Autumn 1

We have had a brilliant first half term in Year 5 and the children have all impressed us with their hard work and enthusiasm. In English, we read the Firework Maker’s Daughter by Phillip Pullman which inspired some excellent descriptive writing. We were impressed by the imaginative ideas for a ‘missing chapter’, exploring the backstories of different characters in the book.

In Maths, we have been working on many of our key number skills, including place value, addition and subtraction, and multiplication and division. We have been working to improve our mental maths with even bigger numbers and the children have been navigating numbers up to 1,000,000! We will build on this learning next term as we focus on formal written methods for the 4 operations. 

History has been a guiding area for this half term as looked broadly at 4 early civilisations: Ancient Sumer, the Indus Valley Civilisation, Ancient Egypt and the Shang Dynasty. We enjoyed exploring surviving artifacts from the different civilisations and worked in groups research one in more depth.

In Art we looked at the Willow Pattern Plate which linked closely to our blended reading text this half term. We learnt about the myth behind the design and drew our own version using watercolour. We also looked closely at dragons – sketching, designing and even creating a dragon’s eye out of clay.

  DT was a huge hit this half term as we designed and made our own bread. Everyone liked designing their shape, choosing their ingredients and of course the taste testing at the end!

We have worked hard in so many areas this half term, it would be impossible to capture all that learning here, but do have a look at the pictures to see us in action.

Welcome to Beech and Chestnut Class (Year 5) 2026-2027

The children in Beech and Chestnut Class have settled into the new academic year incredibly well, and we are very proud of the school values they are already displaying in our first week back of the autumn term. It has been fantastic to welcome them back and hear all about their adventures over the summer break. We have had an exciting week with the launch of our topic, ‘Early Civilisations’, and the children have enjoyed getting stuck into our new class text, The Firework Maker’s Daughter.

Just to inform you, Year 5 PE will be on a Wednesday (Outdoor) and Friday (Indoor) this year. The children will need to wear their PE kit into school, which they will wear for the duration of the day.

If you have any queries, concerns or questions, please feel free to catch us at the end of the day during pick-up, or drop us an email or call via the office. We are always willing to help where we can.

This year, our Year 5 staff team includes:

Mrs Byrne – Chestnut Class Teacher (Monday to Wednesday)

Mrs Roberts – Chestnut Class Teacher (Wednesday to Friday)

Mr Liddiard – Beech Class Teacher

Mrs Lowe – HLTA and Year Group LSA

Mrs Crook – ELSA and Year Group LSA

Ms Lynch – Year Group LSA