Well done to Year 5 for performing a lovely assembly on Friday 13th May. We hoped we weren't going to be jinxed! Groups of children explained what we had been learning in class. These were research about rainforests in literacy, negative number lines in numeracy, seeds in science, dance in PE, playing guitars and musical notation and where rainforests,deserts and polar regions are in geography. Thank you to all the parents and carers who came along to watch and have refreshments in the classroom.

We have been learning how to perform the Haka. The is a Maori dance which is performed by the New Zealand Rugby team before they play a match. It is meant to intimidate the opposition. We worked as a class and in pairs to make up our own dances. Part of the dance involves hitting the thighs and chest. Some of us were very enthusiastic and ended up with bruises on our legs. We performed some examples in assembly for our parents and the rest of the school.

Some year 5 children are taking part in the First Draft Project which is drama based and linked to the Live Theatre in Newcastle. During the first session all of the class took part in some drama activities. Phil and Paddy from the Live Theatre had a discussion and 14 lucky children were chosen to do further drama sessions. After a few weeks two children will then be selected to work at the Live Theatre with script writers and actors to write their own script. Many people from our school will be going to watch the performance at the end of October.

The rest of the class are also writing scripts with Mrs Sweeney to enter a competition linked to Dr Who.

Earlier this week Mrs Sweeney arranged for Expo-Chef to visit Years 5 and 6 to help us whip up some tasty and nutritious recipes. Together we selected ingredients and discussed nutritional values to help us create some delicious dishes. We made a chicken and vegetable curry, a pasta dish and a vegetable soup. We also discussed the importance of protecting our environment by using up as much of our left over food as possible to avoid unnecessary waste.

During the afternoon sessions we worked in teams to put together presentations based on what we had found out during the sessions. We all left school that day with great ideas and full tummies!

Year 5 visited Eden Camp on Wednesday 6th April. Eden Camp was a Prisoner of War camp in World War II and is now a museum about the war. The visit was to reinforce the learning which has taken place througout the term in the Blitzed Brits theme. Although the bus journey was long we saw the effects of World War II in the many displays. These included a blitzed building, Morrison and Anderson shelters, the blackout, a submarine, munitions factory, land girls and the black market. The prisoners exercise area was also very popular and we sang along to the songs in the puppet show. Everyone had a brilliant day and no-one was sick on the bus. Hurrah!

Earlier this week, Years 5 and 6 took part in a brilliant basketball-filled afternoon! We were visited by players from Newcastle Eagles and took part in a range of workshops to encourage us to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Those of us who answered lots of questions received spot prizes, including tickets for upcoming games and T shirts. Those people who demonstrated great skills with a basketball, were invited to take part in some training sessions too! Lots of fun was had by all!

In Year 5 the science theme is Sun, Earth and Moon. As part of this theme we have been investigating how the shadows change depending on the position of the Sun in the sky. We represented the Sun with a torch and made some shadows by shining it onto ruler. Our task was to move the torch and observe how the shadow changed. We found out that the lower the Sun the longer the shadow and the higher the Sun the shorter the shadow. Ourobservations were drawn on white boards.

As part of the Blitzed Brits theme, Year 5 are making air raid shelters which were an essential item during World War II. We have turned and painted boxes, added the arched roof, made the back and front with a door, some steps to get into it and started to make a vegetable garden on the top to provide food in the war.

Every Thursday, Year 5 have a guitar lesson with Mr Nicholson. Each week we learn how to play various notes by playing open strings and changing the notes by pressing our fingers on the frets. This is very hard and we end up with pressure lines on our fingers. We have learned what musical notes are called and count in rhythms. This was tricky but we helped each other to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Year 5 have been receiving golf coaching with Bryan Levy from Gateshead/Whickham Schools Partnership. We have been mastering the skills of how to use a putter and next week we will be using the chipper. The golf vocabulary we have learned is green, bunker, tee, water hazard and fore. We have been practising the skills by playing lots of small games and scoring points.

Finding out about the heart

As part of our keeping healthy theme, we are learning about our hearts and how they work. In PE we have been measuring our resting pulse rate rate and then measuring it again after exercise. Some of us found it hard to find our pulse to start with but managed after a short while. We listened to our heart beat through a stethescope. To help us to understand how the blood moves around our body, we made a heart showing the atriums, ventricles, valves, arteries and veins.

We visited the newly reopened library on Wednesday to change our library books. The children's library is bright and colourful with a sitting area on a stage which has an open book behind it. We learned how to use the new machine to return and issue our books. This is a fabulous place to visit and we look forward to many more in the future.

The children in Year 5 are currently working on a Business and Enterprise project with Miss Duncan, a teacher from Kingsmeadow School. We had to discuss the type of product we could sell in school, the finances involved, carried out market research and designed a logo to advertise it. We decided to sell 'Smoothies'. After voting on our product name of 'Cheeky Smoothy', we chose Bailey's logo to advertise the product. These 'Smoothies' will be available to buy on Friday 4^th February but orders must be paid for by Friday 28^th January. Each 'Smoothy' will cost £1 so look out for the order forms. The photographs show some of the logo designs and making our advertising posters.

