WELCOME TO YEAR 5 MERLINS

Merlins are resilient, resourceful and energetic. They are independent and use creativity to achieve excellent results to become successful young adults. Merlins are keen to explore their environments and enjoy exciting adventures further afield.

THIS TERM'S THEME

‘# Explore More'

This term, Year 5 will be learning to develop their curiosity, build new skills and ask questions that enhance their learning opportunities.  They will find out about how life in Japan compares to life in the UK and discover the key events that took place during Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the world.

P.E AND DANCE DAYS

PE for Merlins will be on a Monday and Dance will be on a Thursday. Please ensure your child comes to school with the correct kit, which is clearly labelled. For more information about kit requirements, please visit our 'Physical Education & School Sport' Page. 
We will ensure that PE kits are sent home at the end of every half term.  

HOME LEARNING DAYS

Home learning will be sent home on Fridays and should be returned to school on Wednesday. Home learning should be completed to the best standard possible and Mathletics and Times Table Rock Stars should also be completed weekly. We celebrate the efforts of Mathletics and Times Table Rock Stars in our assemblies with special class shout outs and certificates.  

UPCOMING EVENTS

Monday 21st April - Bank Holiday

Tuesday 22nd April - Non-pupil day

Wednesday 23rd April - First day of Summer 1

Tuesday 29th April - Assembly visitor

Thursday 15th May - PCSA Sports Festival - Merlins

Monday 19th May-Thursday 22nd May - Bikeability

Friday 23rd May - Last day of Summer 1

Monday 26th May-Friday 30th May - Half Term

Monday 2nd June - First day of Summer 2

Friday 6th June - World Ocean Day

Tuesday 24th June - Sports Day

Monday 30th June - RSHE Week

Thursday 3rd July - Transition Day

Friday 4th July - Summer Fayre 

Wednesday 16th July - Money Sense Day

Friday 25th July - Last day of Summer 2

MEET THE TEAM

Image coming soon

If there are any issues or concerns, please feel free to come in and see your teacher (Miss Tyrrell) or alternatively please contact a team leader (Mrs Gidley).

mtyrrell@whiterockprimaryschool.co.uk

rgidley@whiterockprimaryschool.co.uk

ACADEMIC YEAR 2024/2025

SUMMER TERM

Summer Term Curriculum Map

Friday 2nd May 2025 - Science

This week we have been learning about Air Resistance in Science, as part of our Forces topic. We learnt that it is a type of force that resists the movement of objects through the air, by the air pushing against the object in the opposite direction, like Friction. As part of our lesson, we looked at paper aeroplanes and their movement through the air and how this movement differs depending on their shape and style.

We combined this learning with last weeks homework of 'make your own paper aeroplane' and Friday afternoon all of Year 5 went onto the field to test their paper aeroplanes. It was a great year group experiment and there were some amazing paper aeroplanes, all different shapes and styles.

Tuesday 29th April 2025 - Priest Visit

Today we were lucky to host Matt and Mollie from Bay Church, who led assemblies for all the children. They taught us about the true meaning of Easter, Jesus's death and resurrection, and his Ascension into Heaven. They also discussed the Good News that Jesus and his disciples spread about how to live and talked about the word of God being like a light that shines to light the way for all, and we shouldn't hide the light. The children enjoyed sharing their 'good news' with Matt and Mollie, listening to their stories and watching the video and we look forward to them joining us again soon.

Friday 25th April 2025 - Writing

To immerse ourselves into our new poetry journey 'The Lost Words', we explored our school environment using our senses.  Working in groups, we chose objects such as trees, branches, grass and flowers and described them using our senses: smell, touch, sight and sound.

ACADEMIC YEAR 2024/2025

SPRING TERM

Spring Term Curriculum Map

Monday 31st March - Taekwondo 

Today we were really lucky to have Richard Kelly in from MF martial arts, teaching the children some basic taekwondo skills. They all joined and really enjoyed the session! Look out for the flyer that will be sent home with your child today with more information. 

Monday 31st March - PE 

This half term year 5 have been focusing on Fitness. We have been exploring the different components of fitness through a variety of activities, with the children also designing their own circuit training stations. Year 5 have worked so hard to improve their skipping skills this half term too! Well done everyone!

