Class 12

21st March

Year 5 Synagogue Visit

This week, Year 5 had a wonderful visit to the United Hebrew Community Synagogue. They enjoyed a guided tour, where they explored important Jewish symbols and had the special opportunity to see the Torah scrolls up close. The pupils showed great curiosity and respect throughout the visit, impressing the synagogue volunteers with their excellent behaviour and thoughtful questions. It was a fantastic learning experience that helped deepen their understanding of different faiths and traditions.

Certificates:

Star of the Week - Kani

Mathematician of the Week - Isabella

Writer of the Week - Alister and Alfie H

Dojo Winner - Kayla 

14th March

This week was Science Week and in Science we have been learning about Earth and Space. We did short presentations about how the Sun makes day and night.

As part of International Women’s Day 2025, we looked at the role of women and how it changed forever after WW2.  When the Second World War came, the women of Britain answered the plea for help, just as they had in the First World War. They took on a variety of duties and tasks. Some jobs were dirty and tiring and some were quite dangerous. However, many new opportunities were now open to women. Class 12 researched the jobs undertaken by ordinary women as well as those carried out by five famous women. These women were Vera Lynn, Princess Elizabeth, Una Marston, Mary Churchill and Dame Laura Knight. As a class, we wrote an acrostic poem about Princess Elizabeth, created two word clouds to describe the achievements of Vera Lynn and Mary Churchill and worked collaboratively to create a collage showing the actions of ordinary women during WW2.

14th February

Class 12 had a very exciting Friday at the end of a very busy week. We took part in an online draw-along with two Authors Neill Cameron and James Turner, where pupils joined in drawing the characters form a story and were able to make suggestions and ask questions. We all really enjoyed it. We also made our own switches in Science, preparing for our D.T. topic next half term.

Awards:

Mathematician: Kani

Star of the Week: Harvey

Dojo Winner: Zafreen

Super Scientists: Lani, Elsie and Kayla

Well done also to all the people who got attendance awards this half term!

7th February

On Friday 4 members of Class 12 went to the Youth summit at the Civic  Hall, along with schools from all over the city, to meet the Mayor and to learn about democracy

Award winners:

Scientist: Kayla

Mathematician: Leyton

Handwriting: Harry

Dojo winners: Kayla and Aayan

31st January

In guided reading, we have been looking at poetry connected to WW2. We used our visualisation skills to help us understand the poems and think about the meaning of the words used by the poets. During our English sessions, we have started to retell part of Goodnight Mister Tom. We have worked hard to apply all of the aspects of the year 5 writing and grammar that we have been learning and have impressed Mrs Sturman and Mr Jackson! Four of our students represented Beechwood at a cross-country event held at St Theresa's Primary School. They all tried their best and had lots of fun competing in the race. Well done to Harry, Jacob, Aayan and Pepper. We are so proud of you all! We also learned all about the Chinese New Year, which started on Wednesday, 29th January. 2025 is the year of the snake. Katana did some amazing home learning and made a beautiful New Year card using Chinese writing. Well done, Katana! 

Well done to our award winners this week. Also, a big well done to our cross-country runners who represented the school at St Theresa's on Wednesday.

This week's award winners:

Writing: Summer

Science: Greyson

Handwriting: Lucy

Dojo: Aayan

24th January

Awards:

✒️Writer of the Week: Sophia and Zafreen✏️

👩🏾‍🔬Super Science Award: Katana👨🏼‍🔬

🧮 Mathematician: Harry 🧮

 Dojos: Lily 

🌟 Star of the Week: Harper 🌟

17th January 

Another busy week in Class 12! This week was the launch lesson for WW2. As part of our launch session, we used Chromebooks and the Kiddle search engine to briefly research each of the areas. We also used non-fiction books and range of sources such as propaganda posters, photos and replica artefacts to help us decide what we would like to learn more about during the topic. To begin our topic about WW2, we took our knowledge from the pre-launch session where we discussed the historical periods we have studied previously.  We tried to make links between our current knowledge about WW2 and what we already know about significant events in British history. We then created a mind map to show the links we were able to make. We then thought about what we knew about World War Two already. We did this by completing a ‘certainly true, possibly true or impossible’ sorting task.   
As a class we then used this to help us formulate and write our research questions for the topic.  All questions were decided by our class under the following headings: 
Home Front 
Evacuation 
Key Events 
Significant People 
Impact on the rest of the world 
Alister did some fantastic research into WW2 at home and shared his findings with the rest of the class. Well done Alister! 

