Croeso i Flwyddyn Pump

Teacher: Mrs Maunder

P.E. days - Monday and Thursday (please come to school in P.E. kit)

Forest School - Friday afternoon, alternate weeks (Wk 2)

Please click here for our Class Information Leaflet.

Class update

Spring 2025

10.3.25 - 21.3.25 

What an exciting couple of weeks we've had! Our classroom has been buzzing with activity, particularly during British Science Week, where the children truly embraced the spirit of exploration. They've loved integrating ICT into their learning, and we've seen some fantastic engagement across the board. In Science, we had a blast with various experiments, including melting ice cubes and creating a magic bag. We also explored the theme of change by demonstrating the three states of matter – we even made butter! Lots of laughter and fun was had by all. In Literacy, we've been diving into the concept of stereotypes and discussing how individuals are smashing these stereotypes, particularly in the fields of STEM. The children undertook research on contemporary scientists, engineers, and game developers, culminating in the creation of an iBook using our iPads.  This week, we turned our attention to our own imaginative creations by designing and describing dragons for our upcoming class "Dragonology" book. It's been delightful to witness their creativity soar! On the sports front, our hockey skills are progressing wonderfully, and we enjoyed our very first mini-match this week. The children showcased their tackling and dribbling skills, and their enthusiasm was wonderful. We're also excited to be learning Taiko drums, a traditional form of Japanese drumming. The children are picking up new rhythms and the accompanying chants with impressive speed! The children loved being able to be back in the forest as the weather was kinder to us and enjoyed making 3D models of dragons. In Maths, the pupils have been designing their dream homes and calculating the area and perimeter of their creations. We’ve also explored the connections between fractions, decimals, and percentages in a practical way. To wrap up the week, we focused on Comic Relief, where the children created their own Newsround-style report. Thank you for your continued support! 

17-21.2.25 & 3-7.3.25 

What a busy and exciting time Dosbarth 5 has had! We thoroughly enjoyed preparing for and taking part in our Eisteddfod, where we focused on the myth of Taffy Morgan. The children worked hard to create their own endings to the story, showcasing fantastic use of figurative language, as well as well-structured paragraphs and expanded noun phrases. Their creativity shone through! For the artwork we drew inspiration from Rhiannon Roberts, exploring colour blending techniques while depicting their own versions of Wales. It was wonderful to see so much care and attention going into each piece. Additionally, many pupils entered the competition with their musical instruments and homework – congratulations to all our winners for their fantastic efforts! Looking ahead, we are excited to focus on writing a travel blog about our recent residential trip to Cardiff. Keep an eye out for the websites we’ll be creating! We also had a brilliant time celebrating World Book Day. Thank you for the wonderful costumes; it made the day all the more special as we indulged in everything related to books. In PE, we’ve started hockey lessons and have been grateful for the sunshine to play outside and develop new skills. Meanwhile, in ICT, the children have been busy bringing a scene from our class novel to life in Minecraft, complete with screen recordings of the playscripts they wrote earlier this term. It’s been brilliant to witness all the collaboration! Let’s keep up the fantastic work, Dosbarth 5! 

3.2.25-14.2.25 

We are fast approaching half term, and I am incredibly of all the children for their effort and commitment during the recent national tests. Their hard work and dedication truly shone through, and it is wonderful to see them growing as learners. In our literacy lessons, we have been delving into playscripts and stage directions. The children have shown great enthusiasm and creativity, and it has been a joy to witness their engagement in this area. In mathematics, we explored dividing by a given ratio and learning how to draw to a specific scale, which has broadened their understanding of practical applications in maths. I am also thrilled to share that our dragon eyes project has been completed! The children painted their designs, and they look absolutely fantastic. It's always inspiring to see their artistic talents come to life. The highlight of the past two weeks has undoubtedly been our residential trip to Cardiff. The children were a credit to our school and created wonderful memories during our time away. We had the opportunity to explore St Fagans, enjoy a guided tour of Cardiff Castle, take a scenic ride on a water taxi, and engage with fascinating artwork and fossils at Cardiff Museum. Furthermore, we walked along the barrage, received a guided tour of the Senedd, enjoyed bowling, and capped off our evening with a fun film night. We certainly packed a lot into just three days! Additionally, we have recently wrapped up our cricket sessions with Cricket Wales. This has been a fantastic experience, and many children have expressed a desire to continue playing with local clubs, which is wonderful to see. Our P.E will now revert to outdoor on a Monday and indoor on a Thursday. Thank you for your continued support. 

