Teachers: Mrs Kruber and Mrs Womack
Teaching assistant: Miss Bennett
Important things to remember
At 8.40 am Year 5 children should enter the supervised main gate independently and walk around the one way system on the playground to the class door. They will need to sanitise their hands on entering the classroom.
We will have PE lessons on Wednesday afternoons each week. Children are required to arrive at school wearing their school PE kits.
Poplar Class children are to be collected from the supervised gate that exits onto the car park area at 3.30pm. If your child is allowed to walk home alone then you need to sign a form available from the office to give permission.
Tuck isn't currently served at breaktimes but you are welcome to bring in fruit or healthy snack for yourselves.
What to expect in Year 5
Year 5 offers the time to embed all of the knowledge learnt in lower Key Stage 2 and a year to start the preparations for transition to secondary school. This is often a year when children grow in maturity – sometimes even more so than in their final year in primary. They gain a greater independence and confidence from being given more responsibility in their learning.
Children in Year 5 are increasingly encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning: to do their homework, to pack their school bag, to remember their PE kits. And they develop and grow as a result. It is about encouraging independence in preparation for bigger things to come.
As with every other year, the government have set out statutory schemes of learning that must be taught in Year 5. There is an expected standard to reach by the end of the year, and assessments will be made throughout the year to judge if your child is on track to achieve their expectations for Maths and English.
In maths, there is an emphasis on fractions, decimals, and percentages in this year. There is also an expectation that they will know all of the written methods for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
For English, new punctuation is introduced (such as hyphens, semi-colons, and colons). There is a greater emphasis on grammar features too (for example, modal verbs like would, could, might, and must).
There are some fantastic topics this year: Romans, Space, habitats in Brazil, Vikings and a Science materials topic which investigates removing salt from the sea! This is the year when your child will probably have their first sex and relationship lesson in school as it combines neatly with the science unit on reproduction, puberty, and changes in the human body.
Following government guidelines, we are unable to offer educational visits and visitors to school at the moment. We hope to offer this again very soon and will let you know as soon as we can. We understand that these experiences are valuable to enhance children's learning and will organise this when the time is right.
Keep doing all of the usual things that we say each year. Continue to hear them read as much as possible, practise times tables, help them with homework, talk to them about their day, and encourage them to read by visiting the local library, bookshops, or using eBooks from MyOn.
Reading with your child and listening to your child read are possibly the best things you can do to help your child’s education.
Take time to discuss the text your child is reading, ask about the book, what do they like about it? Is it similar to anything else they've read? Can they tell you about the characters? What do they predict will happen?
Share reading at home - you can be a good role model by reading too!
Here are a few extra ideas for can try on top of this:
Just like in school, give them some independence and responsibility for their learning at home. Here are a few ways you can start giving them some responsibility at home:
If your child is not very organised, then taping a list by the door or to a lunch box works well, as does getting equipment ready the night before.
Another simple thing that you can do as a parent is to be a good example. Never say: ‘I was no good at spelling at school!’ Never tell your child: ‘Go to Dad and let him help you with your maths because he is better than me.’
Children need adults to show them that learning is fun, relevant, and enjoyable – and difficult sometimes. Does it matter if you don’t know the answer? Of course it doesn’t. Instead, look it up together and show that you want to find things out too.
Finally, remember that even in Year 5 your child will still need some down-time playing outside or reading a much-loved book.