10th January

Class 12 settled back quickly after Christmas despite the heavy snow and ice! We started our new topic WW2 with an exciting launch lesson. We began our pre-launch session by recalling our prior learning about the Victorians. We completed a quiz about different aspects of the Victorian era we have learned about previously. Each child answered the multiple-choice questions, and we discussed the answers as a class to check our understanding.  We then thought about one of our key historical themes, empire. We discussed the definition of an empire and used picture prompts to talk like an expert. Using visual cues, the children had to explain how the images were linked drawing upon their prior historical knowledge.  We then used our knowledge of the Victorian period and other background knowledge of British history to complete a timeline from the Victorian era to now. In English, we have started reading Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian. We used drama techniques to explore the thoughts and feelings of the characters as William is evacuated to the countryside at the start of the war and arrives in a small village to stay with pensioner Tom Oakley. Our PE unit for this term is yoga so we spent our first session learning some yoga poses and focusing on our breathwork. We started to link these poses using a flow sequence based on our breathing.

Awards

Happy New Year. 

Class 12 made a good start to the New Year, and our new TSU all about World War 2. 

Awards:

Certificate winners this week were:

Katana - Mathematics

Aayan - Star of the week 

Dojos - Leyton

Well done

20th December

Year 5 had an amazing trip to the Grand Theatre on Thursday to see the wonderful ballet of "A Christmas Carol," performed by Northern Ballet. This was the culmination of ten weeks of lessons with a professional ballet coach and a pianist from Northern Ballet. Year 5 thoroughly enjoyed the performance and were very fortunate to have such an opportunity. Some quotes from the pupils at the end, were:

"That was amazing."

"I loved the ghosts, especially the future one"

Pupils also recognised the professional dancers performing parts that they had learnt in the lessons.

Many thanks to Dagma and Mark from Northern Ballet, class 12 have loved the lessons and had a brilliant trip to the ballet.

Attendance Awards

Well done to those people who won attendance awards this term.

With 100% were: 

Aayan, Lany, Lucy, Jacob and Harry!

With 95%+ were:

Jack, Oliver, Pepper, Harvey, Isabella, Kani, Hajira, Elsie, Kayla and Lily

Most improved attendance was:

Katana

Well done - that's over half the class! 

But we can do even better. Next half-term we want to have everyone with an attendance award!

13th December

On Wednesday, year 5 visited Skelton Grange to take part in a Victorian Christmas workshop. During the session, the children learned how to play different parlour games that the Victorians would have played on Christmas Day. They had great fun playing games such as Hiding in Plain Sight, Kim's Game and Blind Man's Bluff.  They also had the chance to learn about the history of Christmas Crackers and how they were invented by a sweet maker in London. The children made their own crackers using paper tubes, a joke, paper hat, sweet and cracker device. Finally, year 5 headed into the woods to sit by the camp  fire. They spent some time reflecting on 2024 and setting intentions for 2025. They were very surprised to see St Nicholas make his way towards the fire with a small gift for each child!

Award Winners this week were

⭐️ Pepper: Star of the Week ⭐️

 Lily: Dojos 

✒️ Writer of the Week: Zafreen ✍🏻

🧮 Mathematician: Harper 🧮

6th December

On Friday we had a busy day with Sam the tile man coming back for us to glaze our tiles. We also had our Santa Dash with every. one dressed in their Christmas jumpers and hats.

Awards:

 Dojo: Alfie 

✏️ Writer: Lany ✏️

👨🏻‍🔬 Super Science: Dante and Dylan 👨🏼‍🔬

🧮 Mathematician: Hajira 🧮

⭐️ Star of the Week: Elsie-Rae 🌟

29th November

Award winners: 

Star of the Week: Lany

Dojos: Alfie

Super Science: Sophia

Handwriting: Jacob

22nd November

This week Class 12 joined over 30,000 other students, nation wide, in an interfaith Zoom call with representatives of different faiths.  It was interesting hearing them talk about their faiths and different festivals associated with this time of year in different religions.

