting practical investigations and looking at uses in real-life contexts.