Welcome to Year 5F’s first blog of the Summer Term. We hope you all had a lovely Easter break and got ‘chocked’ by the Easter Bunny! It has been a busy first week back and the children have worked hard despite it being so warm and sunny.

On Tuesday, the children were invited onto the Life Bus which has been in school this week. The children met Stephen and his companion, Harold the Giraffe. They taught them all about the body and how it can be affected by alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. They also learned about what makes a good friend. Finally, they learned how to say no to a person in a confident but friendly way – which is called being assertive.

On Wednesday, a company called HH Kids came in to school to work with the children They will be working with them over the next three weeks. The first session was all about smoking awareness. The children found out lots of facts about cigarettes and the effects of smoking on the body. The children found out that every cigarette contains over 4000 different chemicals! Also, they watched a demonstration of how tar clogs the lungs making it more difficult to breathe, using a sponge and treacle.

Maths – This week the children have been investigating how to add and subtract fractions. They began the week by working with fractions that have the same denominator. This wasn’t too tricky as really all you have to do is add or subtract the numerators (the top number in the fraction) as the denominator (the bottom number in the fraction) never changes.

For example…

10/20 + 3/20 = 13/20 or 12/15 – 9/15 = 3/15

Take a look at this website which show you how to add and subtract fractions...

English - This week the children have been learning all about parenthesis and how to use it in a sentence.

Here’s an explanation of what it is…

A typical parenthesis is a word, phrase, or clause inserted into a sentence as an explanation or afterthought. ... A parenthesis is usually offset with parentheses (i.e., round brackets), commas, or dashes. These are called parenthetical punctuation marks.

Here are some examples from the children’s work…

Sophie (who was the giant’s best friend) was very gentle. By Dominik

Late at night, the BFG – who has hands as big as the world – collects dreams. By Maddison

Still as a statue, the rocks, which were jagged and sharp, were covered in moss. By Tyler

The glass jar, which was too heavy for Sophie, contained a good dream. By Krystal

The BFG, which stands for Big Friendly Giant, came to save Sophie. By Ethan

The selfish giant (who was suspicious of what was going on) woke up. By Evie

Topic – The children have read a biography about the explorer and climber Leo Houlding. They were amazed to learn about his many daring exploits around the world and even more amazed to learn that he has visited Westfield in the past! Leo officially opened the ALPS here in school. They have written a Fact File about his life so far.

Science - We have continued our topic about FORCES. The children identified the forces in action in a variety of situations and then went on to draw their own pictures and label them.

Here is our certificate winner this week. He won for listening carefully to everything he was told and consequently writing some detailed and interesting sentences containing parenthesis. Well done from us all in 5F.

All that remains is to say goodbye for this week and to wish you a happy weekend. Fingers crossed the weather stays like this and the sunshine continues!