Year Five Blog - Paused

At the end of the 2023/24 school year, we are pausing the use of this blog space. For further information, please see our school's main website: www.crosshalljunior.co.uk. 

Year Five: February 2024

While the start of February was full of great learning (such as starting our Famous Five adventure narrative, investigating properties of materials in science, exploring fractions and decimals in maths, looking at mountain formation and habitats in geography and so much more), the big event was our residential trip!

In the last week of last half term, Year Five had a very busy but enjoyable trip to York.  The schedule was packed with exciting opportunities, including heading to the National Railway Museum within an hour of arrival!  After marvelling at the miniature railway, clambering on, over and through all sorts of train models and completing a scavenger hunt throughout the main museum, it was time to head back to the hostel for dinner and the most important part of the trip: finding out about rooms!

Following a delicious (and enormous!) meal, the rest of the evening was filled with a range of group activities (designing Viking shields, solving Norse Code and constructing mini catapults) before settling down for their first night away.

Tuesday began with a rotation of Monday’s activities, with the addition of building Viking longships big enough to hold eight people and participating in some tricky team games.  The collaboration and encouragement were fabulous to see, and they ensured some competitive but enjoyable challenges.  After lunch, it was time to head into the centre of York for a guided historical tour of the city walls before dinner and more activities in the early evening.  A cosy film with pyjamas and cuddly toys rounded off the day.

The final full day was just as busy!  The morning started with a walk into York for a very exciting open-topped bus tour and a picnic lunch, followed by a wander down the Shambles (the inspiration for the representation of Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter films.  The afternoon saw a visit to the hotly anticipated York Chocolate Story and gift shop (which they left with considerably lighter wallets!), followed by dinner and the big finale of the end of residential disco.  After they wore themselves out with lot of enthusiastic moves to the blasting music under flashing lights, it was time for bed.

Who wants to waste a whole morning when you’re away on a residential?  Not us!  After very efficiently packing and evacuating rooms, there was time for one last visit: the Castle Museum.  A fascinating walk through time with lots to see and a final chance to spend any remaining money before an al fresco lunch and onto the coach.

Over the course of four days, the children had a fantastic time and demonstrated lots of skills. They were archaeologists and historians, puzzle solvers and athletes, artists and engineers, chocolatiers and performers.  They also demonstrated some fabulous collaborative and communication skills throughout (something commented upon by the YHA staff).

All of the adults were extremely pleased and proud of everyone who came along.  They showed ambition, resilience and kindness, and were praised by members of the public and the YHA staff for being excellent ambassadors for our school.  Well done, Year Five!

For those who didn't attend the residential trip, there were a host of exciting, linked activities completed back at school.

Year Five - January 2024

 Happy New Year! 

This has been a busy month and an amazing start to the calendar year. We have done so many exciting things and have loads of exciting things to look forward to. Here is what some of our Year Five children thought of January:

Some of the exciting things that we have done are: pasta making, new maths journeys, in English we designed our own cracking contraption machine, thermal insulators and conductors in science and in geography we are studying tectonic plates, mountains , volcanoes and earthquakes.

To go into more detail about maths we have been doing …column long multiplication and bus stop method. This has been a bit tricky for a few of us (since it's a complicated skill) but we got the hang of it!

In English we made our own designs of a 'Cracking Contraption',

based off of a show that you will probably know... Wallace and Gromit! We have made many different designs, such as: The Food Machine, The Reading Robot and The Homework Minion!

During this topic, our journey was to write an explanation text about our machine!

In science we are learning about thermal conductors and insulators in our 'Properties of Material' unit of work. One of the CRAZY experiments we have done so far is a fair test on how fast ice will melt in different materials such as: wool, tin foil, bubble wrap, paper and many more.