The Highwayman is dead!

This week, Year 5 discovered the shocking revelation that, during the climax of Alfred Noyes' epic poem The Highwayman, the titular character in fact meets a grisly end! In order to reflect the drama of the situation, and the fact that they will have to translate this into a newspaper report detailing the incident, the children got into character and played out their own TV-style news reports. See below to view how they got on:

Reminder

Year 5 class assemblies are taking place at 9am next week on the following dates:

5O - 27th February
5R - 28th February
5M - 29th February

It would be a pleasure if you could join us to celebrate the learning we have completed so far this year.

Wonderdome

The children had an amazing morning experiencing the Wonderdome, a portable planetarium which took them through the wonders of the Milky Way and the Solar system. This fantastic encounter enabled them to consolidate all the impressive knowledge they had learnt over the last half term and really immerse themselves in the wonder of space!  

We're off to see the wizard!

Year 5 were invited to go to Southgate School last week to attend their dress rehearsal of The Wizard of Oz, providing them with a taste of secondary school life and the opportunities provided to them in their schooling as they get older. While the performance was great, and the children thoroughly enjoyed themselves, they did themselves proud with their behaviour and represented the school impeccably. This was particularly impressive as on the way, we had to squeeze 89 children and 10 adults onto a bus and on the way back, most of us had to wait for two buses to pass before we were able to get on to return to school. We're looking forward to continuing to build links with local secondary schools to afford our children as many beneficial experiences as possible. See below for pictures of the show:

Macbeth Workshop

Year 5 finished off their work on William Shakespeare this half-term with a workshop with West End in Schools where a trained actor and practitioner helped to consolidate their knowledge of Macbeth. We used our values of teamwork, fairness, respect and trust to act out scenes from the play as William Shakespeare wrote them, employing freeze frames for different parts of the play, including the army in Birnam Wood and the witches on the moors, as well as Macbeth’s famous ‘Is this a dagger I see before me’ soliloquy. Scan the QR code below to see what we got up to:

Parachutes-are-go!

Year 5, as part of their forces unit, recently conducted an experiment to test the effects of air resistance. Having previously discussed what air resistance was, seeing how it impacted a piece of paper as it moved through the air, the children pondered what would make an effective parachute and predicted that the larger the surface area, the slower the parachute would fall. They then tested this when each table had a different volume of surface area to use to make their parachutes before observing their descent out of Maple Building's windows. See below for some pictures of our experiment:

Gilwell Park

Year 5 had an absolute blast at Gilwell and now it's time to tell you all about it! First, after setting out expectations and boundaries, we got the coach down to Gilwell, which took us about 40 minutes or so, before Ms Gardiner took us on a quick-fire tour of the important locations of the park. After having some lunch, it was time for us to do some activities! Half of us went into the woods to search for different forms of birds and plant-life while the other played Kickstone, a mix between kickball and hide and seek in the woods. It was then time for all of us to get settled into the rooms and throw all of our clothes everywhere! Finally, we were getting into the meat of the trip: the pre-planned activities. Due to the scheduling, sadly not all activities were available to all children, but the groups completed a range including zip-wire, crate stacking, wobbly pole, bouldering and pedal go-karts. It was fabulous to see the children not only having a blast, but also to see some of them push themselves out of their comfort zone and do things they never could've dreamed of. We then had dinner in the canteen, where some of the children indulged themselves by drinking pint after pint of orange squash, before getting ourselves ready for our evening activity - wide games. This was a range of different team building exercises where they had to work together in order to achieve victory over their rivals, which the children got incredibly involved in (screaming very loudly as they did so)! We then were guided by Miss Powell through the woods to explore the park at night, which petrified and exhilarated the children in equal measure before returning to our accomodation to get ready for bed. Some children had more eventful evenings than others, let's put it that way!
Day 2 was an early start, though some children had woken up far before the teachers had come to, and they were expected to be ready for breakfast by 8am. We ate breakfast and then returned to the lodges to finish up packing before the two groups from yesterday swapped over; those who had free time outside, many chose to return inside to draw thanks to the appalling levels of rain that soaked everyone to the bone. It was then time for our final instructor-led activity before quickly devouring some fish finger wraps and rushing over to the lodges to grab everyone's stuff and throw it on the coaches. All in all, a successful trip that all involved enjoyed!

Pictures of our trip to Gilwell can be found in the folders below. Enjoy:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-xJOFdNIy3nYGQX1K2gfq-uubxAXc9-w?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-I6XoBHIdRhzSyWkme0f-YV4-WLiTIVE?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-YM86GBgU8DFZ_0cC6oPK951Ezx-D5vI?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-Ad9CSm5qk7bStFVFr3-dQke9fxppBxS?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NPS3Sy0kttLHC6HwU-QpPxLdp7HEkMa9?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1f3Bh70Qp8qOmCNw6VnzbdMKp3NLtH6JW?usp=sharing

Back to School!

It has been a busy start to the term in Year 5, but they have been so impressive in terms of their re-adjustment back into school life. To begin our work in English this year, the whole school used ‘Surprised’, a painting by Henri Rousseau that depicts a tiger in the jungle with a surprised expression on its face. In Year 5, the children wrote a descriptive poem using figurative language and were able to create some amazingly powerful imagery in their work, before they performed it to their peers with a great deal of confidence! In Maths, the children have resumed their work in the subject by looking at Place Value and are now beginning to look at numbers all the way up to 1,000,000, even being able to read and write numbers up to such a great value. In History, the children have begun looking at Christianity across Three Empires, beginning with the context of the nativity, why people followed Jesus and how Christians were persecuted throughout the Roman Empire – by throwing them to the lions! Finally, some of our children have begun to go out into the community to Palmers Green Library to read with children aged 2-5, demonstrating great levels of maturity and confidence.