Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you all a happy and healthy 2015.

Thank you very much for all the lovely cards, gifts and well wishes sent in before Christmas. Very thoughtful and much appreciated. 🙂

This term in Year 5 we are going to be working extra hard to improve all aspects of our learning. Times tables and spellings are, as always, very important and need a massive push and I would appreciate any help given to the children at home to support their learning.

In English this term we are looking at ‘Other cultures and traditions’. Children will read texts connected with China, India and Japan. They will read a traditional Chinese story and make links between this and Chinese culture. Further work will feature plays and traditional stories from the Indian tradition and non-fiction about the death of Mohandas Gandhi. They will read haikus and relate them to Japanese culture, learning about their structure and rhythm.

In Maths we will be looking at negative numbers, addition and subtraction of large numbers of money, long multiplication, adding and subtracting fractions, reflections and translations and mass.

Topic this term is ‘Shang Dynasty’ and this will link closely with our English topic. I know the children thoroughly enjoyed the Chinese visitors so this will be an exciting and fascinating topic for us.

Lots to get through this term but we’re Year 5….we can do it!