Wow, what a busy return school it has been this month!

All the children have settled brilliantly to their new classrooms, teaching staff and have been working really hard.

In Literacy this month we have introduced our topic for this term, Victorian Shropshire, investigating some of the historical events and issues that affected our local area. In particular we have been looking at the ‘Nine Men of Madeley’ mining disaster which happened just opposite the school in September 1864. Year 5 then had the chance to walk to some of the sites surrounding this event in our local area. In addition to this educational walk, Year 5 we’re honoured to welcome the Chairman of the Madeley history group, Alan Jones, who detailed further, the events of that fateful day and the aftermath. We thoroughly enjoyed having him here!

Then, using our extended knowledge on the ‘Nine Men of Madeley’, Year 5 have been investigating the features of newspaper reports with the target being writing our own on the mining disaster.

In maths we have had a focus on place value and written methods for addition and subtraction. We have ordered and compared numbers by partitioning numbers of up to 6 digits with then moving on to standard written methods for addition and subtraction, with a focus on exchanging. 

In science we have begun to investigate the properties of materials and their suitable uses, arranging materials into groups according to the properties they possess.

In computing this month, the children have been introduced to ‘Vector drawing’ – creating and layering shapes in a computer program to create images. We have learnt how to rotate and resize shapes and to incorporate colour / texture to our finished designs.