Class Teacher: Mrs Whillock (Monday - Wednesday) and Mrs Cruchley (Thursday and Friday)

Teaching Assistant: Mrs Phillips

PTFA Link: Mrs Powell

Exploring Hot Desert Biomes!

This half term, our geographers are heading on an exciting journey across the world to explore one of the most extreme and fascinating environments on Earth – hot desert biomes! From scorching sand dunes to rocky landscapes and surprising wildlife, we will discover how people, plants and animals survive in these incredible places.

What will we be learning?

We will become desert explorers as we:

• Discover where hot deserts are located around the world and identify the key lines of latitude where they are found
• Explore the main characteristics of desert biomes, including climate, weather and landscape
• Locate the largest deserts on each continent and compare them
• Investigate the physical features of deserts, such as dunes, oases, canyons and salt flats
• Learn how the Mojave Desert is used by humans and why it is important
• Understand how people use desert environments in different ways around the world
• Explore how human activity can impact deserts and contribute to changes in climate and landscape
• Find out about time zones, including how the Mojave Desert differs from the UK
• Identify threats to desert environments and what this means for the future
• Weigh up the benefits and challenges of living in a desert
• Compare deserts with a contrasting biome, looking at land use and climate
• Debate whether a desert environment is truly hospitable and why

Key Questions we will be investigating

• Why are deserts found in certain parts of the world?
• How can anything survive in such extreme heat and dryness?
• What would it really be like to live in a desert?
• How do humans use deserts, and should we use them more or less?
• Are deserts changing because of human activity?
• Is a desert a harsh, empty place — or a unique and valuable environment?

 Get ready to think like geographers!

We will be using maps, images, case studies and discussion to become real experts on desert environments. Expect big questions, interesting debates, and some surprising discoveries about one of the world’s most extreme biomes!

Reciprocal Reading

This half term in Year 5, we will be using reciprocal reading to help us understand our class text, 'The Boy at the Back of the Class' by Onjali Q Raúf

Reciprocal reading helps us become active readers who think carefully about what we read, talk about books and explain our ideas clearly.

Story Synopsis

This is the story about how one ordinary nine-year-old child and three classmates are full of empathy for Ahmet, a boy that comes to their school as a refugee from Syria (he is the boy at the back of the class).  Through their sensitivity, curiosity, ingenuity, bravery and innocent niceness, they make a massive impact on Ahmet’s life, friends, class, school, community and wider world. There’s a lovely lack of stereotyping on gender and backstory for the narrator, which adds to the message of not judging people before you know them.

An inspiring and sweet tale that will help children think about what it is to be a good person whatever your circumstances (the narrator is from a poor background with a single parent mum who struggles to make ends meet), and challenge prejudice and push for fairness, whenever possible.

Key Vocabulary

We will be learning and using these key words linked to refugee and migration experience plus emotional and social themes:

• Refugee: A person forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.
• Asylum Seeker: A person seeking international protection and safety in another country.
• Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
• Bigotry: Intolerance or prejudice against people holding different opinions.
• Prejudice: An unreasonable dislike of a person or group based on stereotypes.
• Belonging: A feeling of fitting in or being part of a group.
• Compassion: Sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings of others.
• Scruples: Feelings of doubt or hesitation regarding the morality of an action.
• Immigrant: Someone who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.
• Migrant: A person who moves from one place to another, often for work or better living conditions.
• Displaced Person: Someone forced to leave their home, typically because of war or natural disaster.
• Stateless Person: Someone who is not considered as a national by any state.

🌟 English: The Paperbag Prince by Colin Thompson 🌟

We are excited to start reading The Paperbag Prince

The Paperbag Prince is a charming picture book, beautifully written and illustrated by Colin Thompson. The main character determinedly recycles and reuses other people’s discarded items from all across his land, in order to save and repair it throughout the years of it being used as a dump. It is only when the council finally leaves and hands him his land back that the land is able to heal and recover after years of damage. As with all of Thompson’s books, the detailed illustrations add so much to the story and every page could tell a story in its own right. A beautiful book with a beautiful message about sustainability and the impact even one person can have when they are determined.

National curriculum skills for this unit:
Spoken language:
• Listen and respond, build vocabulary
• Give well-structured descriptions, explanations and narratives
• Maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations
• Participate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play, improvisations and debates
• Consider and evaluate different viewpoints

Reading comprehension:
• Make comparisons within and across books
• Check sense, discuss understanding and explore meaning of words in context
• Ask questions to improve understanding
• Predict from details stated and implied
• Identify how language structure and presentation contribute to meaning
• Distinguish between fact and opinion
• Provide reasoned justifications for views

Writing Composition:
• Identify the audience for and purpose of writing
• Note and develop initial ideas, drawing on reading and research
• Enhance meaning through selecting appropriate grammar and vocabulary
• Use organisational and presentational devices to structure texts
• Use consistent and correct tense
• Distinguish between the language of speech and writing
 

Science- Forces and Space: unbalanced forces

Unit Outcomes:

• Describe gravity and its effects.
• Describe the relationship between mass and gravity.
• Describe air resistance and its effects.
• Describe friction and its effects.
• Describe water resistance and its effects.
• Describe the relationship between surface area and air and water resistance.
• Explain how to make an object aerodynamic or streamlined.
• Describe the effects of levers, pulleys and simple machines on movement.
• Analyse predictions, data and anomalies to write a conclusion.
• Plan a fair test to investigate air resistance.
• Write a method.
• Evaluate a method and judge the degree of trust.
• Design a results table.
• Calculate the mean average from repeat data.
• Draw and annotate a diagram.
• To draw an accurate line graph. 

Our class author is Michael Morpurgo. 

Click on the picture of him to see his website.

Have you read any of his books?

Which book is your favourite?