Year 5 - Paint like an Egyptian

The students in Year 5 have finished reading our primary autumn text, The White Giraffe and the mystery of the smugglers has finally been solved! In the last few weeks, the children have used their growing understanding of South African culture as a hook for developing all sorts of writing, reading and speaking disciplines. They have written their own South-African-style traditional tales, used persuasive language to create advertising brochures for the Sawubona Game Reserve, created first-person poetry and taken on the role of book reviewers. They have had a wonderful time exploring the traditional tales of southern Africa this term, galvanising their reading and writing skills along the way, and will no doubt enjoy next term’s foray into parts of the world near and far in our Spring term novel.

Year 5 children headed outside and used our large playground hundred square to discover that the lengths of a square are longer than its diagonals. We have been deriving and applying the formulae for the area and perimeter of a rectangle and a triangle, along with the relevant compound shapes. The geometric representation of figures and sketching of distances and areas has helped with developing clearer understanding. Children are learning to show key information and appreciate that they are able to find unknown dimensions.

How do you mummify a Pharaoh? Year 5 pupils know the answer! They have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the Ancient Egyptian period this term, learning about how pyramids were made; why the River Nile was so important to the Ancient Egyptian civilisation and who the Ancient Egyptian Gods are. To mark the end of this exciting unit, pupils were involved in an Ancient Egyptian workshop that took them on a journey through the mysteries of mummification and what life was like for an Ancient Egyptian.

Geography lessons have been equally exciting! The pupils have learnt the names and locations of many of the counties in England - ask them how many they remember! They have loved studying atlases: locating the seven continents in the world, learning European cities and their capitals and describing the location of countries in the world using the vocabulary, hemisphere, tropics of cancer and capricorn and lines of longitude and latitude.

Linking to Humanities Year 5 have been painting like the Ancient Egyptians in Art. First, we discovered how papyrus paper was made and then we painted scenes of wildlife onto the paper. Our compositions were inspired by the wall paintings from Nebamun’s tomb and feature stylised plants and animals.

In Design and Technology, pupils have been putting their woodworking skills to good use, making land yachts from pine baton and dowel. The children are looking forward to the testing element, as there is much competition to see which vehicle will travel the greatest distance without crashing!

Whilst the Year 5s are coming to the end of their term of German studies, they also have French back on their minds. They have been keenly preparing their French song, ‘Les 12 Jours de Noël’, for the upcoming Carol Concert. They are getting quite excited to showcase their hard work and skills to parents at the concert.

As for German, they have been learning and practising some language for shopping situations… asking and answering the question, ‘Wieviel kostet das?’ (How much does that cost?), using their knowledge of German numbers with prices in Euros. They have also been enjoying learning to sing ‘Wir wünschen euch frohe Weihnacht’ (We Wish You A Merry Christmas) in German.