Puffins Year 5 2024 - 2025

Curriculum learning Summer 1

Welcome to Puffins class page. Here, parents will be able to see an overview of the learning that is planned for the first half of the summer term. We start our term focusing on our text called, 'The last book of adventures,' by unknown explorers. As we explore the book, there will be lots of writing opportunities, including an opportunity to write a survival narrative and a survival guide based on the text. Throughout the unit of work, there will be a focus on spelling, grammar and handwriting linked to the year 5 expectations in the national curriculum.

As well as this, children will complete retrieval practice - small stakes quizes for all subjects - to enhance children's retrieval of information from their long term memories, strengthening their learning. 

During our shared reading sessions, we will be continuing with our teaching sequence from Literacy Counts called, 'Ready, Steady, Comprehend,' which has been specifically developed to ensure that the children are immersed in a variety of texts and genres. This term, the children will be immersed in a plethora of texts linked to The Americas with a focus on both fiction and non-fiction texts. In these sessions, we will be focusing on how the structure impacts the reader and how the author focuses on language and grammatical choices to influence the reader.

In Geography, we will be continuing our learning about the locations of the world's countries with a focus on an Apline region in Europe. We will be learning to answer the question, 'Where should we go on a holiday?'. Our learning on this topic will lead to high quality writing outcomes for our curriculum books.

Maths homework comprises daily Doodle work - logging on for 5-10 minutes -  English, is daily reading  (see rationale in the section below). Please work with your child to ensure that their homework is completed daily. The work set for Doodle consolidates mathematical learning from the current and previous year groups learning, focusing on miconceptions and concepts that haven't been reinforced currently by your child. In conjunction, Doodle provides the perfect opportunity to practice the skills that they have learnt in recent lessons, improving mathematical fluency.

At Cuddington, reading is seen as a fundamental skill that activates children's imaginations, makes them curious about the world they live in, develops their language and listening skills and has a positive impact on their social and emotional wellbeing. There is growing research evidence that shows there is a positive relationship between reading frequency, reading enjoyment and attainment (Clark and Douglas 2011, Twist et al 2007, Education Endowment Foundation, 2021). As a result of this, we understand the importance of regularly reading with your child. In UKS2, we advise that you read 15-20 minutes per day with your child, no matter their proficiency level. Whilst listening to your child, try to ask them questions about events that have happened so far, characters thoughts and motives and to make accurate predictions based on the text as well as the meanings of pieces of vocabulary with in the text. 

Our PE lessons will take place on a Wednesday afternoons and Thursday mornings. Please ensure that your child has their PE kits with them in school at all times so that they can participate in all of their PE lessons. These lessons are a compulsory part of their curriculum and greatly benefit not only their physical but their mental health and well-being.

Throughout the term, the children will be allocated their own reading books and library books that they will be allowed to take home with them.  If you require any new reading books, then your child can ask the teacher who can allocate new books for them to read.

To keep up to date with what is happening in our class, make sure you regularly check our school's Facebook and Instagram feeds as well as the class dojo page. 

Should you have any queries, please feel free to contact me via the class dojo message platform. 

Here's to an exciting term in Puffins class!

Mr Hutchinson

Year 5 Teacher

Mathematics and Modern Foreign Languages Lead