Bentfield
Primary School and Nursery
Welcome to Year 5 Maple Class!
Email: maple@bentfield.essex.sch.uk
Ancient Greek Pots
In our art work this term, we have been looking at Ancient Greek pots. We looked at the different shapes and uses of pots that they had and also the types of designs they would have used. We then learnt clay techniques, designed our own pots in the Ancient Greek style and then made them, painted them and finished them. Take a look at the pots we made below.
Outdoor Learning - Tracking
This week in our outdoor learning, we learnt different tracking symbols and then laid trails in groups, which other groups then followed. We worked on our teamwork skills and being observant as well as knowing what the different tracking symbols mean.
Ancient Greek Masks
As part of our topic work on how the Ancient Greeks lived, we learned about their theatre and the use of masks within this to portray different characters and different emotions. We then thought about a mask for an emotion and made our own versions. Take a look at what we came up with.
Evening Outdoor Learning
On Wednesday 22nd January, we had our evening session on the field and in the forest area. We arrived at 4pm and started off with some games around the forest. After that, we gathered around the campfire for hot dogs, where we warmed our own sausages up over the fire and had a home-made cookie. We told a few ghost stories, before having free time. By now it was very dark and most people played hide and seek in the forest in the dark. We gathered round the fire one last time for hot chocolate, roasting marshmallows to make smores and before we knew it, it was time to be heading home again. An evening of excellent fun was had by all! I'd like to say a massive thank you to Nicola, Mel and Miss Hobday for their help and making the evening possible. Check out the photos below to see just some of the fun.
Welcome to the Spring Term
A very warm welcome to the spring term! This term's newsletter and planning overview can be seen below. Please scroll down to the bottom of the page for this term's homework grids. PE will continue to be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays this term. I look froward to another successful term with Maple Class!
Santa Dash
As part of the Save the Children Christmas jumper day, Carron from the local sports partnership came in to do a Santa Dash with us. We played games and had fun running to Christmas songs while wearing our Christmas jumpers and any festive hats that we had. Take a look at all the fun we had in the pictures!
Bikeability
We have had 4 days of bikeability training this week. The children have been learning how to ride their bikes safely on the roads - such an important skill for when riding their bikes around the local area. The key learning points, were looking before moving and turning, assessing the traffic and roads ahead and acting accordingly and making sure that they always wear a helmet! We hope that they put these skills into practise and enjoy riding their bikes for many years to come. Take a look at the photos below to see what they got up to.
Properties and Changes of Materials
In science this term, we have been learning about properties and changes of materials. We have carried out a number of investigations to learn about: dissolving, reversible and irreversible reactions, separating mixtures of materials and then applying our understanding to discover the mystery materials. Take a look at the pictures below of the various experiments we have done.
Harvest Assembly
On Monday 7th October we held our harvest assembly to be thankful for the food we have to eat and to think about sharing food with those in the local area and around the world who struggle to have enough food to eat. The children brought in lots of lovely donations for Touchpoint. For our input to the assembly, we worked in groups to research how harvest is celebrated in different countries around the world and made posters and read out facts to the rest of the school - some people even learnt words from different languages as part of our presentations. The countries we chose were: Australia, USA and Canada, Thailand, France and China.
Gilwell Day 1
We had a bit of a soggy time loading onto the coach with a heavy shower, but got on ok and had a smooth trip down to Gilwell. We then went to our accommodation, had our packed lunch and it was straight into our first activities. Groups 1 and 2 did aeroball and the sensory trail and group 3 did archery and the 3G swing. After that, a little time to settle into room before dinner of cajun chicken, roast potatoes and veg, not to forget the chocolate moose for desert! After some more time in our rooms, we had a series of wide games in the dark - sorry no pictures came out from this. We look forward to an 8am breakfast and an action-packed day of activities tomorrow!
