The theme of our assembly was money, millions of pounds! The idea came from a book which we are currently reading in 5N and we also chose this theme because it is Maths money week at Birchfields. The book is called ‘Millions’ and is by a man called Frank Cottrell Boyce. There are 2 copies of this book in the school library if anyone would like to read it, all of 5N can recommend it!

The book is about 2 schoolboy brothers who find a bag full of money and it tells of their adventures whilst spending the money. The boys are called Damian and Anthony and for our assembly we performed a sketch as if they had been invited onto the television show, This Morning. We filmed a sketch with children acting in the roles of Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby as well as the two boys from the book! We shot a small film which we then projected onto the big screen in the hall for our assembly.

Also during the assembly we discussed some of the things we have learnt this week including, how much items cost and are worth and what is a million? We also played a ‘Family Fortunes’ style quiz where our audience had to guess the most popular answer to the following questions:

What would you buy first if you had a million pounds?

Who would you give some of your money too?

What is the most expensive thing you could buy with a million pounds?

Our assembly was a great success and 5N were awarded the ‘Big Birchy’ class of the week award by Miss Offord at the good work assembly.

Well done 5N!

Miss Barrett

To begin the topic 5N were shown a picture of a man on a horse and asked to write down their thoughts on who he was, what he did and where he was from.

There were lots of different and fantastic ideas including that the man was a King, St George, a pirate, a robber, a wanted man, a knight, a postman, a jockey, a prisoner and someone even said they thought this man was Zorro!

We discovered that it was a picture of the highwayman and that some of our guesses were very close!

Come back soon to see what other work we have been doing on ‘The Highwayman’.

Miss Barrett

Before the Easter holidays the whole school was working really hard during science and technology week and year 5 were working especially hard on their chocolate topic. Everyone had their own topic booklet to work through during our chocolate weeks. We really enjoyed tasting the different kinds of chocolate products and comparing ingredients. We each made our own Easter egg to take home and enjoy over the Easter holidays.

After coming back to school we began work on our new topic ‘Can England win the world cup?’. We are really enjoying this topic and have begun to research the country of South Africa and have developed our own South Africa fact files.

In Literacy this half term we have been working on a novel by Morris Gleitzman called ‘Boy Overboard’. The story is about a family who have to leave Afghanistan because the country is at war. We have all been really enjoying this story!

In Numeracy we have been working on lots of different things. We have worked particularly hard on time, fractions and percentages. Children doing Wave 3 maths have also been working really hard on doubling numbers.

In science we have been working on sound. How sound is created and how it travels to our ears. We did experiments with lots of different instruments including, tuning forks, tambourines, drums and cymbals.

Returning to school after the half term, 5N conducted a science experiment about how differing levels of activity affect our pulse rate.

We took our resting pulse rates in class to see how many times our heart beats while we are sitting down.

Then we went into the hall to begin our mild exercise! We walked at a normal pace around the hall for a minute and a half  then sat down to take our pulse rates.

We noticed that they had increased from our resting rate.

Then we began our vigorous exercise! We ran around the hall, again for a minute and a half before stopping to take our pulse once more.

As we panted and tried to get our breath back, we realised our pulse rate had dramatically increased!

We went back to class to complete our experiment sheets, and to catch our breath!

Come back to our webpage soon to see what else we have been up to in 5N!

Miss Barrett

This week we went to the museum of science and industry and met Prince Charles! More information on this visit can be found on that page, click on the link on the top left of this page.

We have been continuing our hard work on the topic of the Tudors. This week we got even more involved in Tudor life by cooking and eating some Tudor style food.

We made bread and a dish called Pottage.

Pottage is a recipe which originates from Tudor times. Some of the ingredients include carrots, onions, parsnips, cabbage, leeks, turnips and celery. We peeled and chopped all these vegetables (enough for around 100 people!) and began to boil them. Then we added dried beans and lots of different herbs to add flavour including thyme, coriander and sage, along with some vegetable stock. Later we included porridge oats to thicken the mixture.

We mixed and baked individual bread rolls to eat alongside the Pottage.

Once everything was ready we tasted the Tudor food. Some people were braver than others and were more willing to taste the food.

We learned that Pottage was eaten by poorer people in Tudor times. The recipe didn’t include any meat because people couldn’t afford it.

Later in the week we evaluated the Pottage in relation to our topic of healthy eating. We decided that although the Pottage was healthy because it included lots of vegetables, it wasn’t a balanced meal as it did not include any meat or dairy products.

We also brought the Pottage into a numeracy lesson where we calculated the price of an individual portion and decided it was a very cheap meal and very suitable for poorer people in Tudor times.

5N are performing their class assembly on Tuesday to the rest of Key Stage 2 and some children have been working very hard at learning their lines. We will be performing a few scenes from a Tudor play about Henry the 8th as well as discussing other work we have been doing throughout this topic.

Come back soon to see how our assembly went and what else we have been doing in school.

Miss Barrett

School re-opened on Monday 4th January after the holidays and we began our lessons for this half term.

In literacy we will be working on poetry this half-term but on Monday we had a big writing session where we wrote about our holidays. There were some excellent descriptions of the snow and the fun we had playing in it, during the break.

In numeracy we began working on fractions which we will be working on for a while.

Our Science topic for this half term is healthy eating and we will be starting work on this next week.

Also on Monday, Miss Nortcliffe introduced our topic for this half-term The Tudors! The class were really happy and enthusiastic about this topic and the children wrote down some questions they would like to find out about Henry VIII whilst we are working on this topic.

On Monday night the snow came! This meant that everyone struggled getting to school on Tuesday morning and so Miss Offord closed the school for Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Thursday morning school re-opened and we can carry on with our exciting work this half term despite the bad weather.

There will be lots of exciting activities in 5N this half term so check the website again soon to see what we have been doing.

Keep safe and warm in the snow!

Miss Barrett