Friday 25th November

Welcome back to Year 5F’s blog for this week.

Maths – The children have again been concentrating on multiplication and division this week. The children began the week by continuing to look at factors. They looked at common factors that numbers have and then the highest common factor. For

example…

24 has the factors 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 24                                                                

36 has the factors 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12 and 18.                                                

Their common factors are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12.                                                                 Therefore, the highest common factor is 12.

As the week moved on they investigated both square numbers and prime numbers. They discovered that a square number is the product when you multiply the same number by itself. For example, the product of two multiplied by two is four, so four is a square number. They then looked at all the square numbers from 1 to 144. Do you know them all? Also, they discovered that a prime number is a number that will ONLY divide equally between two factors, 1 and the number itself. For example, 7 is a prime number as it can only be divided by 1 and 7 whereas 9 is not a prime number as it can be divided by 1, 3 and 9. A number which is not prime is called a composite number, so 9 is composite.

Did you know that there is only one even prime number? Do you know what it is?

Take a look at this online tutorial which helps to explain multiples, factors, prime and composite numbers...

English – The week began with the children producing an independent piece of writing. They had to imagine that they had discovered a baby dragon. What did it look like? Where did they find it? What did they do with it? Did they tell anyone or keep it a secret?

As the week went on they watched some short bedtime stories that were about dragons. They compared them, looking for both similarities and differences. Take a look at them for yourself...

Topic – The children thought about what it would be like to be on a Viking raid. What did they do? Where did they go? How did they get there? They thought about what it might feel like to be a Viking about to embark on your first raid. They also thought what it might feel like to be a monk or a villager who was being attacked by the Vikings. They went on to write a diary entry from either the point of view of a Viking or a monk.

Science – The children have continued to look at life-cycles. This week they have investigated the life-cycle of a mammal. They discovered that a mammal usually gives birth to a live baby (the duck-billed platypus being an exception), the mother will produce milk to feed her baby, then the mammal grows and learns survival skills from their parent until finally it becomes an adult itself when it will go on to find a mate, reproduce and continue the life-cycle.

Next week they will be looking at the life-cycle of humans. We would greatly appreciate if you could dig out some photos of your child when they were a baby, and as a toddler. We will copy them and return them home. The children will be using them to produce their own life-cycle in their books. Many thanks.

Here is our PUPIL OF THE WEEK. He won his certificate for his amazing skills as a ‘Drill Instructor’ in French. He led the whole class in singing the alphabet. C’est magnifique!