Page 8 - Junior School Admissions Booklet 2020_2021

YEAR 5
English
Throughout Year 5, boys consolidate their reading, writing, speaking and listening knowledge and extend their skills to attain a greater sense of themselves as authors and writers. There is a focus on ‘awareness of audience’ and this is achieved by using a range of resources such as competition writing and blogs. Thesaurus skills are developed to improve boys’ vocabulary choices. Reading continues to be a priority and two contemporary novels and a classic children’s novel are studied. Boys work on increasingly challenging comprehension pieces, together with regular grammar practice and work on text construction.
Mathematics
The school year is broken into 13 blocks of work. The main topics studied include place value, 4 rules of decimals, area and perimeter of triangle, quadrilaterals and composite shapes. Addition and subtraction of fractions, percentages, understanding timetables and more difficult time related calculations. A variety of graphs and transformations are taught, calculating volume as well as drawing nets and 3 dimensional shapes, and the boys learn how to display and use collected data. Mental arithmetic is also practised throughout the year.
Science
Upper School Science is taught by the Head of Science in the well-equipped Junior School laboratory, where boys develop fundamental experimental techniques and learn to use a range of scientific apparatus. Topics covered in Year 5 include: materials; reversible and irreversible changes; separating mixtures; the fire triangle; sound and how we hear; forces, including gravity; the Earth, Sun and Moon; growth and development of living things.
Computing
Programming with Scratch: developing an interactive game; web security, strong passwords and cryptography; creating digital art and computer generated images; photo editing; the internet and how search works; creating a website; blogging; CAD: 3D modelling with SketchUp.
History
The Vikings; the Mayan civilisation; The Tudors.
Geography
Rivers, mountains and the water cycle; the Amazon region; a geographical study of consumer products.
Religious Education
Beliefs, practices and moral values in Hinduism; beliefs and practices in Christianity, including Easter and the significance of Jesus’s crucifixion.
Art, Design and Technology, French, Games, Music, Performing Arts, Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education and Physical Education complete the curriculum.
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