Week Beginning Monday 19th October

The final week of the first half term was a very busy one for Ash Class. The children began to work on poetry for the first time this academic year and spent the week analysing different poetry formats, building rhyming word banks, and composing poems about animals. In addition to this, they rounded off the first multiplication and division topic of the year, completed their science Innovate Projects on one of the planets of the solar system, and wrote and performed podcasts about life in the Shang Dynasty, and sketched landscapes in art. Well done for all of your hard work this half term Year 5. Enjoy a safe and restful half term!

Week Beginning Monday 12th October

Another busy week for Year 5, the penultimate week of their first half term. The children wrote independent non chronological reports on one of the animals they chose for their fable and used their newfound research and report writing techniques to begin their science Innovate Project, a comparison between one of the planets in our solar and Earth. They worked on factors and multiples in maths, began learning a Billie Eilish song in their guitar lessons, and created fabulous rockets for their aspirations display.

Week Beginning Monday 5th October

This week was space week, which meant a very busy week full of activities. The children began analysing the format and language of reports ahead of writing their own, and learned about the moon cycle during their science lessons. They used the Chromebooks to hone their research methods and learned about the virtues in RE, writing beautiful prayers to ask for the cardinal virtues of temperance, justice, prudence and fortitude. We had a fantastic road safety presentation from a theatre group, who made a great impact on the children. They attended a national Space week webinar, designed a Space Rover after learning about technology developed for space that is now used in everyday life, and rounded off the week travelling through the solar system in the Wonderdome.

Week Beginning Monday 28th September

This week, the children worked incredibly hard and produced some outstanding independent fables based on Aesop's The Lion and the Mouse. They chose their own animal pair and and adapted the story for their choice. In maths, the children wrapped up their addition and subtraction unit and moved onto multiplication and division, and, in art, they created colour swatches of different paintings my a variety of artists, matching the tones and hues they could pick out from the images. A very busy week indeed!

Week Beginning Monday 21st September

The highlight of this week for Year 5 was their tennis taster morning, in which they received a coaching workshop to introduce, build on, and hone their tennis skills. The children has an incredible experience working on their backhands and attempting to maintain the longest rally! The children also learned about the agreement between God and Moses, and the covenant this created between God and his people, and about the significance of Bronze in the Shang dynasty. Finally, the children worked on their independent fables based on the Lion and the Mouse.

Week beginning Monday 21st September

This week, the children had a lot of exciting activities in addition to their curriculum work. Ash Class was visiting by Firefighter Shannon, who delivered a fantastic workshop about fire safety in the home. As a school, St Joseph's also hosted a Macmillan Coffee Morning and non-uniform day to fund raise for the fantastic charity. Despite the fun, the children were focused throughout the week and completed some fantastic learning, including an oral report on the daily life of someone living in the Shang Dynasty, a practical activity to demonstrate how Aristotle knew the Earth was not flat, and a tricky Nrich maths problem about the sum of odd and even numbers. Well done Year 5!

Week Beginning Monday 14th September

It has been a very busy week for so early in the term, with a visit from Billingsgate Fish market as well as National Fitness Day. The children dove straight in with letters and diary entries exploring the points of view of each of the protagonists in the focus text, The Lion and the Mouse. Ash Class are powering through their Place Value maths topic and are now comfortably working with 6-figure numbers, while, in science, they have made paper replicas of the heliocentric solar system model and used it to explain solar and lunar eclipses. In history, we have continued to delve into the daily life in the Shang dynasty through artefacts that have been unearthed by archaeologists, and we are continuing to work on our text, 'Holes', following the story of Stanley Yelnats and his time at Camp Green Lake. Well done Year 5!

Week Beginning 7th September 2026

It has been a very busy first week back at school for Ash Class and they have settled well into Year 5. The week involved a lot of introduction to new learning and routines, which the children embraced enthusiastically. The children began their new writing text - The Lion and the Mouse from Aesop's Fables, as well as a new reading text - Holes. They got to grips with working on bigger numbers in maths and were introduced to the dynamic dynasties of Bronze Age China, as well as our solar system.  A full-on week was wrapped up by the first guitar lesson of the year. A fantastic start from Ash Class - well done!