Welcome to Year 5

In Year 5, we have a number of trips and visits available. To link with our Water Geography unit,  we visit a river to undergo some river dipping and complete our geography field skills. We will have our Roman Day to celebrate the mid-way point on our Roman learning. During the summer term, we will go to Paulton’s Park for our forces workshop to help with our science learning, where we will then get to see the forces at work – on the rollercoasters! During our Skellig unit, we will have a bird visit from Falconry UK to help with our subject knowledge of birds.

Homework is set on a Friday and due in the following Thursday.

The best way to assist your child at home is to help set up routines that ensure your child has increasing responsibility for getting their school things ready, completing their homework and daily reading. Daily reading is fundamental to children’s progress so any support with this would be fantastic. This could be a mix of the child reading to you and you reading to them too. Times tables are also key in a child’s success to maths in Year 5 and 6; without this vital knowledge they will struggle with the everyday basics. Any support you can provide with helping your child to ensure they have high quality weekly homework would be highly beneficial as well. Checking over your child’s homework and discussing the number of marks they achieved helps them to identify where they may have made any mistakes and what areas they should focus on in the future. 

Each day, your child should come equipped with their reading journal (signed daily), their reading book, a named water bottle, a named snack box with a fruit or vegetable snack for playtime, a named lunchbox (or know that they are having a hot school dinner), a named waterproof coat and a named sunhat and suncream in the summer.

The deadline for applications for secondary schools is usually the 31^st October in the year that your child enters Year 6.

The deadline for applications for secondary schools is the end of October in the year that your child enters Year 6. 

For some top tips of what your child should be reading, please see our useful documents and links (below) for a recommended reading list for Years 5 and 6 or have a look at the reading section of our website. Research shows daily reading as one of the highest contributors to high achievement in children. Therefore, children should be reading daily all through their school life; we encourage children to log this in their reading journals which we will check daily. Once your child has read five times in the week, they will receive a ‘High 5’ pom pom to put into their class jar. Once the jar is full, the class will celebrate by choosing an activity from the reading raffle!

It is a National Curriculum statutory requirement that children are able to swim 25m. All children are invited to swim in Year 3 for a block of lessons, if children do not pass then we ask parents in Year 5 if they have since reached this. If children are still not able to swim 25m then children are invited to attend six catch up lessons in Year 5 whilst the other children complete their PE in school. There is a small fee to pay for these swimming lessons, but if there are any problems with this, then we encourage you to get in touch at the earliest opportunity so that we can help.

In Year 5, we have PE on Wednesday and Thursday. Children should attend school in full PE kit, including navy jogging bottoms and our branded Avonwood navy hoodie. They should not wear any jewellery (including earrings) whilst participating in PE.

In Years 5 and 6 we permit children to walk to and from school independently with prior parent and school consent. To request this, please complete the form (which you can find from the office) and pass this back to the front office once completed. Please await written confirmation this may go ahead before commencing this.

In Year 5, we spend our time getting children ready for the pace of Year 6 and Secondary School, so this feels like less of a shock for them. One thing that really helps with this is confident and fluent times table and arithmetic skills (e.g. knowing number bonds to 10, 20 and 100 fluently and being able to add single-digit numbers in their head quickly). Additionally, it would be beneficial for children to practise their Year 5 and 6 statutory spelling words which can be found below.

We do not do anything specific to assist with 11+ practice at school. All preparation for this should be done at home, however, teachers are happy to discuss which areas of learning your child may benefit from focusing on.