Key Stage 2 classes recently took part in a virtual visit from award-winning author, Hannah Gold. 

During the virtual visit, Hannah spoke about her bestselling books The Last Bear and The Lost Whale. She also introduced the children to her highly anticipated third book, Finding Bear. Hannah spoke about her exciting work and the background to her latest book, as well as answering pupils’ questions in a Q&A session.

Some of the children enjoyed listening to Hannah so much that they were motivated to write their own animal stories inspired by Finding Bear.

Last week, Year 5 had a special History workshop.

We explored the lives of Anglo Saxon monks which is part of our History topic this term. Richard really brought the past to life as he shared many aspects of Anglo Saxon times with us.

Just as Richard intended, we learned lots and we had lots of fun!

Here is a selection of photos of the children enjoying their brilliant afternoon:

Three teams of pupils from Year 5 and Year 6 enjoyed competing at Monkton Stadium in the Quadkids Athletics event last week. There were some brilliant results in the 75m sprint, 600m, howler throw and standing long jump. Everyone tried so hard and should be extremely pleased with their performances. Team A placed 5th out of a staggering 48 teams!

Most importantly, I was very proud to see everyone supporting each other with lots of enthusiasm and kind words. The children had buckets of positive energy and it was a delight to hear them cheering each other on.

A huge ‘well done’ from Mrs Usher 🙂

Year 5 have been invited to take part in an invention challenge by Little Inventors in partnership with South Tyneside Council. Pupils have been given a worksheet which they can fill in and return to school by Thursday 30th March. We will then submit all entries together. Please note this in an optional task and there is no pressure for the children to submit an entry. Please see the following information for more details.

Little Inventors in partnership with South Tyneside Council and Dogger Bank Wind Farm are delighted to launch the Powering the Future: South Tyneside and Beyond!

Dogger Bank Wind Farm is in process of becoming the world’s largest offshore wind farm. It will be capable of powering 6 million British homes. The project will generate a vast source of renewable energy, harnessing the power of wind to provide sustainable energy and reducing the use of fossil fuels.

The Year 5 challenge is to invent something that creates renewable energy by harnessing power from movement. This will help us reduce the use of fossil fuels and prevent climate change! The energy of motion is called kinetic energy. This movement could be dancing, running, shivering, swaying, and so much more!

How about a battery that is powered from the movement of a dance-off? A pair of shoes that you walk in for a bit to generate energy, then they turn into mini hoverboards? How about harnessing the energy from a live orchestra or from bouncing on a pogo stick! Time to get moving and shaking, thinking and making!

See this PowerPoint for more information and ideas:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S90Nhdao4yNGsZeTI7PdoyVkhrnjtXmP/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117483607155286670880&rtpof=true&sd=true

This week, Year 5 visited OpenZone at The Word as part of their Computing work on programming. The children had a jam-packed day full of fantastic activities. They built models using Lego Spike and explored how to program their models to move and react in different ways. We had everything from dancing robots to goalkeepers!

Next, the children used Microbits and wrote programs for them including some with count-controlled loops. Finally, they wrote sequences of commands using a ‘dance party’ tutorial on Hour of Code. Many of the children enjoyed this site so much that they asked to do it at home! We have added the link to the website on our class page.

Here are some photos and a video of the children in action. Great work, Year 5!