16th March 2026

Some of Year 5 have been doing Bikeability this week - maybe you've seen us out on the streets of Prestwood in our helmets and high-vis jackets, seeing and being seen, measuring "a door and a little bit more", singling out, doubling up, practising our u-turn manoeuvres, giving and generally showing everyone how safe cycling with superpower zen road awareness is done. Look, look, and look again! The whole Year 5 team have been so proud of how well children have conducted themselves in these sessions - how respectful they have been to the instructions, and how bravely and seriously they have taken on each new challenge. 

Outside of Bikeability we have been researching the artist Denzil Forrester, and making our own sound-and-movement dub and reggae inspired paintings. We've also been researching and crafting deep sea creatures!

2nd March 2026

In the leadup to World Book Day, we have been launching our next English unit on 'Defeating the Monster' stories with a hunt around the (drizzly!) playground to find rune symbols which cracked the code to open the chest of BLOD. Inside were gauntlets which could protect one member of each team from the otherwise-deadly canker stones which each heroic warrior had then to throw into Grendel's gaping maw, to ensure his demise. We thought we had defeated the monster...but the next day we heard from his mother, who was not best pleased with our handiwork - she had taken three children prisoner and robbed them of their voices! (ask your children what happened next...)

We have begun working with equivalent fractions and decimals in Maths, and children are becoming expert in their multiple concrete, pictorial and abstract representations of different values. On Wednesday with Miss France, we had to work in teams, using our knowledge of fractions to break out of 'The Sweet Shop Lock-In' escape room. 

9th February 2026

Year 5 have been very busy this week and last putting together our Class Assembly - creating and rehearsing scripts together, thinking about how best to showcase some of our work, learning and rewriting songs to teach each other on Thursday morning. We are all excited to show you what we've put together - and don't want to spoil the surprise by saying too much else that has gone into it so far...

In English we have been working on letters to local MP Sarah Green, using our powers of persuasion to convince her to commission a statue of a local hero to stand outside Prestwood Village Hall. We thought about what the purpose of statues is (to beautify? commemorate? inspire?) and whether they should be figurative or symbolic, and then researched current and historical people who might make a good subject for a piece of art, also carefully considering what it could be made from and how it would last.

Revisiting fractions in Maths (this time finding fractions of quantities, and multiplying fractions and mixed numbers by integers - tricky stuff!) has shown that everyone really DOES remember how fractions work - it's all an easy ride from here onwards!

It was brilliant to see so many parents on our open morning last Thursday - thank you for coming, and please do come back!

26th January 2026

This fortnight in Y5 we have been:
    - Completing our second Maths unit of the year on multiplication and division (children are getting very good at catching my silly mistakes)

• Building our first proto-type wobble-bots using off-centre weights in DT

• Making scale models of the orbits of celestial bodies in Science (ask your children how far away Pluto was going to have to be measuring with the tape measure!)

• Finishing and publishing our memoirs of Katherine Johnson in English: some of the children's best English work of the year so far

We are also very excited about Viking Day on Thursday, and have been preparing by making Viking trading route board games, and comparing different versions of some Viking sagas (we started with the creation of the world by Odin, and the discovery of Vinland by Leif Erikson).

12th January 2026

We have begun the spring term with a big bang in Y5, starting our new Science unit on the Solar System, and combining this fortuitously with our new Guided Reading book, Hidden Figures. We have also discovered themes in this book to be in interesting conversation with discussions in English around activism and protest, where we have been debating the actions of Just Stop Oil and talking about Great Thunberg's memoir. I've been particularly impressed this week by the children's writing in which they showed emotions - through body language, thought, and facial expression - rather than telling their readers what they were. 

 In Maths we are beginning to tackle 2-digit by 3-digit multiplication (find out from your child the current trends in grid and column multiplication!), and we will - excitingly - this week be beginning our first DT module of the year, building a small wobbling robot. 

8th December 2025

It's been a fiery week in the Tigers: due to unexpected circumstances involving fire alarms, we have been sequestered in a different classroom from usual since Monday. Children are coping truly admirably with being somewhere different, and some enjoying a trip down memory lane in their old Year 3 classroom. Fittingly, we were visited by three members of Bucks Fire Service on Monday, who gave us an interesting talk, and also a tour around all the equipment packed into their fire engine - parked on the top playground! 

In English we are completing our portal stories, zooming in on details from High Wycombe's chair-making history; in Maths we are learning to subtract fractions, and we have just completed our Science unit on materials and their properties with an experiment blowing up balloons with different amounts of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda (this works very well and is very simple: see if your child can show you at home!). 

24th November 2025

In English we have begun honing toolkit skills for writing our portal stories. We have practised writing with short sentences and unanswered questions to build suspense and mystery, and used sound effects to create an atmosphere. We are enjoying the Nowhere Emporium by Ross MacKenzie - we can never guess what twists and turns will be coming next...

In Maths we are heating up our brains on fractions - finding equivalent fractions, converting improper fractions to mixed numbers and back again, and ordering fractions less than and greater than one. Try using the fraction bars with your child on polypad: https://polypad.amplify.com/p (or ask them if they'd rather have 2/10 or ¼ of a pizza). 

10th November 2025

In Maths this half term we have been thinking hard about multiples, factors, prime numbers, and square and cube numbers. We've found Venn diagrams useful, as well as counters (for making arrays), multilink (making cubes), and hundred squares. We've also been getting better and better at our times tables, which has helped a lot - with record numbers of children moving up a level in Cracking Times Tables. 

In English we have begun planning and writing our own eyewitness accounts, some about firework night. Try testing your child on their first, second and third person identification - eyewitness accounts often use all three!

In the event of a school closure, remote learning will be available here.