Spellings will be given out each Friday.  Spelling lists will consist of words from the statutory Y5 word list and one or two spelling patterns per week.  We will be making use of a resource called 'The Spelling Shed' which provides activities related to the weekly spellings.  These will be used to support the children's learning and some may be sent home.

Times tables to be tested will be given out on a Friday and will be assessed each Friday.
 
Reading is also extremely important.  A recommended Y5 book list has been given to the children. We hope that they will read as many of these as they can, over the course of the year.  Some will be shared in class, as they relate to our topics, and we hope that others will be read with family members and independently.

The children will be given a book to use as a reading diary and I would like them to keep a record of their daily reading. At least once a week, I would like the children to write about their reading in more detail.  This might be a summary of a story, a review of a book, a character description or, another reading activity of their choosing. The reading diaries will be collected in each Monday and returned on the Tuesday.

I would like the children to continue to read books off the Year 5 recommended list. Once a book has been read, the children can share their thoughts and opinions about the book with the whole class.  This may offer encouragement to their peers as to the best books to read and enjoy. I will keep a record of the books the children have read.  Of course, the children can share books they have read and enjoyed, that are not on the list, and I will be particularly interested in the children sharing their reading related to poetry and non-fiction too.  I aim to provide reading for pleasure sessions, each week, where the children can chat about their reading and share their experiences with their classmates.

Our guided reading sessions, this half term, will focus on the book Beowulf by Michael Morpurgo, and this will feed into our writing lessons too. We will be looking at the features of myths and writing our own version of Beowulf, as a modelled write before planning and writing our own myths. This also links to our history topic about the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings.

Our class reader will be The Nowhere Emporium by Ross MacKenzie.