Awards:

Dojo winner - Oliver

Writer of the week - Katana

Mathematician of the week - Lily

Star of the week - Harvey

Well done to all of you.

Home Learning

Lily did some of her own research about Victorians. She found out about Queen Victoria and about life in Victorians times.  Fantastic effort Lily.

15th November

To finish our exciting week Class 12 celebrated Children in Need Day by dressing up and making cakes.

Well done to our certificate winners this week:

 Dojo Winners: Alfie and Lily 

👩🏾‍🔬 Super Science Award: Katana 👩🏾‍🔬

⭐️ Star of the Week: Everyone  for fantastic behaviour on our trip! ⭐️

Curious About Climate

On Thursday 14th November, year 5 visited Leeds University to take part in a fascinating day called, 'Be Curious About Climate Change.'  The day started with an assembly led by Catriona Flesher which taught us about what climate change looks like around the world. We heard about Catriona's personal experiences when she visited Malawi (a small country in southern Africa) to research how climate change was affecting the lives of people who lived there.  She told us how important is  to be an advocate of taking action against climate change.
After that, we took part in a range of different activities with climate change experts where we rotated around different stalls. We worked with the Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission to investigate what our school playground could look like in the future. We used playdough to create different ideas to get ready for future weather such as designing playground shelters for shade and rain protection, planting trees and thinking of ways to capture water. We worked with Dom Hirsz to consider how we can keep feeding the world in a changing climate. It was great fun extracting flour from wheat whilst learning about the challenges being faced growing crops due to climate change.  Dr Harriet Thew taught us how to leave a message to share how we felt about climate change. She told us how our voice matters because we are part of the next generation who will care for our planet. Dr Robin Hayward worked with us to identify different trees and recognise their unique properties to reduce the impact of climate change. Hannah Barnett demonstrated how rising temperatures are affecting the world's glaciers but taught us how we can help save these icy regions. Finally, we heard how nature inspired John Smeaton who was the father of civil engineering born in Leeds over 300 years ago! It was interesting to hear how his ideas are still having an impact on our lives today. 
The final activity was presented by James McKay and was called, 'Can you draw the future? We spent some time looking at the amazing mural he has painted on a curved wall in the university campus. The mural shows ideas of what Leeds could look like in future, showcasing ideas such as electric trams, wind kites, community gardens to grow food and the reintroduction of animals in green spaces in the city. Our task was to find out about climate change solutions and create pictures showing what a city could look like in a positive, sustainable, net zero future. 
It was a brilliant day where we got the chance to meet a wide range of experts and learn about climate change and what we can do about it in a fun, informative and hands on way. 

8th November

On Wednesday, year 5 visited the Leeds Industrial Museum to experience what life was like for a Victorian child. Each child took part in two workshops, one in the Victorian school room and one in the mill itself. During the school room workshop, the children were transported back to the late nineteenth century and learned the importance of the three R's - writing, arithmetic and reading. They discovered Victorian teachers were much stricter than today's! The children used slate boards and pens as well as ink, a pen and blotting paper to write. PE was a drill session done in unison outside to embody the principles of "healthy mind, healthy body". The children were shocked to learn they had to pay for their morning's schooling before heading to the mill to work! The trip was a fascinating insight into life for Victorians in Leeds and the impact of the Industrial Revolution. The staff at the museum were impressed with our children's knowledge and fantastic behaviour.

Well done to our certificate winners this week:

 Dojos - Harry 

👩🏾‍🔬Science - Hajira 👩🏾‍🔬

⭐️ Star of the week - Oscar ⭐️

25th October

This week, year 5 shared their learning about Black History Month with parents through an assembly. During the assembly, they shared their learning about the significant black individuals they had learned about this half term. They  then had the opportunity to look through their work with their grown ups (who were very impressed with how hard we have been working!) 

In art, we worked hard to build upon our previous year 2 learning on printing. We used polystyrene to create a simple but bold design and cardboard and string to create another design. We then colour mixed muted, natural tones and experimented with them to create repeating patterns like William Morris did. We are looking forward to creating our own clay tiles after half term with the artist Sam. 

Hajira also shared some amazing home learning that she had done. She had researched facts about Queen Victoria to share with Class 12. Well done Hajira- keep up the good work! 

Certificate Winners:

🧪 Aayan —Science 🧪

✍🏻 Isabella — Handwriting ✍🏻

✒️ Kani — Writing ✒️

 Hajira and Harper — Dojo 

⭐️ Elsie — Star of the week 🌟

18th October

This week, year 5 have been looking in more detail at the work of William Morris during our art sessions. We spent some time colour mixing using watercolours to try to recreate the muted, natural colours he used. We then tried to use fine brushes to copy parts of his designs. Once we had done this, we took ideas from clay tiles he had created. We referred back to our own grounds and used nature as our inspiration. We carefully then created our own floral designs which we will make into clay tiles of our own. We are looking forward to working with the artist Sam after half term to do this.

Peppa impressed Mrs Sturman this week by carrying out her own research into the Victorians at home. She wrote down interesting facts that she brought into school to share with the rest of Class  12. Sophia also talked about a visit to the Coal Mining Museum where she had discovered more about the Victorians. Well done girls! Thank you for sharing your knowledge. We love to hear about your amazing home learning in school.

Certificate Winners:

🧮 Jack — Maths 🧮

✍🏻 Isabella — Handwriting ✍🏻

✒️ Kani — Writing ✒️

 Lily — Dojo 

⭐️ Star of the week — Alister 🌟

11th October

This week, we had a workshop run by the National Archives which focussed on black people during the Victorian era; the impact they had on society and how they were treated. We used different sources to learn about the diverse lives of three Black individuals. We investigated what documents can tell us about their lives. The session explored themes of migration and identity and allowed us to develop our historical enquiry skills. We talked about how, even though there was racism in the Victorian era, these people were able to overcome this and be respected and successful in their fields. We learned that there were many other amazing black Victorians who we know little about, including many women. We learnt that these parts of history which are not written about much are often referred to as ‘hidden histories’. We all agreed that it is important that we try to learn more about the amazing people that may otherwise be forgotten.

Certificate winners this week:

Harry - Dojo Winner

🧮Sophia - Mathematician of the Week🧮

🔬Greyson - Super Science Award🔬

✍🏻Lily - Handwriting Superhero✍🏻

🌟Katana - Star of the Week🌟

4th October

This week, year 5 began their art topic looking at the work of Victorian artist William Morris. We learned how William Morris was well known for creating beautiful patterned wallpaper inspired by nature. After the Industrial Revolution, many people began to miss living in the countryside so he created floral patterns in muted tones. We used our gardens and grounds to seek inspiration from nature and looked at different pieces of his work. We used art vocabulary to discuss and evaluate his work. Next, we looked at the patterns used on Victorian tiles and tried to recreate them using appropriate sketching pencils to create different shades. 

In English, we began to write a balanced argument debating the question, 'Should all children be entitled to an education?' We had to imagine it was 1870 and the Forster Education Act had just been introduced. We researched arguments both in support and against the act and began to write the argument.

Certificate winners this week:

We done to...

✍🏻 Kayla - Writer of the Week! ✒️

 🧮 Alfie - Mathematician of the Week! 🧮

🎉 Lucy - Class Dojo Winner! 🎉

🌟 Jacob - Star of the Week! ⭐️

27th September

Class 12 enjoyed the European Day of Languages celebrations. Many people dressed up and brought in cakes (which tasted great) and Lucy brought in a fantastic model of the Rhine Tower which she visited last year.  

Our Certificate winners were:

 🇫🇷EDL: Lucy and Oliver 🇩🇪

 🧮 Mathematician of the week: Hajira 🧮

🎉 Dojo Winner: Lily 🎉

⭐️Star of the week: Summer ⭐️

Storyteller and historian Matthew Bellwood visited year 5 to run a workshop about Victorian leisure activities. During the workshop, year 5 learned about what the Victorians liked to do in their free time and why and how this was similar or different to other time periods. Matthew helped us to answer one of our key questions formulated at the start of the topic and the workshop built on and extended our previous learning about the Victorians in year two.  We looked at a wide range of different sources such as playbills, pictures, video clips, wooden toys and zoetropes. We even saw the fist moving image which was recorded in Leeds by Louis Le Prince in a garden in Roundhay. Matthew also taught us two songs. One was 'Mistletoe Bough' a popular Victorian Christmas song and another which about a public execution at Armley Jail in Leeds. 

