Years 5 & 6

Frozen Kingdom

This half term we are going to shiver!

Welcome back to another half term full to the brim with exciting learning opportunities. Our topic for this half term, ‘Frozen Kingdom’, finds us travelling to the planet’s coldest lands… vast wilds, hostile territories; incredibly beautiful, but often deadly. We will be learning about different biomes across the world in our Geography lessons and design and make igloos in DT.

In English this term, we will begin by developing understanding of what makes a fantastic story. In this unit, we will be immersing the children in rich descriptive vocabulary and take them step by step through the process of becoming an author of their very own arctic inspired story. We will then move on to persuasive writing when learning how to write effective letters of complaint and end the term with journalistic writing.

During our guided reading lessons, we will be reading a range of texts to develop inference and deduction skills; explanation skills and improve fluency and expression. Cursive handwriting and beautiful presentation will still remain a priority and we will continue to practice this as well as learning our weekly spelling rules and associated words.

In maths, we have now completed our units on place value and the four operations and will now be moving onto fractions. The children will learn all about what fractions are, how to find fractions and how to problem solve with fractions. Quick recall of times table and division facts will really support the children with this unit, therefore if children are not yet confident with these, we advise working on this at home to support the work we do in school.

In Science, we will be learning about dissolving and investigation variables which affect the rate solids dissolve. We will also be learning about how light travels and classifying plants using classification keys.

In PE the children will be working on improving their basketball skills in their outdoor lesson and bringing their inner dancers to life in our ‘fire and ice’ dance topic. For PE days, please can children come to school wearing their PE kit and ensure that a jumper and tracksuit bottoms are worn on colder days as the children will have a session outside. Please also ensure appropriate footwear is worn on these days.

Here are some things you might want to do at home:

• Find out what natural resources and raw materials are reaped from the Arctic. What impact does this have on the environment?
• Make “iced jewels”. Mix powder paints and dyes into water, in an array of colours. Pour into an ice cube tray before freezing overnight. Pop the cubes out and explore your iced jewels. What happens if you sprinkle salt on the cube?
• Design a pair of snow boots for an Arctic explorer. What materials would you use? What features could they have? Let your imagination run wild!