Curriculum Bulletin: Year 5

Iceberg Ahead! 

• During this topic will learn about the maritime history of Southampton
• We will use our geography skills to explore the intended route of the Titanic and plot this on a map
• We will learn about life on board the Titanic, and what jobs were available on board
• We will find out about the different classes of passengers
• We will use a variety of historical sources in order to discover more about the Titanic; discussing whether they are primary or secondary sources and how this affects their reliability
• We look at where the events of the Titanic fit on a timeline with other significant events in history
• We will visit Southampton Boat Show to compare modern day boats to the Titanic, as well learning about importance of Southampton's present day maritime culture. Have a look at what we got up to last year here
• At the end of our topic we will celebrate our learning with a Titanic day, where we all dress up and perform our historical dance, which they would have done aboard the Titanic. Take a look at the fun we had last year and some inspiration for your outfits here

Reading 

• This term we will be promoting the importance of reading for pleasure
• Developing our skills of using a text to retrieve information
• Answering questions using P.E.E. (point, evidence, explain)
• Comparing different books by the same author
• Looking at a variety of historical texts to inform our topic work

Writing



This half term we will be using the context of writing a diary in role, as a Titanic passenger to develop the following skills:

• Descriptive writing using: alliteration, personification, adjectives, similes and metaphors
• Using prepositions in a piece of writing
• Using time conjunctions 
• Focusing on the planning stage of writing by exploring different ways in which we can plan
• Using paragraphs to organise our writing (using TiP ToP to help us)
• Using a dictionary and thesaurus to improve the vocabulary we use in our writing

Maths 

• Revisiting place value (including decimals), and it's importance in maths
• Understanding and ordering negative numbers
• Roman numerals- both reading and writing
• Counting forward and backwards in powers of 10, from any given number- you could use this game to help practise 
• Written and mental addition and subtraction methods
• The relationship between addition and subtraction (inverse operations)

Learning at home

• Reading Logs are checked on Mondays and we expect to see 4 entries a week
• Keep working hard on your logs and we will test you as much as possible in school, but please make sure your logs are in school everyday
• Weekly homework will normally be set on Thursday and due on Thursdays
• This half term's homework is a Titanic project, a great opportunity to get creative and show everything you have found out about the Titanic. This is due in on the 14/10/16 ready for the exhibition on the 19/10/16