Spring 1 Year 5 and 6 Knowledge Organiser

Below 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

We had our last session with the Great Project, where the children looked at gender inequalities and stereotyping. It was great to hear the children agreeing that boys favourite colour can be pink (and that they used to dress baby boys in pink) and that girls can be as interested in football as boys. They were shocked to hear that men used to legally be allowed to be paid more than women for doing exactly the same job!

They then produced promise hands to demonstrate their understanding of the healthy relationships topic. The children really enjoyed this project and have hopefully benefited from its content. We will be creating a display of their work from this project in the corridor to showcase their hard work and share their knowledge to hopefully support others in having great relationships too.

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In History the children have been demonstrating the knowledge they have acquired throughout the half-term all about the Golden Age of Islam and have created some lovely 'travel brochures' to entice people from the Dark Ages to visit the Golden Age in Baghdad. They have incorporated lots of great detail about modes of transport, buildings, the mosque, the bazaars and the House of Wisdom where scholars share their knowledge.

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We joined in with Internet safety day on Tuesday last week looking at how we can get support if we are experiencing difficulties online, for example online bullying, addiction and exploitation. We discussed strategies for staying safe including not sharing personal information, not trusting strangers and blocking people who make us feel uncomfortable or unhappy. We also thought of lots of ways we could support each other if we knew someone experiencing online difficulties through a variety of scenarios and started to look at reporting to a trusted adult (we will continue this part of the learning after the half term break). The children really engaged with these discussions.

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In Art we have been completing our designs for our final piece of Islamic art. The children finished their vegetal pattern designs on their plates. They then practised their skills in tesselation before applying all of their new skills from this half term in their design of an Islamic arch, including geometric shapes, tesselating patterns, symmetry, vegetal patterns and calligraphy.

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In science we wrote up our investigation into the effects of exercise on the heart rate. We explored how long it takes for our heart rate to return to resting rate after exercise. We then worked on explaining our findings in our conclusions to answer our investigation questions of why our pulse rate increases when we exercise. The children can now explain how the muscles need more oxygen to create more energy when we exercise so the heart has to pump more blood, that carries the oxygen, to the muscles and thus our heart rate (pulse rate) increases.

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The children were excited to have the visitors for the Great Project back again this week and they shared some great discussions around domestic abuse before completing posters to help spread awareness and support. I was very impressed with their posters and we are hoping to create a lovely display in the school.

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This week the children had their last lesson on the features of Islamic art, looking at vegetal patterns, and showed great skill in using a compass to create their designs. They also started to think about their designs for their final pieces which we will be working on next week.

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In History this week the children were doing some research in groups to compile posters about the different achievements in medicine, maths, engineering and science from the Golden Age of Islam. They really enjoyed this activity and have started to create some great posters which we will hopefully finish next week.

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In Science this week the children did an experiment to record their pulse at rest and after a variety of exercise activities. They then plotted their results on a graph.

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In gymnastics this week the children were focusing on balances. They had to work in pairs and decide between them who would form the base for their routines. 

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In History this term we have been looking at the Golden Age of Islam and have explored the start of the Islamic faith and the establishment of the Empire ruled by the Caliphs. This week we looked at the development of the Round City of Baghdad. The children listened to descriptions of this ancient city and created their own  drawings of what they thought the city looked like before researching more facts about the city.

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Last week the children continued their exploration of Islamic art by practising some calligraphy. They each chose one of the British values and practised painting them in Arabic calligraphy.

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In Science this week we have all become blood experts! The children all worked in teams to research a specific component of our blood. They came up with lots of information and some fantastic facts!

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This week in PE the children have been working on their gymnastics skills. They have been practising lots of different jump shapes. Some of the children surprised themselves with how brave they were jumping from the highest vault and they really focused on performing the movements from start to finish. Here is an excellent example.

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We are very lucky to be participating in The GREAT project for the next four weeks for our PSHE curriculum. The children have been exploring what makes a good, happy relationship and what would make a bad relationship. They played games and created some fantastic pieces of work to present their understanding of good and/or bad relationships.

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We have also started our new science topic this half term looking at the circulatory system. The children are really enthusiastic to learn lots about this system so I look forward to the rest of the lessons this half term. We have discovered that the blood vessels in our bodies (veins, arteries and capillaries) could be stretched to cover 60,000 miles and go twice around the world. Even more impressive is that the heart can pump a blood cell all the way around that network of tubes in one minute!

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We had an amazing session delivered to us by Reverend Ken Johnson from the RS Resource Centre in Nottinghamshire. He provided an immersive experience for the children to learn about the Islamic religion as part of our RE curriculum. The children really enjoyed the experience and showed great respect. 

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We are having PE lessons with Next Level Sports this term and they are starting looking at dance movements. We had two brave volunteers to demonstrate their moves for the rest of the class to follow on - Well done girls!

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This week we made a start on our History topic and the children enjoyed creating an accurate timeline (to scale) to compare the periods of history that are studied at Primary School. We then explored the different cultures of the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and the Islamic civilisations from the same time period and compared them. We now know why this time period was known as the dark ages in Europe but the Golden Age in the Islamic Empire where gathering and sharing knowledge was of great importance.

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The children have already produced some fantastic art work as part of their study of Islamic art, initially focussing on geometric designs using symmetrical shapes.

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We have started our new text in English which relates to our topic of The Golden Age. We will be exploring the stories in 1001 Arabian Nights. This is a collection of stories cleverly told by the 1001st wife of the King of Sasan in order to prolong her life and save her from execution. We will be learning about more of the stories throughout these first few weeks of term.

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Welcome back hope you have all had a fantastic break and a great New Year!

We have had a fantastic start to the new term. We welcomed in the new year by considering our hopes and dreams for our future. We have thought about the lifestyle we would like to have when we grow up and the type of job we would like to do.