Gilwell Day 2
We were up for breakfast of sausage, hash brown, scrambled egg and beans with the option of cereals and toast as well this morning. After that our activities started. Today, group 1 have had archery, gauntlet, backwoods cooking and fire lighting; group 2 have had fire lighting, backwoods cooking, grass sledging and gauntlet; group 3 have had fire lighting, backwoods cooking, aeroball and archery. In the middle, we had lunch of meatball marinara sandwiches and salad. Our much-needed dinner today was vegetable curry with rice and naan bread with apple crumble and custard for pudding. Our evening activity was the campfire and even though it feels as though we've only just arrived, we have started packing as we'll not have much time with our activities tomorrow.
Gilwell Day 3
Day 3 began with packing up our belongings before a busy morning on our final day. Breakfast this morning was chocolate croissants with a choice of cereals and toast. After this we went to our last 2 activities: group 1 had 3G swing and grass sledging; group 2 had sensory trail and 3G swing; and group 3 had grass sledging and fire lighting. Lunch before we left was fish finger wraps with salad and we managed to squeeze in a trip to the gift shop before getting back on the coach and heading back to school. I know that the children (and staff) are very tired this evening, but what a brilliant trip it has been. The children have shown excellent independence, resilience and teamwork through all of the activities and beyond. I hope that it has highlighted to them the joy in being physically active outdoors and that they can easily manage without their devices! I want to say a huge thank you to all the staff who gave up their time to make this possible.
World War II Rationing
As part of learning what life was like for people living during The Blitz, we learnt about rationing. We had a go at cooking some rationing recipes of 'crunchies' and a pudding made from mashed potatoes. We then had a go at designing a day's menu from the rations that would have been available. We found that lots of us would have used our rations for the week within the first day!
World War II Games
As part of our work on 'The Blitz', we used our first outdoor learning session of the year to have a go at playing some games that children would have played during World War II. After having a go at hopscotch, canon, jacks and skipping, in groups, we came up with our own games that could have been played and had a go at playing another group's game.
Homework
Homework should be completed from the homework grid. Children should choose one task a week to complete and hand it in on a Tuesday. Homework books will be handed out again on a Thursday ready for the children to complete their next piece of homework. The homework grid is available below as well as being stuck in your child's homework book.
Regular reading at home should still be happening. A combination of reading alone and reading to an adult or sibling is a good idea for year 5 pupils. Times tables and division facts underpin so many areas of mathematics that it is crucial that children know them well. The aim is that they can respond within a few seconds to any calculation given rather than having to count through times tables to get there. It is important to practise regularly to maintain this important knowledge. The links below can support with this.
Spelling a crucial area to work on in year 5 to consolidate spellings learned in previous years and also to learn new spelling patterns. In your child's homework book is a grid of activities that they can do to practise their spellings at home as well as which spelling patterns we will be learning about during the term. Below is a link to Spelling Frame, which is an excellent programme to practise spellings. Their login is stuck in their homework book.
Spelling and Times Tables Links
Unfortunately not the ones with chocolate chips.
Our cookies ensure you get the best experience on our website.
Please make your choice!
Some cookies are necessary in order to make this website function correctly. These are set by default and whilst you can block or delete them by changing your browser settings, some functionality such as being able to log in to the website will not work if you do this. The necessary cookies set on this website are as follows:
A 'sessionid' token is required for logging in to the website and a 'crfstoken' token is
used to prevent cross site request forgery.
An 'alertDismissed' token is used to prevent certain alerts from re-appearing if they have
been dismissed.
An 'awsUploads' object is used to facilitate file uploads.
We use Matomo cookies to improve the website performance by capturing information such as browser and device types. The data from this cookie is anonymised.
Cookies are used to help distinguish between humans and bots on contact forms on this website.
A cookie is used to store your cookie preferences for this website.
Cookies that are not necessary to make the website work, but which enable additional functionality, can also be set. By default these cookies are disabled, but you can choose to enable them below: