Year 5 Weekly Overview

Week Beginning: Sunday 4th April 2025

Important notices:

Friday 2nd May - White Rose Maths parent workshop - Please see here for more details.
Upcoming event - Swimming gala week - Year 5's swim gala day will be on Wednesday 7th May - Please see here for more details

A message from Mr Mernagh

Dear Parents,

I hope this message finds you and your families well. As always, we’re delighted to share the latest updates from our middle school community.

White Rose Maths Training & Parent Workshop
This week, our staff participated in a some White Rose Maths training sessions after school. This high-quality professional development from a UK based trainer, helps our teachers enhance pedagogy across the school, ensuring consistency, challenge, and deeper understanding for all pupils.

To further support our children’s learning at home, we’ll be hosting a White Rose Maths Parent Workshop tomorrow. This will take place tomorrow from 8.30am-9.30am in the Small Gym. This will be led by a specialist who is over from the UK. This is a great opportunity to share with parents how we teach maths in school and explore ways you can support your child’s learning at home. The sign up has been very positive with over 80 parents already signed up. Please see Mr Bray’s Parental Correspondence with further information.

Big Dream Day – A Huge Success!
A massive thank you to the DESS community who helped make our Big Dream Day such a memorable occasion. It was truly inspiring to see our pupils engaging with a wide variety of careers, passions, and future possibilities. From geologists to vets, flight crew staff to pharmacists, our children were buzzing with excitement and curiosity. Events like this remind us just how powerful aspiration and imagination can be in shaping young minds.

Thank you, as always, for your continued support in making our school such a vibrant and nurturing place to learn and grow.

Have a lovely weekend.

Kind Regards,

Mr Mernagh

Head of Middle School

lmernagh@dess.org

Preparing my child for Year 6

As always, we endeavor to provide the best for all the children and we are always grateful for the support we receive at home. To assist the children at home, we have provided parents with a document which is designed to help Year 5 children transition smoothly into Year 6. Here, you will find a range of resources across the curriculum which may help some of the children achieve their targets.

We hope you find this useful.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1djNSlMClJDc1Ed7KoCGeZR3E6Ep53p2j/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=105950665658215905956&rtpof=true&sd=true

Year 5 Book Bingo competition

To encourage the children to read a range of different books, we have introduced a new competition: Reading Bingo. Each square of the bingo sheet has a different focus which the children have to find in different books. Once they have read that book, they can get it signed off by either a teacher, librarian or yourself.

Children will receive 10 house points for completing the sheet!

Upcoming house competitions

Here is some advice on how you can sign up to your free parent accounts for Atom Learning:

Outdoor Playtimes - bring activities!

Now the weather is warming up, the children will need to wear a sun hat throughout Term 3.

There will also be some playtimes which are too hot to be outside and therefore will be indoor. We strongly recommend that the children bring in an activity such as drawing, diaries, card games, puzzles or board games to help keep them occupied during these hot breaks.

Bring books in every day!

Please encourage your children to bring their library/reading books into school everyday. There may be small periods of the day where your child is able to read for 5 minutes in-between lessons or during indoor breaks!

Swimming

The boys are now swimming.

Please ensure your son has the following with them for their swimming days:

- DESS Swimwear
- Towel
- Flip flops
- Goggles
- Swim cap (if their hair is longer than their chin)

Year 5 parent curriculum map

Learning Objectives Covered this Week:

English

To use a variety of devices to describe a character
To use powerful verbs to express ideas in writing
To use fronted adverbials to make links between paragraphs
To publish writing

Reading Unit Objectives

Explaining the meaning of words in context and retrieval
Retrieve and record key details

Mathematics

3-D shapes
Use known facts to add and subtract decimals within 1
Complements to 1
Add and subtract decimals across 1
Add and subtract decimals with the same number of decimal places

Science - Reversible and irreversible changes

We will continue to explore our Science topic on reversible and irreversible changes, focusing on seperating materials this week.

Topic - Shang Dynasty

We will be continuing our Shang Dynasty topic, exploring China's rich history!

Photos

Please use the following links to access photos...

Reminders

Chromebooks

The Y5 children need to bring a fully charged Chromebook to school every day. If you would like to order a Chromebook, please email it@dess.org

In Year 5, children come into class by themselves in the morning. The class teachers and TA’s will be in the classroom ready to greet the children.

At the end of the day, 5A and 5B teachers will bring the children onto the shaded playground area at 2pm (1pm Thursdays) to meet you. 5C and 5D will assemble at the side of block E, outside the 5C classroom. The Year 5 team will be around to point you in the right direction.

Please remember that parents are not to enter classrooms. The school day begins at 7:30am and pick-up is from the shaded playground at 2:00pm. REMINDER: We finish at 1:00pm on a Thursday

Please bring a full water bottle to school each day.
Please bring a hat everyday.

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