Year 5

Welcome to Year Five

Class Teachers: Mr Cattermoul and Mrs Taylor

This page will contain class newsletters, photos of interesting activities and useful links.

Below are some of the exciting memories that children who are currently in Year 5 have experienced since starting school.

WELCOME BACK TO YEAR 5 - We hope you had a lovely summer and it is lovely to see the children back in school.

Please see the Newsletter below.

May 26th

What a great end to the half term we've had. This morning we finished our super creepy book 'Room 13',  and as so often happens good triumphed over evil. The four children in the story succeeded in destroying the vampire at the very last minute. The children have really enjoyed this book and were eager to hear the ending. Then everyone had a fun session at the pool - a lovely way to finish their swimming experience. This afternoon we drew the reading raffle and the Lucky winner was Millie who won a joke book and a super nature game. Finally we had many parents who joined us to look at their children's work. Each child chose two or three pieces of work that they were particularly proud of and really enjoyed showing it off and talking about it. We hope you all have a great holiday and we will see you back at school on Tuesday 6th June. 

May 19th

What a great time we had at the Mini Triathlon today. The children were wonderful and a credit to the school. They started the day with a briefing and message from the Brownlee Brothers then straight into the pool. The water was shallow enough for everyone to feel confident but deep enough to allow our swimmers to show off their best strokes. Special mention to Peyton who only recently began to swim without any aids but managed the whole swimming challenge - what an achievement. Also to Ella who, although nervous, completed it without a noodle - well done Ella. 

Next it was the cycling/scooting challenge and again the children attacked this with great enthusiasm. Damian was amazing on his bike - possibly an Olympic champ in the making? I was particularly impressed with the 'scooter people' as it was quite a long course and legs must have been aching by the end.

Finally came the run and Nyle's brilliant effort - He made it look very easy! I was delighted to see every one of our children complete the course and gain their Triathlon Medal. A brilliant end to the event. 

May 12th

Another week has flown past with Year 6 completing their SATS tests and Year 5 really helping their friends by being exceptionally quiet in the classroom during each test. 

As part of our English curriculum we are reading the book 'Room 13' a chilling and thrilling mystery about a room that appears at midnight!! The children are really enjoying this book and have a wealth of predictions about what is going on in the room and what will happen next. In Maths we have been completing translations  - moving shapes around a grid - which is not as easy as it sounds. Well done to everyone for trying hard and being successful with this aspect of Maths. 

Science has been a great deal of fun with the children designing and testing parachutes to test air resistance. They have learned a tremendous amount about this topic through this imaginative activity. 

We hope you have a good weekend and look forward to seeing you on Monday. 

May 5th

In celebration of the Coronation of King Charles we have been looking at the life and times of different monarchs this week. In our class we have been focusing on the life of Edward VII. The children have learned about his reign and completed a pencil portrait of him. Of course no coronation is complete without a spectacular crown and the children made their own decorating them with jewels. See pictures below. 

In maths we have looked at co-ordinates and translation, moving a point or shape around a grid following a set of instructions, and in English we have continued writing the story of the picture book 'The Way Back Home'. 

We hope you enjoy the coronation weekend and we will see you all back on Tuesday.  

April 28th 

Another week over and this week saw us back in the pool at Armley Leisure Centre. It was great to see the improvements that the children had made. A special mention goes to Millie, Peyton and Layton who swam without flotation aids for the first time - a fantastic achievement. I'm looking forward to taking the class again next Friday. 

With Spring upon us we completed a reading comprehension about hedgehogs today. As well as being a valuable English lesson it was very interesting to learn more about hedgehogs and how to look after them if they visit your garden. In maths the children were calculating angles inside squares, rectangles and triangles. Everyone made a really good attempt at this and answered some quite complex questions - well done all. 

We hope you have a good weekend and see you on Wednesday.  

April 21st

It was lovely to see the children back after the spring holiday and it was back to learning with a lot of enthusiasm. In English we are telling the story of a picture book and creating the pictures with words so that the reader can see them in their minds eye. Quite a tricky thing to do but the children have been very successful and there has been some excellent work. In maths this week we have been measuring angles and I think that it is safe to say that using a protractor has proven to be quite a challenge. However, we have been very impressed with the children's determination to succeed. 

The 'Suffragettes' is our new topic in History and on Thursday we had a lively debate between Lord Cromer, who was adamantly against women having the vote, and  Emmeline Pankhurst who of course campaigned fiercely for women to have the vote. The children enjoyed experiencing this event and Mr Cattermoul and I also enjoyed dressing up and getting into character to present these opposing view points. 

Well done to our pupils of the week who were Matty and Phoebe. 

