Welcome to a new year!

A new year has started and our current Year 5 class are settling in to school really well. I would like to welcome the children and their parents to this class blog and I hope you enjoy using it throughout the year.

Pages and posts will be added to the blog on a regular basis so that children can share the excellent work they are doing in class with their parents. I would really appreciate parents taking the time to share this blog with their children and please feel free to add comments about the work the children are doing. We will be adding pieces of work, photos, videos and posts that readers will be able to comment on. Last year, the blog worked really well with both parents and children and I hope that we can keep this up.  The children really enjoyed reading comments people made about their work and it made them feel very proud of their achievements. 

The children of Year 5 will have a special lesson based on Internet safety and how to use the blog. Parents will be sent a letter with instructions on how to access the blog and comment on posts but please feel free to ask questions you may have.

I look forward to having an extremely successful year!

Olympic Torch Relay

Today the children took part in our 'Olympic Torch Relay.' The children at our school took it in turns to complete a short walk in the local area with our very own Olympic torch!

Our class completed the walk with Year 1 and Year 3. We were really responsible and helped to look after the younger children. We are looking forward to the real Olympic torch arriving in Birmingham soon!

Apollo 11 Moon Landing in Y5

As part of their homework this week, the children have been given some lines to learn for our re-creation of the Apollo 11 moon landing. They have also been asked to bring in some smart clothes to wear for our performance.

We will be making props on Thursday and rehearsing on Friday. We hope to film our moon landing on Monday. We will be using a 'green screen' to make our film look realistic.

Apollo 13

Over the next few weeks, we will also be looking at the film 'Apollo 13.' Take a look at the trailer below.

E.T.

Take a look at the film trailer for E.T.

We have been watching this film in our literacy lessons this week. We have created a zone of relevance board, learnt how directors can create different moods/atmospheres and have created a storyboard of events.

We will be using our storyboard to re-write sections of the film as narrative.

Apollo 11

Yesterday afternoon, Year 5 learnt all about the first moon landing. We read some memories from people all over the world who remembered watching this event on the television. We then created a mind map of facts all about the Apollo 11 mission.

We found out that the moon landing took place on July 20 1969. We know that the crew of Apollo 11 were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon and his first words were 'This is one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.' Buzz Aldrin described the moon as 'magnificent desolation.'

The astronauts displayed the American flag and then carried out different experiments. They collected 22kg of moon rock samples to bring home. They spent 21 hours on the surface of the moon and over half a billion people watched them on televisions across the world. They left behind a plaque which read:

Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace For All Mankind.

The astronauts returned home on July 24th 1969, landing in the Pacific Ocean.

Once we had found out our information, we completed some independent writing. We imagined that we were Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin and we recounted the events of the lunar landing. We even tried some space food so that we could get a better understanding of what life is like for an astronaut. We liked the ice cream but we didn't like the strawberries.

Here are some photos of our work:

Space Race

Today we have found out about the 'space race' between the USA and USSR. We spent some time discussing the Cold War and were able to use the key words 'capitalist' and 'communism'.We created a time line of events and spent lots of time discussing who had been leading the space race before Neil Armstrong completed his moon landing.

We then had a look at the famous space race front cover from TIME magazine and had a go at creating our own. We learnt that China has now joined the space race and that the aim is to put humans back on the moon in 2020 as well as explore other planets.

We finished our lesson by thinking about which country had the most impact on the 'space race.' What did you think?

Here are some examples of our magazine covers.