Tuesday 18th March 2025 - Let's Dance Showcase

Our Year 5 and 6 Dance Club performed outstandingly at the Let's Dance Showcase at South Dartmoor Community College this afternoon and evening. It was a long day involving an afternoon of watching other schools perform, as well as having a rehearsal ourselves on the stage. We then performed in two shows over the course of the evening (and managed to practise in one of the classrooms as well). As a group, we decided on the Addams Family theme tune and so were dressed as Wednesday and Pugsley Addams. We all really enjoyed practising and performing this dance and hope everyone who came to watch us enjoyed it too.

March 2025 - Computing

This term, we have been learning to film and make our own videos. We have learnt many filming techniques such as close up, long shot and panning. In our groups, we chose a topic to talk about it and then used a storyboard to help us plan what we wanted to say and the filming technique we were going to use for each scene. Once we had filmed our videos, we used a movie maker app to edit it - deleting unwanted parts and adding music, sound effects and text. We have had great fun making our films - you never know, we could be the next Steven Spielberg!

Friday 14th March 2025 - Maths

Measuring the perimeter and area of the school football field was a fantastic way to bring math to life. By engaging in this hands-on experience, Magpies gained a deeper understanding of these essential concepts while enjoying the great outdoors. This outdoor activity not only enhanced their mathematical skills but also fostered teamwork, communication, and critical thinking. 

Thursday 6th March 2025 - World Book Day

This week we celebrated World Book Day. It was an activity filled day! We created designs for the ‘design a nation book token competition’. We also watched and took part in the BBC Live World Book Day Lesson – it was brilliant! Have a look at some of our amazing costumes!

Thursday 27th February 2025 - Dance

This week we have started some new learning in Dance linked to the Egyptians. The dance is about how hard it was to build the pyramids, so we began with creating a 'sad solo' depicting the slaves working on the pyramids which needed to include different actions, dynamics and levels. We then added on the 'trapping' section, where we worked in pairs (called a duet) and one of us became the master and the other the slave. The master had to trap the slave using a circular shape, then the slave escapes. We put this together with the first part, one person from the pair being the slave performing their sad solo, while the other person was the master watching over them. When the music changed, the master then had to enter and trap the slave with the slave then escaping. This part of the dance then ended with a freeze frame of the master trying to catch the slave. We all really enjoyed this.

Monday 25th February 2025 - Geography

This week in Geography, we started our new topic 'Trade Journeys'. In class, we explored different products from world famous brands, as well as learnt the difference between imports and exports. To further explore this we completed a Fieldwork task, acting as trade ambassadors for different global nations, to better understand how trading works on a global stage. 

Thursday 13th February 2025 - Design and Technology

This week, we have linked our learning about Space, in Science, to our DT Lego Wedo project to build and program a Moon Rover.  We worked well in our groups to follow the steps accurately and then used coding to program the rover to move to certain 'moon bases'.  We tinkered with the coding to ensure it reached the destination required.

Monday 10th February 2025 - PE

This has been an exciting half term for year 5 as they have had coach Lloyd Blackler from the Torbay Tigers teaching their basketball lessons. Children have been developing their passing and dribbling techniques whilst learning the rules of the game, allowing them to organise and referee mini games. Well done year 5! 

Tuesday 5^th February 2025 – Reading

This week, the School Library Services came into school to visit Year 5. They brought in new books for the children to explore that are going to be available to read in the school library.  The books consisted of six different genres: , Imaginary worlds, Fascinating Facts, Realistic, Funny, Wild about Animals, and Adventure and Mystery.  The children discussed how to choose a book if they are in the library at school, or how to choose a book of their own out of school.   We discussed how to choose a book by looking at the picture, flicking through it, and reading a page to see if it grabs their attention.  We love to read in Year 5!

January and February 2025 - Reach Outdoors - Indoor Climbing

We had so much fun at our two indoor climbing sessions at Parkfield with Reach Outdoors and had a fantastic time learning new skills. We challenged ourselves to go even higher each time we went up the climbing wall! Take a look at the pictures below...

January 2025 - Computing

This half term, Yr5 are focusing on the Education for a Connected World document produced by the Government. As the world of technology is constantly changing, so are the perimeters of online safety and there a now many areas which need covering. The section we are focusing on at the moment is Managing Online Information. We have learnt all about search engines and how these are used to search for information on the internet. We know the child friendly search engines we should be using to keep us safe and know that only key words need to be used (typed or spoken) to reduce the amount of information provided. We have also learnt that we cannot trust any information we read online - we must become fact checkers! We have learnt that some things we read online, like reviews, are based upon opinions only and that we must make informed decisions about whether we believe what is being said or not.