Have a good weekend everyone.

March 31st

Our final week before the holiday!! The children have been very busy in science conducting investigations to discover the difference between solutions and suspensions. They mixed various materials, such as sand, salt, sugar, with water to see if they made a solution or suspension. They really enjoyed the lesson as you can see from the pictures below. 

We celebrated our Pupils of the Term in Well Done Assembly today and our congratulations go to Tyler and Peyton who were chosen from Year 5. 

Also congratulations to Millie who won our Reading Raffle. 

Finally we had Cobden's Got Talent this afternoon and what a show it was!! A huge well done to our dance stars Cody, Paolo and Riley and to our singer Kelsey for her great version of the 'Cup Song'. We would like to wish everyone a Happy Easter and hope you enjoy the well deserved holiday. 

March 24th

This week, in English, we finished our story about Luna who was determined to become an astronaut. Despite a great many trials and a tragedy she finally became one, much to her delight. The story raised a great many talking points and emotions for the children and we have been very impressed with their mature approach to this video. They finished with some spectacular writing which was designed to show not tell Luna's feelings. 

In maths we have been calculating the area of shapes. As the work has progressed through the week the children have found some of the problems quite tricky but they have shown real perseverance and determination. Very well done to you all.

In our art lesson today we set the children quite a challenge, to copy a Victorian house with all the embellishments that the Victorians loved.  We were amazed by the great results, please see pictures below. Finally we hope everyone has a good weekend.   

A shorter week this week but still busy with a great deal of new learning happening. In English the children have been learning about a writing technique called Pathetic Fallacy where we attribute human feelings to inanimate objects or animals. We have had wailing sad winds, miserable grey fog and furious thunder. The children have tried very hard to include this in their writing and have all done well. In maths we started looking at Shape and calculating the perimeter of rectangles and rectilinear shapes. It was quite tricky but the children have persevered with it. 

Today we did the auditions for Cobden's Got Talent. Quite a few children showed off their talents and then a secret vote was held. The winners who will represent our class are, Kelsey with the Cup Song and Paolo, Riley and Cody with their version of the Macarena.

Hope everyone has a good weekend and that the weather stays nice for us all.

March 10th

Well what a wintry and snowy end to our week! Another busy one with a lot of great learning going on for everyone. In maths the children have been converting between fractions, decimals and percentages which is definitely challenging but we have been very proud of the children's determination and resilience in mastering these concepts. 

In English we had an experience day on Thursday. In this session we examined the negative feelings that can occur when we are faced with a seemingly impossible challenge or when we have faced failure. We then made an origami space rocket and we all experienced some of those feelings when it didn't go exactly to plan. We then spoke about what we could do to overcome these feelings and the children spoke about showing resilience, determination and a 'have a go' attitude. I'm pleased to say that, in the end, everyone ended up with a rocket and a feeling of satisfaction.

In history we have been learning about inspirational Victorians and this week we started to look at the life and work Thomas Barnardo. The children were surprised to learn that this amazing man started off as a rather unpleasant child who appeared to bully those less fortunate than himself. We will be continuing to look at his exceptional work next week. 

Finally we hope that you enjoy this snowy weather. Below is a picture I took of my  front garden, I would love to see any pictures that you have of your fun in the snow. 

March 3rd

Welcome to our class page. We have had an interesting and informative week. In Maths our work has continued with decimals and we have been rounding these to whole numbers and to one decimal place. The children have done really well with this work. On Wednesday we had a dance lesson taught by a PE expert and the children really enjoyed the session, especially outstanding were Nyle and Paolo who were both Stars of the Week for their efforts. Today in English we looked in detail at a short story and the children used their inference skills to identify the personality traits of the different characters and work out the underlying meaning of the story. We had a lot of fun yesterday with World Book Day and once again your children shared stories with a group of our younger children.

We now have 10 keyboards for the children to use in their music lessons and we will have some pictures of the children playing them next week. 

 Have a good weekend everyone. 

February 24th

Hope everyone had a great half term and it was lovely to see the children back on Monday. We have started this half term with fractions and decimals in Maths. Converting between these two can be a little tricky but the children have done very well this week. Biographies have been the subject of our English work and on Thursday and Friday, we combined History and English to write about  William Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade. As Kian put it "He was an inspirational person and he never gave up." Music has been exciting as the children have started writing their own short melodies using musical notation. We are awaiting the arrival of some new keyboards and then the children will be writing and playing their own compositions. 

Hope everyone has a good weekend. 

