Welcome to the summer term!
As usual we have lots of exciting things planned! This ranges from our ancient Maya topic in summer 1 to our Year 5/6 production towards the end of the summer term.
Summer 1
The Marvellous Maya
Our Main topic for Summer 1 is ‘The Marvellous Maya’. This is a very exciting topic and we will be linking as many of the different curriculum areas to it as we can. We are embracing our new curriculum statement of Inspire, Collaborate and Endeavour’. Please ask your children about this! In class, we will be creating fact files about Maya gods and goddesses, producing estate agent brochures to sell Maya houses, designing a popular culture magazine to showcase the latest cooking trends and fashion statements in the Maya world and producing a Maya ‘Dragons Den’. We will also be creating Maya models using a variety of media.
If you would like to find out more about the Maya, then have a look at the websites below:
http://www.mayankids.com/mkintro.htm
https://mayaarchaeologist.co.uk
https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/topics/zq6svcw
https://www.bbc.com/teach/class-clips-video/history-ks2-introducing-the-maya-civilisation/znk3cqt
This is us at the beginning of our history work – comparing British and Maya time periods.
Summer 2
What is climate change? What impact has it had on our World? What potential impact might it have?
These are our key geography questions! All of our work in the summer term will be linked to this – apart from when we are practising our play!!!
Literacy in Year 5
During the first half term, our literacy work will be linked to our Maya topic. We will be focussing on traditional Maya tales and will be writing our own in a similar style. Our class text is ‘Rainplayer’ by David Wisniewski. This is a beautiful book and the pictures in the story are all created using cut-paper. In our non-fiction work we will be selling a Maya house!
Our class book in summer 2 is ‘Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick’ this links to climate change.
It is a new genre called ‘dystopian fiction’ – this is a style of writing which is set in a familiar world but imagines a future where terrible things have happened and people have to fight for survival.
Maths in Year 5
During the summer term, we will be focussing on decimals and percentages, fractions, properties of shape, position and direction and covering units.
Sport and PE in Year 5
In summer 1, PE will be every Tuesday in Year 5 – children should make sure their PE kits are in school all week. They will need a water bottle and suitable sports trainers for outdoor sport – on the new grass field!
In summer 2, we will be having the Sports Coach and will further develop our skills in athletics. This will take place on a Friday.
Science
We will finish looking at animals, including humans. As part of this we will look at the stages of development from birth to old age.
Towards the end of summer 1 we will be studying buoyancy. Maya farmers used buoyancy to help them grow crops, this is called raised bed farming – we will be investigating this and which forces are in operation to stop the beds from sinking!
After that we will look at other forces and how they work!