We had a visit from a fire safety officer. We found out some interesting facts about fire. He told us about the triangle of fire. Oxygen is the gas which we need to breathe so it is all around us. A fire also needs oxygen to burn. Fuel is something that burns in a fire. This can be anything from paper to furniture in your house. We get heat from matches and lighters. Oxygen, fuel and heat = fire. Many fires start during the night.

 We found out about the Sleep Safe Six. A fireman has to be protected so he showed us the equipment which has to be worn. Here is a picture of us trying it on.

The children in Year 5 are current working with Miss Duncan from Kingsmeadow School on a Business and Enterprise project. We have discussed the suitability of a product to sell in school, learned about the finances involved, completed market and designed a logo for our product. Our product is a 'Smoothie' . The 'Smoothie' will be on sale in the Community Room on Friday 4th February but orders must be made by this Friday 28th January. They will cost £1 and there is a choice of 3 flavours. The photographs show some of the logo designs and us making our posters to advertise the Cheeky Smoothies. Watch out for the order forms.

We have been writing diary entries as the charcater Willie from the story Goodnight Mr Tom. The children have been trying to include powerful verbs, similes and emotions. This was written by Samuel during one of the lessons this week.

Well done from Mrs Sweeney

As part of our link with Kingsmeadow School, children are able to take part in additional lessons to extend their talents. Each half term 3 children are selected to visit Kingsmeadow on Monday afternoons. The first half term focus was drama. Avalon, Max and Bethany were chosen to develop their talents. I am sure you will be impressed with their acting skills in the Christmas production of Scrooge at School and in forthcoming class assemblies.

Katerina, Ray and Mikolaj are currently learning Spanish as this half terms focus is languages. Katerina (Czech) and Mikolaj (Polish) already know two languages as well as all three of them learning french in school. They will definitely be multi-lingual which have huge benefits for communication and holidaying abroad in the future.

In January the focus is science. I will be selected 3 scientifically minded children soon so watch this space.

L.Sweeney

Year 5 have been learning how to write instructions. We have been learning to use time connectives to lead from one step to the next without using the word 'you' so that it is kept impersonal. This is part Niamh's work showing this. Completed in Big Writing on 26.11.10.

Year 5 had a brilliant day on Friday 17th September when we attended the Great North Run Show on the Quayside in Newcastle. The class took part in a range of activities such as television commentry, radio broadcasting, writing newspaper reports, table football, archery, climbing wall and an inflatable. Max was an excellent commentator on a game where he had to watch footage of Andy Carroll (one of Brighton Avenue's ex pupils and Mrs Sweeney's sportsmen). Bailey was a mountain goat as he clutchede his way to the top of the climbing wall with great ease. Everyone was brave and tried every activity. The free bowl of pasta gave us a treat and energy for the afternoon. Many children commented that it was one of the best trips they had been on.

Well, what a fantastic year! Well done everybody, you all worked very hard and made some super progress. Here's to an even more successful time in Year 6!

Last week Year 5 had their final guitar lesson with Mr Nicholson. We have really enjoyed our lessons and now have the potential to become very talented musicians! We would like to extend a big thank you to Mr Nicholson and the team at Music Services for the opportunity you have given us. We hope that the future Year 5 and Year 4 classes have as much fun during guitar lessons as we did!

Last week, Year 5 pupils returned from break to find a mystery bag in the classroom. After realising that the bag didn't belong to anybody in the room, we decided to look inside and hunt for clues to suggest who the owner was. We found some very unusual items inside: a map of the Antarctic, newspaper cuttings about explorers, warm clothing, flight details and husky food. After lots of discussion, we came to the conclusion that the bag belonged to a missing Artic explorer. We decided to write letters detailing our find, so that people could locate his whereabouts. The missing explorer has since been found safe and well, all thanks to the excellent detective work and fantastic writing of our Year 5 class!

Last week the Year 5 pupils took our digital camera onto the school yard to look for examples of good, positive behaviour. In Year 5, we always aim to be friendly and supportive to one another. Looking at some of the photographs taken on the yard, we think that's definitely the case!

As part of our 'Extreme Environments learning theme, we have looked closely at rainforests around the world. We found out that the rainforests are threatened for a number of reasons and that this in turn affects the many plants and animals found there. Due to these problems, many animals loose their habitats, which can cause them to become endangered.

Here in Year 5, we were all very keen to do something about this, so we researched ways to help. We found that the wildlife charity WWF, offers an adoption scheme where you donate money to help an endangered species and you adopt an animal in return. We used money we had raised previously in our class savings jar and donated it to the WWF.