Firstly a 'well done' to our super swimmers in Year 5 and especially to those who have achieved a certificate and badge. They children have really enjoyed their swimming lessons and every single one of them has made tremendous progress. Some super work this week about Louis Le Prince who made the first moving film right here in Leeds. We have continued learning about fractions in maths with some very good work done by the children. Finally we hope that everyone has a great half term and we look forward to seeing you all in a weeks time for more exciting and interesting learning. 

February 3rd

Another busy week over! The children have been working very hard in maths getting to grips with fractions. They have all done well and made super progress with their understanding of this area of maths. In English we have used the knowledge gained from our Armley Mills trip to write about the life of mill children. It was a pretty grim life and the children have produced some excellent reports about conditions for children in the mills. 

It has been National Storytelling Week and on Thursday the children partnered with children from Year 1 to share some stories. Please see the pictures below.

Have a good weekend everyone.  

Week beginning 23rd January

What a super week we have had in year 5 this week. Well done to all the children who achieved their 10m and 25m badges in swimming. We have finished off writing our story based on the animation Kitbull, which thankfully had a happy ending. On Thursday, our trip to Armley Mills was a great success - the children were a real credit to our school and asked and answered loads of questions about life in Victorian times. Some even said they would prefer to be in a Victorian classroom! On Friday we had an amazing Lego Workshop. The children extended their learning about engineering, coding, technology and there was even a bit of maths in the session. All the children found it great fun. Below are pictures from our Trip to Armley Mills and the Lego Workshop. 

January 16th

A short week this week but one full of unusual and interesting activities. We had a session entitled Mindful Minis in which the children learned some very useful Yoga techniques to help with their focus and regulating their emotions. Today we had a visit from a steam engineer who brought in a miniature steam engine and two steam driven machine mechanisms. It was an interesting talk and demonstration and good preparation for our Armley Mills visit next week. Hope you have a good weekend everyone. 

January 9th

A week of hard work and fun!!  The children have continued their multiplication maths work and everyone has progressed very well indeed. In English we have been watching Kitbull and writing about the story - will the cat and dog become friends?

History has been interesting as we looked at how and why the population of Leeds increased during Queen Victoria's reign. This afternoon we did some mono printing in art and I have put some examples of the children's work below. 

Our stars of the week were Peyton for her amazing maths work and Abbie who wrote a very thoughtful Code for her life based on our RE lesson (see below). Very well done to both girls. 

A huge welcome back and a very Happy New Year to all our children and parents/carers. It has been a great week as we have started our brand new topic on the Eighteenth Century and the Victorians. The children constructed their own time line in history noting down a lot of interesting key events. We also started our new book 'Street Child' which has proved to be very popular with the children. In maths we have been looking at strategies for multiplication. We hope you have a good weekend and are not too tired after your first week back. 

5th December

We have had another successful week in Year 5. The children have produced some really good English work about the novel Kensuke's Kingdom which they are really enjoying. We have reached an intriguing part of the story and there have been some interesting predictions regarding what will happen next. In maths it has been fractions again but the questions have become increasingly more difficult. Everyone has been challenged but have really risen to the occasion. Today has been Christmas Jumper Day and we have had some really great outfits (see pictures below). Our elves are now on the tree but hopefully won't create too much chaos over the weekend unlike a lot of the elves that you have at home!! Have a good weekend everyone. 

28th November

Another week, which has led us into December! In maths it has been another week of fractions. All the children have made great progress and are feeling much more confident about this area of maths. In English we have been learning about and using modal verbs and there have been a lot of 'could', 'should' and 'might's' in our writing. Today however, we got into the Christmas spirit and began to make our elf Christmas tree decorations. It was great fun and they will be finished and on the tree next week. See below for photos.

Have a great weekend everybody.    

November 21st

A great week this week but very busy for the children. In maths it has all been about fractions. Proper and improper fractions and mixed fractions, the children have certainly needed to concentrate but they have done extremely well with this area of maths. In English, they have written the beginning to their own story about being stranded on a desert island. There have been some lovely descriptions of the island and the animals there. 

Why does hair go grey? That was the question posed to the children in science. They used the internet to research and answer the question. So if you have ever wondered about this your child will be able to explain!!

November 14th

Back to school after a very busy weekend at Robinwood. The children were fantastic and very well behaved. We had many comments from the leaders at Robinwood saying how wonderful the children were. Despite being tired on Monday the children have got straight back into their school work this week doing some 3D shape and fractions in maths. They have been learning about similes and metaphors in English and they are making a real effort with their handwriting.

We have had a go at building a cam mechanism with quite a lot of success and experimenting to see if drinking water affects our reaction time in Science.

October 31st

It was lovely to welcome the children back  and we enjoyed hearing about their 'Trick or Treat' experiences. 