20th September

Class 12 have worked hard this week. We have been writing play scrips based on our work from the book 'Oliver' and in Science we have learnt more about Forces; we learnt about gravity and air resistance this week.

Well done to our super hard workers: 

Jacob - Dojo winner

✏️✏️Harry - impressing Miss Spooner with his writing ✏️✏️

🧮 Aayan - Excellent maths 🧮

🌟⭐️Hajira - Star of the week with an excellent attitude to learning all the time!⭐️🌟

This week, the West Yorkshire Fire Brigade visited years 5 and 6. They spoke to us about what to do in case of a fire and how to ring 999, ask for the fire service and give as much detail as possible about the location and fire. Some children were chosen to put on the special fire suits and boots and were shocked by how heavy they were! It was very interesting to look at the fire engines and discover what equipment is carried and why. Every child even had to opportunity to use the water hose! 

In history, we answered the first of our key questions about Queen Victoria. We used a variety of different secondary sources such as non-fiction books and webpages we searched for on Kiddle. 
We researched: 

• Queen Victoria’s family tree 
• Her marriage to Albert and the effects of her children's marriages to monarchs across Europe.  
• How long she reigned for 
• Which countries she ruled 
• Where her children lived after they married and the effect/alliances these created 

We were surprised to learn that she had 9 children, 40 grandchildren and 37 great grandchildren! She even had the nickname 'The grandmother of Europe' due to the fact that so many of her children and grandchildren were married into royal families across Europe. We then used our research to create an outcome in our computing session in the form of a spider diagram presenting our findings. 

In English, we worked hard to turn part of the Oliver Twist story into a playscript using stage directions and creating our own dialogue for the play. During our PE session, we have started to practise the skills needed for dodgeball which include throwing, catching, ducking and dodging. Well done year 5 another busy week full of fantastic learning! 

13th September

Year 5 were excited to start their History topic this week, For all of the autumn term, we will be learning about The Victorians. To begin this learning, we took part in an interactive launch session! We began by considering our previous historical learning in KS1 and LKS2 and the knowledge we already had that could be built on. We thought about the chronology that we have already learnt and historical facts from each era. We started by sorting facts that we had learnt in previous topics into the correct historical period.  

As a class, we looked at the dates of the Victorian period (1837-1901). Using our prior knowledge, we thought about what Britain may have been like during this period of history.  We used paper strips of different sizes to explore the context of historical eras we had studied in previous years. These included The Stone age, Iron age, Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Greeks and Romans. It was great to discuss our previous learning from throughout our time at Beechwood. We created a big timeline and were surprised to see how much these different eras overlapped and how long some of them lasted. We couldn’t believe how long the stone age section was and it was interesting to see the time periods in relation to each other! 

Next,  was our launch session where we completed an ‘Impossible, Maybe, Possible’ task where we had to sort statements about the Victorians and decide if they could be true or not. We had to use our wider knowledge of history and what we had previously learned about the Victorians in Year Two to help us.  We created a mind map of what we already knew and could remember about the Victorian era.  

After that, we completed a carousel of different stations to help us devise our key questions to guide our learning throughout this topic. We recorded ideas on post-it notes then used these ideas to formulate open ended questions to research and answer. We used the following headings to generate questions: 
Arts and Leisure 
Victorian Leeds 
Queen Victoria and the British Empire 
Life in Victorian Britain: Equality and Change 
Victorian Childhood  

6th September 2024

Class 12 had a fantastic start in year 5! All of the children impressed Mrs Sturman and Mr Jackson with their enthusiasm and attitudes to learning. It was lovely to see everyone arriving back in school looking so smart and eager after the summer break. 

We started our first unit in English, which is play-scripts. linked to our history topic this term, The Victorians. Our text will be Oliver Twist written by Charles Dickens. The children learned a little about the author before reading the first few chapters of the book and exploring the thoughts, feelings and motives of the characters using drama. Freeze frames, conscience alley and thought bubbles were used in these sessions. Next week we will start to look at the features of play-scripts. 

Please see the newsletter below for information regarding Year 5

We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday for the Year 5 Parent Information assembly at 8.55am if you can make it 🙂