We are now the proud adoptive family of Koyah, the young orang-utan. We love him very much and can't wait for updates about how he is getting on!

Here in Year 5, we are always very keen to use our ICT skills to support all areas of the curriculum. So far this year we have created a variety of brilliant animations and composed a super song using 'Garageband' software amongst many other things. At present we are using ICT to support our 'Extreme Environments' learning theme. Here we are creating spreadsheets to plan our expeditions to extreme environments all over the world. We then created PowerPoint presentations to showcase our individual projects to the rest of the class.

Earlier this term Christopher and Jack from Year 6 asked Miss Heathfield if they could plan, prepare and then teach a set of lessons to Year 5. They taught two fantastic lessons based around persuasive writing and problem solving strategies. As you can see from the photographs, we were all very impressed and keen to get involved. Christopher and Jack, you will make brilliant teachers in the future!

Just a reminder that it is the Year 5 class assembly on Friday 26th March at 9am. We have been working very hard this past term and are keen to show you what we have been up to. Please come along and support us if you can, we think you'll really enjoy what we have put together. Look out for photographs to follow!

Hope to see you there!

On Thursday 4th March, Miss Heathfield and five pupils from Year 5 had great fun at the 'Let's Animate' conference held at the Dryden Centre. We have been working on a 'heroes and villains' song and storyboard in class to link in with our current learning theme, so we had lots of ideas as to what we wanted our animation to be like. By the end of the day we had created a short stop-motion animation with our song playing in the background, we couldn't wait to take it back to school and show it to the rest of our class!

Hola!

On Friday 19th February, Miss Heathfield and Miss Hind, along with Leyla and Shannon from Y5 and Jack and Casey from Y6, were lucky enough to be invited on a special visit to Madrid, Spain as part of our exciting Comenius Project.

We travelled to Madrid along with staff and pupils from Caedmon Primary School and spent five days in the city. We all had so much fun and learned so many new things. We spent time in a typical Spanish school; saw the fantastic sights of Madrid and the pupils spent time with Spanish host families who looked after them so well while they were away from home.

We all had a fantastic time and would like to thank all of our new friends who made our time so enjoyable. We look forward to June, when staff and pupils from Madrid will be visiting us here in Gateshead. Finally, a huge 'well done' goes out to Leyla, Shannon, Jack and Casey who were all fantastic representatives for our school, you really made us proud!

As part of our 'Heroes and Villains' theme, we visited Gateshead Central Library to see Richard from St Mary's Heritage Centre. We had a fantastic afternoon as he brought lots of artefacts from the time of the Second World War for us to explore. We investigated these closely and thought about what sort of person they might have belonged to. Through this we found out about an ARP man, an evacuated child and a mother who stayed at home in Gateshead to look after her children. Each one in turn was a hero who was brave, strong and often risked their life for the war effort. Wartime heroes...Year 5 at Brighton Avenue Primary School salute you! 

Please read our class newsletter for this term. Please see Miss Heathfield or Mrs Treloar if you have any queries.

January 2010 newsletter.doc

We all really enjoyed our last learning theme, Sailing the Seven Seas. We particularly liked finding out about famous pirates from history, such as Blackbeard, and famous fictional pirates, such as Long John Silver from Treasure Island. We really enjoyed getting into the role of pirates as you can see from the photographs below!

With a new term, comes a new learning theme and throughout the current term we will be investigating 'Heroes and Villains'. Further information can be found in our class newsletter, posted above. If you have any suggestions or information you think may be useful for us, please leave a comment below!

On Tuesday 1st December Year 5 were invited to the Gateshead Schools' Music Service awards ceremony at the Dryden Centre to celebrate our hard work and progress in guitar lessons. We were presented with a special award on the night and gave two brilliant performances. A big thank you to all parents who attended the ceremony and to our guitar teacher, Mr Nicholson, for all your hard work and support with Brighton Avenue. Finally, a big 'well done!' to all the pupils who performed on the evening. You were fantastic and we are all very proud of you!

On Friday 18th September, Year 5 had a fantastic day out at the Great North Sport and Fitness Show held at Gateshead Quayside. We took part in lots of physical activities which made us think carefully about what we can do in order to make sure that we keep fit and healthy. We returned to school exhausted, but feeling very proud, as organisers complimented us on how sensible and polite we were. Have a look at the selection of photographs taken on the day to see some of the things we got up to!

On Wednesday 24th June we visited Beamish Museum and took part in a Victorian lesson. We were divided into groups of girls and boys to work hard at our lesson, which involved arithmetic and handwriting. We all worked very hard and really enjoyed ourselves. Have a look at some of our photographs of the day!

We have been working really hard on our summer term learning theme 'Flying The Flag' where we have been looking closely at the Victorian era. Next week we will be visiting Beamish Museum to find out more. We are all really looking forward to it. Look out for photographs of the day to follow!