In maths this week we have been using long multiplication strategies. The children have shown great resilience and determination with this strand of maths and we are very proud of their attitude towards their work. 

In English we have looked at punctuation for direct speech and the children have been thinking carefully about where and how to place inverted commas, commas and capital letters. They have done a great job with this!

We have also been rocking the classroom in music with our new song 'Livin on a Prayer' by Bon Jovi. The children really enjoyed the lesson and maybe we have some budding rock stars among them. 

We hope you have a good time if you are celebrating Bonfire Night - stay safe!

October 17th

This week in Year 5 the children have been very busy. In maths they have  reviewed the strategies for multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1,000. They have then applied this knowledge in a variety of ways to solve different types of problems. 

In English the focus has been poetry. The children have been reading and learning a humorous poem by Shel Silverstein in preparation for a group  performance. The poem we chose is called 'Sick' and tells the tale of Peggy Ann McKay who definitely is too sick to go to school. Please see the video below to enjoy the children's performance of this excellent poem. 

Greek Gods was the theme in history this week and we set the children a challenge to research and write a fact file about one of the gods. We were delighted with the results which were detailed and beautifully presented. Our two children in Well Done Assembly, Riley and Charley, wrote particularly good fact files and deserved their Well Done Certificates for such super work.

Next week is half term and we hope everyone has a great holiday. We will see you back on Monday October 31st. 

October 10th

Another busy week in year 5. In English the children have planned and written a non - chronological report about the Olympics in Ancient Greek times. They have produced some fantastic ( and very neat) work not just about the sporting events that took place but also about the religious and social events that were a part of the games.

In maths this week, we have been learning about factors and square numbers  and  the children did very well with these mathematical concepts. Some children challenged themselves to find the value of the squared teen numbers!

In swimming a very special mention goes to two children who have found swimming lessons rather daunting. This week they were confident enough to lift their feet off the bottom of the pool, a real achievement and very well done. 

Finally our two superstars in Well Done Assembly were Harvey Seed for a great arithmetic test result and maths work and Tyler for some brilliant history work.  

October 3rd

Into October already we go! More great work from the year 5s this week. They have completed their writing of 'The Present' and are now compiling their own epilogue of what happens to Jim and his new dog and they are making a great job. Lots of children have impressively included embedded relative clauses in their writing.

This week in our Science lesson we had a visit from the Leeds Countryside Rangers who took the class on a seed collection workshop around the school grounds. We collected lots of seeds and other natural things (see pics below).

In Art, some of the children completed their Cantrell style masks (see pics below) and these are now on display in the hall.

September 26th

This week the children have been working very hard in maths continuing their work on place value. They have been introduced to negative numbers and sequences of numbers among other things. They all did very well understanding that numbers do not stop at 0!!

In English, the children have continued writing about the short film The Present. This is a story about boy given a puppy which is not quite perfect. As the story has unfolded  they have produced some really thoughtful work.

Our superstars in Well Done Assembly this week were Kieran for great PHSE work and Millie who did some fantastic maths. 

And finally, Friday is music day and today we have learned to play the chorus of 'We Will Rock You' on the glockenspiels as well as beginning to learn how music is written. Please see the photos below. 

September 19th

This week we have continued with our place value work in maths -  reading, writing and ordering numbers up to 1,000,000. In English we have continued our writing based on the animation - 'The Present.'  Some of the handwriting has been excellent this week.

In History the children have been finding out about Alexander the Great and in Art we have designed our Kimmy Cantrell style masks which look excellent.

September 12th

Another super week of learning in Year 5! 

This week the children started their swimming lessons and we were delighted to see so many children doing really well. They obviously enjoyed their session at the pool.

On Thursday we had a fantastic drama workshop based on the Ancient Greeks. Mrs Whitfield led the children through a series of acting activities which resulted in some very convincing and entertaining animal impersonations. Following on from this the children learned about Greek Choruses and how they differ from a chorus in the present day. Finally using the skills that they had explored in the lead up activities the children performed an Ancient Greek play. Every child had a part and many surprised 

 us with their acting ability. All in all a great day.

We chose two children for Well Done Assembly who particularly shone at the workshop and they were Jessica and Xander, Well done to both our acting stars.

September 6th

We are very impressed with the way the children have come back to school and settled really well showing a great attitude to their work. We have been busy learning about word classes in English, place value (including Roman numerals) in Maths. The children have completed some great cubism pictures in art in the style of Picasso. In Science we looked at the life cycle of flowering plants and tried to order the different stages of a plant's life (see pictures below)

We are delighted to say that Riley and Sophie are our first Star's of the Week in this new academic year. They have both had a super attitude to their learning and this has shown in their great work. Well done to both of you.