In class this week, we’ve been diving into the fascinating world of ancient Egyptian beliefs about what happens after death! Imagine traveling on a magical boat across the Nile River, facing fantastical creatures, and reciting spells to reach the afterlife. That’s just part of the incredible journey children are learning about. From mummification to the Great pyramids, the topic is sparking curiosity and a sense of wonder about this ancient civilization.

Fun fact – The heart is not removed but instead weighed to see if you were good or bad. Ancient Egyptian embalmers would place a scarab beetle on the heart to suppress it so it would speak against the owner of the soul!

WOW is a pupil-led initiative where children self-report how they get to school every day using the interactive WOW Travel Tracker. If they travel sustainably (walk/wheel, cycle or scoot) once a week for a month, they get rewarded with a badge. It’s that easy!

It’s simple to run and children love taking part. Each year, the collectable WOW badges are designed by pupils in our annual badge design competition. On average, WOW schools see a 30% reduction in car journeys taken to the school gate and a 23% increase in walking rates.

Here you can see 5S Eco ambassador quizzing the children on the initiative.  

In Art, the children are developing their skills using different kinds of pastels. Last week they began by focusing on zooming in on a planetary surface and shading to make the cracks, craters and shadows apparent. This week we have looked at a range of different surfaces which included different colours and shapes. The children’s task was to fill in the blank in the same style as the complete original images.

After the children’s dress and technical rehearsal we thought they earned a well deserved break so we took a little trip to Leeds Museum. Below you can see the children enjoying their time in the Hip Hop Journey exhibit. We were mesmerised by the Ancient Egyptians exhibit and saw a replica of a 3000 year old mummy and its tomb. This was so exciting because our unit for next half term is the Egyptians!!!!

To compliment our Macbeth theme we have been studying the life of William Shakespeare and the impact his works have had on our culture. The children learnt about the key moments of his life and how he started off in the world of theatre. We loved learning about the words and phrases he made popular through his works such as ‘to be or not to be’ (you can see some more below).

In todays computing lesson the children looked at how to code so their Microbit would become a fortune teller. The children did this using the online programming site called Scratch. The children learnt that the Microbit had a sensor built into to it allowing them to program in a way where they didn’t have to press any buttons to get an answer but to just simply shake using the ‘on shake’ coding block.

Year 5 enjoyed their singing assembly this morning as part of UKS2 Clergy Worship! They sang songs about our current value, ‘forgiveness’. 

In 5S we have started our computing unit where we are learning how to program using MicroBit MakeCode. The children programmed a MicroBit to show correct when button A was pressed and wrong when button B was pressed, through this we learnt about conditions and that we have to instruct a computing by coding and programming. Have a look below!

5S had great week of learning during Anti-Bullying week. We took part in the UKS2 picket – we created our own picket signs and had our own class chant, ‘stand up, speak up, make a noise’. During our Anti-Bullying PSHE lesson, we conducted a silent debate. The children silently moved around the classroom in groups, writing down their thoughts and opinions for different bullying incidents.

I was really proud of the class – they put a great deal of thought into their silent debate contributions!