In Year 5, our Cornerstones topics for the year are:
- Stargazers
- Off With Her Head!
- Sow, Grow and Farm
- Scream Machine
- Pharaohs
What will my child learn in Year 5?
As experienced in all year groups, Year 5 follow the National Curriculum Programme of Study, as set out by the UK Government via the Department for Education. At HCP, we strive to make teaching and learning personalised, exciting and creative through a variety of topics and teaching methods.
The curriculum for English in Year 5
We follow a Mastery approach in English via the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided. Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.
Students should be able to read most words effortlessly and to work out how to pronounce unfamiliar written words with increasing speed. If the pronunciation sounds unfamiliar, they should ask for help in determining both the meaning of the word and how to pronounce it correctly.
Here are some of the texts that students will engage with in Year 5:
- Arthur and the Golden Rope by Joe Todd-Stanton
- A Stage Full of Shakespeare Stories – Angela McAllister
- Race to the Frozen North – Matthew Henson
- Young, Gifted and Black by Jamia Wilson
By the end of Year 5, children’s reading and writing should be sufficiently fluent for them to manage the general demands of the Year 6 curriculum, ready for the end of Key Stage Assessments (SATs – KS2 Standard Assessment Tests). They should be able to evidence their understanding of the writing purpose and intended audience by selecting appropriate vocabulary and grammar. New types of sentence punctuation are introduced in Year 5 (such as hyphens, semi-colons, and colons), with increased emphasis on grammar features (for example, modal verbs ie. would, could, might, and must).
The curriculum for maths in Year 5
The main focus of maths teaching in upper Key Stage 2 is to ensure that children extend their understanding of the number system and place value to include larger integers. This should develop the connections and associations that children make between multiplication and division, and with fractions, decimals, percentages and ratios.
At this stage, pupils should develop their ability to solve a wider range of problems using both written and mental methods of calculation. With this grounding in arithmetic, pupils will learn the language of algebra as a means for solving a variety of problems. In geometry, children will learn to classify shapes with complex properties and will learn the vocabulary they need to describe them.
How will my child be assessed in Year 5?
Throughout the year, our Year 5 teaching team will be assessing children against the National Curriculum for Year 5, making observations, looking at the work the children complete during lessons and gathering evidence to determine what children are attaining in reading, writing and mathematics by the end of Year 5. This end of year teacher judgement will be shared with parents through your child’s end of year report and will show parents whether your child is working:
- at age related expectations;
- towards age-related expectations
- or above age-related expectations (also referred to as Greater Depth).
Updates regarding how your child is attaining will also be shared at our autumn and spring term parents’ consultations in November and March.
Y5 Partners in Excellence (PiXL) Tests
Every academic term, (from Year 3 to Year 6), we conduct PiXL (Partners in Excellence) formal assessments tests. PiXL tests compare children’s knowledge and understanding against the end of year expectations for each year group in reading; grammar, punctuation and spelling (GPS) and mathematics.
As well as informing a teacher as to the academic performance of each child in their class, PiXL tests also enable diagnostic evaluation of gaps in children’s learning and are supported by teaching ‘therapies’ and interventions which will address misconceptions and assist students in overcoming challenges.