Monday 20th January 2025 - Maths Mastering Number

This week in Maths, we have started 'Maths Mastering Number' to help enable us to better understand key mathematical concepts. We have learned key facts which have given us the ability to calculate more efficiently, even when those facts aren't within the times tables that we typically learn or the number bonds to 10.

Friday 10th January 2025 - Art

In Year 5, we have started our new Art unit by exploring what we know about warm and cool tones.  We will focus on the artwork of Katsushika Hokusai and his famous piece 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa' and build upon these skills for our final piece.

Thursday 9th January 2025 - Dance

This half term in Dance, we are using Hokusai's 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa' as a stimulus for our dances. In today's lesson, we picked four sections of the Japanese picture and chose four different body parts to 'draw' that section of the picture. We then added a dynamic to each section to add interest for the audience. Next week, we will be working in small groups to add to our dances by including different formations.

AUTUMN TERM 2024

Autumn Term Curriculum Map

Friday 20^th December

Today we have enjoyed wearing our Christmas Jumpers and eating the tasty dinner, which we enjoyed in our House Teams with children from all across the school. In class, we enjoyed Christmas activities and a quiz. Happy Christmas!

Thursday 19th December - PE

Year 5 have really enjoyed developing their netball skills this half term. We have focused on attacking and defensive skills, looking at how we pass and move with the ball when attacking, and different ways to intercept the ball when defending. We finished the half term with full court netball games introducing the basic rules and positions. 

Friday 13th December 2024 - Art

In Art this half term, we have been learning all about Jo Di Bona and his specific style of Art called pop graffiti, which he invented himself. We have enjoyed learning about him and his style, which is a combination of collage, graffiti and pop culture, and using this to create self-portraits this week.   

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 - Science

In Science this half term, we have been learning all about Living Things and Their Habitats. This week we focused on the process of fertilisation in flowering plants. We learned about sexual reproduction in flowering plants and how the male and female parts join in the fertilisation process to create new seeds and how these seeds are spread.   

November 2024 - Computing

In Computing this half term, we have been learning all about systems and how they work. We have looked at examples of systems in our everyday lives - traffic lights and online shopping sites. We have also looked at web sites and how they are accessed via the internet. We have learnt that we need to refine our searches when looking for websites in order to cut down the amount of pages sent to us.

Wednesday 27th November 2024 - Design and Technology and Learning Celebration

In Design and Technology this week, we followed the set of instructions that we wrote to make homemade vegetable soup.  We worked well in our groups to peel, chop and blend our vegetables into a delicious soup.  To complete our meal, we also followed a recipe to make homemade bread rolls which were very yummy!

We shared our soup and bread rolls, as well as our WW2 Lindy Hop dance, as part of our Learning Celebration.  It was so lovely to share our learning from this term with so many adults.

Friday 22nd November 2024- Spanish

Year 5 had lots of fun in their Spanish lesson this week learning about Peru. We learnt some really interesting facts. We discussed the different languages spoken in Peru such as Spanish, Aymara and Quecha. We also learnt about the Lost City (Machu Picchu) and about the Vicuna (a type of Alpaca) which is native to Peru. iQué maravilloso!  Did you know that the capital city of Peru is Lima! iQué interesante! Here are some of the key words we found in a wordsearch!

Andes- Amazon- Inca-South America-Llama-Rainforest- Nuevo Sol. 

We ended the lesson watching the official trailer to the new Paddington in Peru film. iQué fantástico!

Thursday 14th November 2024 - Dance

In Dance, we have been learning the Lindy Hop in preparation for our learning celebration. This dance became popular during World War II, when the American soldiers came over and danced the Lindy Hop in the British Dance Halls. In our dances, we have to include the basic step - rock (step, step) triple step and a breakaway section (where we separate from our partner and do something different). We have all really enjoyed learning this dance!

Tuesday 12th November 2024 - Design and Technology

In preparation for our own soup making, Year 5 completed research about soups that are available in our supermarkets.  As part of our research, we evaluated the appearance and the smell of a range of soups and some of us even taste-tested them thinking about the texture and the ingredients we could taste.  We discussed what we liked and disliked about the different soups and we will apply this to our own soup designs.

