English will begin with looking at Grace Nichol’s ‘Cosmic Disco’ where the children will explore a selection of poetry and apply the poetic techniques to their own writing. They will have the opportunity to use art and drama to explore the texts and to create several of their own poems. Following this Year 5 will then study Frank Cottrell Boyce’s ‘Cosmic’. They read the book, asking questions and developing understanding of inference and the author’s use of language. They use discussion and role-play to explore characters. They develop editing, proof-reading and peer-review skills. They plan, edit and write a story from a different character’s point of view.
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday’s the children will focus upon spellings in the day through the discussion and introduction of spelling patterns, playing games and through the use of a new programme ‘Spelling Shed’. The children have all been given their own personal login and will be able to access this programme from home. On occasion we may set homework tasks through Spelling Shed too, this allows the children to revisit spellings from previous year groups that they may not feel secure with yet but also encourages the new spelling lists for Year 5 and 6. The spellings provided are taken from the national statutory lists and will be assessed at the end of Year 6 so it is essential that these words are embedded now.
Across the rest of the year the children will explore several other fiction texts taken from the Power of Reading; such as Skellig, The London Eye Mystery and Varmints. We will also look in depth at the non- fiction text; Shackleton’s Journey – this text allows us to discover Antarctica and North America and directly links to our Geography topic about Biomes and Human and Physical Geography.
In Guided Reading, we will be reading a selection of poems, song lyrics, poetry and non-fiction texts. The children will develop their comprehension, inference and deduction skills through carefully adapted questioning, which also link to grammar and spellings. Reading Eggs will continue to be used throughout the school to encourage Reading at home. Remember, if your child has read a book on Reading Eggs they can record this in their green diary to earn their Reading Challenge sticker.
