Years 5 & 6

Years 5 and 6 Curriculum Overview

Welcome back and we hope you had a good break. We are looking forward to our new topic: Blood Heart.

This term the children will be learning about the human circulatory system. They will study William Harvey and learn about his discoveries regarding valves. They will find out about the components and functions of blood and consider how to keep their hearts healthy through healthy eating and cardiovascular exercise. In our lessons we will be focusing on the children’s use of scientific vocabulary and how they apply this to their writing.

We will continue to ensure that the children have a good understanding of the non-negotiables – the building blocks that support their maths learning. We will be developing the children’s reasoning skills and their ability to use and apply the mathematics they have been taught when problem solving. Please encourage them to learn their multiplication tables and their division facts as these are used in many areas of the maths curriculum. All pupils have access to Times Table Rockstars and this is a fun way to learn the multiplication tables.

Year 5 children will be set some project homework do this half term along with their regular maths homework. Year 6 will be receiving additional homework to help them prepare for secondary school and as part of their revision for the SATs tests in May.

In the Year 5 and 6 team we have the following teachers: Mrs Koszykowska, Mrs Harris, Mrs McGarragh, Miss Stankowski and Miss Pollendine. To help the children with their learning we have: Mrs Brown, Mrs Launn, Mrs Donald, Mrs Briggs, Mrs Smith and Miss Holman.

Ideas for home learning

•       Find out about some famous heart surgeons.

•       Find out about the size and structure of a human heart and compare it to the size, structure and number of hearts in other animals. (Worms have five!)

•       Find examples of proverbs or idioms relating to the heart, such as ‘wear your heart on your sleeve’ or ‘eat your heart out’.

•       Find out about the different pulse points on the human body including the side of the neck (carotid), wrist (radial), top of thigh (femoral) and elbow crease (brachial). Test the different pulse points – which one has the strongest pulse?

•       Measure your family’s resting heart rates before putting them through their paces. Ask them to hop, skip, jump, and run measuring their heart rates after each activity. Fill in a table or spreadsheet with everyone’s results before looking for patterns in the data. Who has the slowest heart rate? Which exercise gave the biggest increase in heart rate?