Tuesday 12th November 2024

This week is Anti-bullying Week! We had a whole school assembly where we discussed what the word respect means and how we can be respectful towards each other. Today we wore odd socks to celebrate our uniqueness! We know that it doesn't matter if somebody is different to us. We must remain respectful and kind,

Friday 8th November 2024 - Writing

Today, we had great fun testing the set of instructions that we had written for our shared write to make 'Crazy Chocolate Lollies'.  We followed the step by step instructions that we had written to evaluate the accuracy of our instructions and to see if it produced the intended outcome.  We obviously had to taste test them as well to make sure they were as delicious as they looked! 

Friday 8th November - PE

This week year 5 started their first week of netball. Children are developing their footwork, passing techniques and understanding of the rules of the game. They are also identifying the skills that can be transferred between netball and basketball, acknowledging the different rules between both sports. 

Thursday 24th October 2024 - Music

In Music, we have been learning how to play the recorder.  In this lesson, we practised A, B, C and G notes that we had previously learned and then we learned how to play F - which was a little bit trickier!  We showed great resilience and determination to play this accurately.

Computing October 2024

In Computing this half term, the children have been focusing on Online Safety. We have talked about how we can keep our passwords safe and how we can create secure passwords. The children have also discussed the age restrictions of social media apps and the terms and conditions which come with them. We talked about how these terms and conditions require users to give their consent before using them. 

Friday 18th October 2024 - Writing

As part of our Writing journey about instructions, we used different sets of instructions that made the same product.  We decided to make 'Instant Ice-Cream' which the children really enjoyed but some of our groups had varying results! In our next lesson, we evaluated which set of instructions were the easiest to follow and why, how we worked well in teams and how we could improve the instructions next time.

Friday 18th October 2024- Mandarin Club 

你好! (nǐ hǎo) – “Hello”

Year 5 had lots of fun in Mandarin club. We learnt lots of greetings in Mandarin Chinese. We also played interactive games and finished our PowerPoint presentations which included information about China. 

We can't wait to show our presentations to all the Year 5 classes. 

Tuesday 8th October 2024- African Dancing Assembly

As part of our celebrations for 'Black History Month', this week we were lucky enough to have African dancers and drummers in our assembly. They explained to us that they come from West Africa, specifically a country named Ivory Coast. As they played a beat, they also shouted call and response activities. We joined in by shouting and singing phrases, as well as taking part in a range of African style dances.

Friday 4th October 2024 - Art

In Art, we have been trying to improve our portraiture sketching skills by learning how to draw a eye with details within the eye, the eyelids and eyelashes.  We used a step by step guide to help us.

Thursday 3rd October - Reach Outdoors Body Boarding

Despite the change of plan, Merlins had an amazing time body boarding with Reach Outdoors at Goodrington Sands in Paignton.  They had a fantastic time in the warm sun, body boarding in the sea and some enjoyed body surfing too! They demonstrated fantastic determination, resilience and body boarding skills!

Thursday 26th September 2024 - Dance

This half term in Dance, we are creating dances based on photographs taken during the time of World War II. We have explored the feelings of those in the pictures and then chosen two photographs to base our solo dance on. We have to think about how our choice of dynamics (how we move) will help to portray the feelings of those people from that time.

Tuesday 24th September 2024 - European Day

This week we have celebrated European Day.  We started the day with an exciting assembly with Senorita Head where we learned how to say hello in different languages including Spanish, French, Polish and Russian and sang some of our favourite songs that we sing in our Language lessons followed by some exciting games in class.

Friday 20th September - PE

Year 5 have had a fantastic start to PE this year, working really hard in their tag rugby lessons. This half term we are focusing on the principles of attack and defence in all invasion games but linking these skills more specifically to tag rugby. Some students are also applying these skills to contact rugby in order to develop their knowledge for sport outside of school. 

Monday 16th September – History

This week we have started our new History topic in which we will be studying World War 2. In class we discussed the origins of WW2 and began to learn many of the key dates and vocabulary associated with this time period. We then created a class timeline of key dates during WW2 and then created our own more detailed timelines into our book.

Wednesday 11th September – Writing

This week we have started our new writing journey. This is based on the book, ‘The Ice Bear.’ We have given our first impressions, after looking at the front cover and reading the introduction and blurb. When looking at some of the pages, from the book, we discussed as a class the features we could see. We’ll be using this information to write our own stories at the end of the journey.

Year 5 Class Reader – Autumn Term

Miss Tyrell is reading Street Child as the class reader for Merlins.

Street Child by Berlie Doherty is about Jim Jarvis whose mother dies and he is left an orphan in London to fend for himself. He is picked up by the Police and sent to the work house. Jim dreams of escaping and one day he finally takes his chance and makes his escape.