Year 5

Miss Trushkina teaches Woodpeckers and Mr Strickland teaches Puffins

Year 5 Curriculum 

Our children are taught in line with the expectations that are set out in the National Curriculum.  

Our Curriculum has been designed to ensure rigorous learning of knowledge and skills, but also to help teachers make all learning exciting, active and meaningful for children. It is a comprehensive curriculum that really engages children and gets them interested in the world around them. Learning with our curriculum takes a global approach by helping children to connect their learning to where they are living now, as well as looking at the learning from the perspective of other people in other countries. The curriculum also emphasises the history and culture of Britain and promotes fundamental British values.

Mathematics

As Mathematics is such an important life skill, we adopt the ‘Mastery’ approach to our lessons. We use a range of resources to support teaching and learning across the school. These include Effective Maths, Maths No Problem and White Rose Maths. Our maths mastery approach allows pupils to spend longer on key mathematical concepts, most noticeably number. During these longer units, we use the concrete, pictorial, abstract approach as it builds on children’s existing knowledge by introducing abstract concepts in a concrete and tangible way. It involves moving from concrete materials, to pictorial representations to abstract symbols and problems. Concrete is the ‘doing’ stage. At this point, pupils in all year groups use concrete objects to model problems, this approach brings problems to life by allowing the children to handle and manipulate a range of physical resources. Pictorial is the ‘seeing’ stage. Here visual representations of the concrete objects are used to model problems. This stage encourages the children to make links between the physical objects they have worked with and the pictures, diagrams or models that represent the problems they are trying to solve. Abstract is the ‘symbolic’ stage where children use abstract symbols (numbers, notation and mathematical symbols) to model problems and indicate the operation required to solve the problems.

The key features of our maths curriculum are:

•Emphasis on problem solving and application of skills, allowing pupils the chance to relate what they learn and to connect knowledge.

•Careful scaffolding of core concepts through visualisation as a platform for comprehension;

•mental strategies, to develop decision making abilities;

•pattern recognition, to support the ability to make connections and generalise.

•Emphasis on the foundations for learning, and not on the content itself, so pupils learn to think mathematically as opposed to merely reciting formulas or procedures.

English

At Harris Primary Academy Beckenham, we use the 'Power of Reading' as the basis for our English Curriculum.  This is a text-based approach to English, where the children use high-quality texts, with challenging vocabulary and interesting themes, to engage them with writing.  Through a text, children will experience a range of different learning styles such as drama, identifying the features of different text types, language acquisition focusing on high level vocabulary, planning and writing extended pieces.  These skills enable pupils to write in a range of genres - both fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  It also promotes a love of literature because it helps children to develop empathy, inference and a deeper understanding of authorial intent and language choice.

Reading

In Year 5, we believe that reading is the gateway to learning but should always be pleasurable and fun. We aim to give children a concrete set of skills to decode and infer information in the text, but also enable them to develop a lifelong love of books. As children progress through KS2 they will have daily whole class reading skills sessions, along with other classroom activities. Our well stocked fiction and non-fiction class reading areas aim to offer children a wide range of personal choice alongside the books selected by adults for learning activities.

Handwriting

Year 5 continue to be taught to write using specific joins and break letters. We use the Morrells scheme to support out children in forming letters and joins correctly.  We believe that this promotes flow and speed and supports the pupils' continued development of spelling. All teachers in Year 5 model this style when working with children or marking books. Once a child is a proficient writer, they will be awarded a pen licence and will begin to use a pen in their work

Writing

In Year 5, writing is taught through English lessons that use Power of Reading texts as the main stimulus. Children experience writing in all genres, using their core text as their stimulus. This means that all children have a shared understanding of the storytelling elements of writing. Wherever possible we ensure we offer children the opportunity to write for a real purpose.

Grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Discrete teaching of grammar, punctuation and spelling continues throughout Year 5, along with opportunities to develop and apply these skills within other English lessons.