Autumn 2 Year 5 and 6 Knowledge Organiser

Above you will find a copy of our knowledge organiser for this half term. It includes all our key facts and vocabulary for our topics.

Weekly Updates

Hope you all had an amazing Christmas break and wishing you a very Happy New Year!

Our last few days were full of Christmas fun! I was so proud of them all for doing an amazing performance of Feliz Navidad! They certainly deserved all the fun they had at the Christmas party!

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The children completed their final art sketches employing all the skills we have built up this half-term to create an illustration page for the fantastic beasts book detailing some of the creatures and focusing on their distinguishing features.

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We had a fantastic last full week of the Autumn term. In our last music lesson the children had fun composing their musical stories using the music lab song maker on the ipads. Have a listen to one of their compositions here:

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This week the children have completed their non-chronological reports on their fantastic beasts. Over the past few weeks they have considered their beast's appearance, habitat, diet and behaviour and have compiled all of that information into one final piece.

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On Thursday the children continued their art lessons focusing on sketching, this time adding colour to the fantastic beasts.

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On Wednesday, Holly Hill had their first Christingle with a lovely service led by Reverend Lee, which explained the symbolism of each of the parts of the Christingle. The children then created their own Christingle which we lit in a final ceremony.

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The children had a great time going in the snow-globe that Santa and his elf brought to school on Monday 6th December. They particularly enjoyed their snowball fights with Buddy the Elf and telling Santa what they would like for christmas!

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We have started our new unit in Maths looking at multiplication and division and we have been looking at patterns within the times tables. We will be applying our times tables lots over the next block of lessons so would encourage all children to be practising them at home whenever possible using time-tables rockstars. There are also some great tricks that the children can look up on you tube to help them recall their times tables based on the patterns we have been exploring. Have a look here:

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On Friday in Art, we began to apply the skills we have been learning over the past few weeks by practising drawing a thestral, using basic shapes to build the shape of the body and then adding detail using different line techniques and shading to create texture and form.

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On Thursday in Science, we did some research into David Attenborough and the work he has done to raise awareness and educate the public on different animal species and the impact that humans are having on the natural world. The children were shocked to hear that animals are becoming extinct at an alarming rate.

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In Music on Wednesday the children explored applying different timbre to create different effects for different characters in the story of Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev. The children enjoyed following a story map to detail how the different timbre of the different instruments was used. 

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In English this week we have been writing our descriptions of our own fantastic beasts and we have been peer editing them by reading them aloud for the rest of the class to try and draw their creature based on their descriptions. The children then tried to offer constructive feedback to improve their work, highlighting missing detail and encouraging the children to reflect on their own writing. I am looking forward to sharing some of their descriptions next week, along with other information they will be writing about their creature's habitat and diet.

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In art this week we have explored sketching using basic shapes to create the shape of a creature.

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In science, over the past couple of weeks, we have been looking at the different animal classifications, including mammals, insects, amphibians, reptiles and birds, and the children have done some fantastic research to create fact files. We then focused on the life cycles, and they looked at presenting their knowledge in different formats including orally presenting the life cycle of a frog.

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This week we continued our lesson on anti-bullying, and thinking about different bullying scenarios, in groups the children produced snakes and ladders games with actions of direct and indirect bullying at the heads of the snake and methods to support the victim at the bottom of the ladders.

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Our Jigsaw lessons this week focused on anti-bullying. We explored the topic of racism, and the children created some lovely designs of ribbons supporting anti-racism. We then thought about other reasons for bullying, including appearance, sexism, anti-disability and online abuse and the strategies we could use to prevent and deal with bullying.

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We continued our art learning about using shading to create form by adding different levels of value to shapes.

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We started our music topic last week and completed our chronological timeline of musical genres this week. The children enjoyed listening to the different types of music. 

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In French this week the children have been focusing on numbers.

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In English this week we have created our own fantastic beasts and started our plans outlining facts that we will include in our non-chronological reports.

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On Monday 14th November we had a visit by two Police Community Support Officers to talk to us about knife crime. The children were enthusiastic and engaged and were surprised by some of the statistics. Overall, they understood the message that it is never right to carry a knife and that before it gets to that stage they should talk to a trusted adult.

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We started off our anti-bullying week in style wearing our odd socks - its ok to be different!

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In SPaG this week we explored abstract nouns and created poems for Remembrance Day based on describing an abstract noun. The children all delivered beautiful presentation when decorating their poem with poppies. We then held a whole school 2-minute silence to mark our respect for the fallen soldiers. 

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We started our art topic looking at using lines to create effects of texture and depth (using shadow). We practised applying those techniques when sketching a Niffler. We will be building on this over the next few weeks to develop form and new skills.

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In Week 2 in English, we started to look at the language JK Rowling uses to describe the appearance of the creatures in her book. We used the descriptive words to create a picture of the Basilisk. We then used our inference skills to draw on information in the text to identify the type of location (the habitat) the creatures would want to live in if they lived around Selston. 

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We have had a fantastic first week back after the half term.

We finally received the kits to make our own cam toys. We had great fun on Friday carefully following the instructions to build our frame and add our axle and crank handle. Then the children had to decide which cam they needed for their personal designs and position them accurately for the desired movement of their feature. Finally, the children were able to draw and create their moving features and decorate them. They all looked amazing and with a little tweaking all worked brilliantly. I was very proud of their fantastic efforts.

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On Wednesday, in science we started our new topic on animals and their habitats. We researched the characteristics of mammals and their life cycle and how they reproduce. The children should be able to tell you that all mammals have hair (including sea mammals like whales) and that they all produce milk for their young. They also know that they are warm-blooded (can maintain their body temperature) and have a backbone (vertebrates). They should also be able to draw the life cycle. They were particularly fascinated to hear that the kangaroo is born at an underdeveloped stage, the size of a grain of rice, and has to crawl up the outside of its mother to get into the pouch where it continues to develop and feeds on its mother's milk.

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We have started our new book in English, which the children are very excited to explore. We will be designing new beasts that JK Rowling could use in her next book. We have investigated the language used in the magical world (words like obliviate that originates from the word oblivious, and other words that are completely made up like 'Bowtruckles'). We have begun to explore how the fictional author, 'Newt Scamander', has written and how his purpose and audience differs from the real-life author (JK Rowling).