Teak 5 Autumn 2025-26

Welcome to Teak 5!

2025 - 2026

Mrs Brennan/Mrs Lewin - Class Teachers

Mrs Komuszynska, Mrs Williams, Mrs Crosby - Teaching Assistants

Autumn 2

The Solar System

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.

Autumn 1

Marvellous Mechanisms

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.

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, 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.