Happy New Year and Welcome Back!

We hope you all enjoyed a wonderful holiday and are ready for an exciting term ahead. This term, our topic is  “The Swinging Sixties”, and Year 5/6 will be exploring one of the most fascinating decades in modern history. Here’s what we’ll be learning:

• Life in the Sixties – Comparing everyday life in the 1960s with today, including fashion, music, technology, and culture.
• Famous Figures of the Era – Discovering influential people such as Martin Luther King, The Beatles, and Neil Armstrong, and understanding their impact on history.
• The Space Race and Moon Landings – Investigating the race to space, the historic Apollo 11 mission, and how it changed the world.
• The Solar System – Continuing our space theme by exploring planets, moons, and the wonders of our universe.

Literacy This Term

In our literacy lessons, Year 5/6 will be developing a range of writing skills. We’ll be focusing on biographical writing, explanations, news reports, and different styles of speech writing.

Our class novel will be Moon Landings, which ties in perfectly with our topic on space and the 1960s. In addition, pupils will explore some of Shakespeare’s works, creating webpages and presentations to highlight their understanding of his timeless stories and language.

Maths and Numeracy This Term

In Year 5 and 6, we’ll be building key skills in maths. This term, pupils will learn about mass, including converting between metric units such as kilograms and grams, and imperial units like pounds and ounces. We’ll also focus on subtraction and multiplication, ensuring children develop confidence and accuracy in these essential areas of the Year 5 curriculum.

Alongside this, we’ll have numeracy sessions, where pupils will apply the skills learned in maths to real-life contexts and cross-curricular activities. These will link to our topic “The Swinging Sixties” and other areas of learning, helping children see how maths is used in everyday life.

Our RE topic this term is Galilee to Jerusalem.

We will be learning about Jesus’ new law, which builds on the law of Moses, and the Transfiguration, when Jesus appeared with Moses and Elijah before Peter, James, and John. Pupils will also explore the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus teaches the Beatitudes—guidelines for living a good life that focus on love, humility, and putting God first. We’ll see how Jesus goes beyond rules to the heart of behaviour, teaching that it’s not only wrong to kill but also to hold anger, and that we should love not just our neighbours but even our enemies. We’ll link this to the parable of the Good Samaritan and learn about the Our Father prayer as a perfect summary of the Gospel.

Our virtues this term are asking us to become Curious and Active This means asking questions about the world, their faith, and society around them. Becoming active allows us to Connect learning to real life, e.g., “How does this Gospel story help me care for others?

Keep Learning at Home

Don’t forget to check your BUG CLUB and MYMATHS pages regularly for reading and maths activities. Updated maths targets will also be posted on our class page to help everyone stay on track.

We’re excited for a fantastic term ahead—let’s work together, keep trying our best, and aim to be the very best we can be!

Miss Samuel/Mrs Johnson