20.1.25-31.1.25  

It has been another busy fortnight in Dosbarth 5. The children have been thoroughly immersed in our novel of “The Land of Roar”, creating some wonderful sensory poems based upon their homes. Having created a class map similar to that in the novel, the children have all written and recorded an oral story, focussing on expression and intonation, drawing the listener in. They then used these to write detailed descriptions of their settings, and the results were fabulous!  Numeracy has centred on negative numbers, area and perimeter.  To celebrate St Dwynwen’s Day, the children used their ICT skills to create cards using Adobe express. Their use of Adobe continued as they delved into the history of the symbolism of the Welsh flag and the red dragon. They all created comic strips, retelling the story of the battle between the red and white dragon.  Through expressive arts, the children have finalised their designs to create a dragon eye and then sculpted them out of clay. The attention to detail was incredible with lots of double checking of designs to ensure accuracy. Watch this space for the finished article.  Finally, in science we have been learning about the functions of the major organs of the body – we had some extremely eye-opening discussions about the length of the intestines! We then focussed on the lungs and how air travels through them to enable us to breathe. Our next big thing is our residential in Cardiff – we can’t wait to go and then tell you all about it! 

6.1.25-17.1.25  

Blwyddyn Newydd Da and welcome back to the spring term. The children have completely immersed themselves in our new topic, Gwlad y dreigiau (Land of dragons). Our new novel is called “Land of Roar” by Jenny McLachlan and so far we have analysed the map of Roar, generated our own class map using Ai and compared and contrasted characters. We have also evaluated what home means to each of us, creating metaphors about the meaning behind our home, in readiness to write our own sensory poems. Numeracy has been all about fractions – finding fractions of amounts and adding and subtracting fractions.  The perseverance shown in year 5 to understand the methods involved has really paid off. We have been discussing our Christmas holidays in Welsh using lots of past tense sentence starters such as I ate, I drank, I saw and I went. In expressive arts, we have begun to design a dragon eye which we will eventually make out of clay with a glass eye in the centre. All if the children have created a mood board of styles and colours they like as inspiration and then followed a tutorial to draw an eye as practice. Their attention to detail was amazing as was their ability to blend colours for dramatic effect. As a class we have been discussing what information we should share about ourselves online, categorising it as either personal or private. There were lots of great discussions about whether information such as email addresses should be shared depending on the circumstance. It is wonderful to see our learners knowing how to stay safe in our ever-increasing digital world. We have also been incredibly lucky to have started the first of four cricket sessions delivered by Cricket Wales under their programme “Chance to Shine”. These will be held on Thursday for the following three weeks. Diolch yn fawr for your support and enthusiasm with all that we do in class. 

Autumn 2024

25.11.24-6.12.24

Christmas is rapidly approaching and dosbarth 5 continue to be super busy in the classroom. We have now come to the end of our series of online German lessons with the Goethe Institute which the children have thoroughly enjoyed. They are now all able to have a conversation in German involving greetings, goodbyes, colours, animals and food – they are all fantastisch! In literacy, we have been learning about the features of a diary entry and written diaries as if they were writing after a night in the blitz. The writing was wonderful, showing such empathy and understanding of the timer period. In the same vein, we have also analysed the memories of an evacuee to Penallt, creating a character analysis of her background and experiences.  Our enterprise project is now in full swing and we are very grateful for the orders we have already received. To tie in with our topic of World War Two and make do and mend, we are trying to reuse as much as possible. Dosbarth 5 are making rag wreaths, bauble wreaths and small gonks which they are very proud of.  Following on from their initial study of Helen Elliot’s art, we have now begun to draw notable buildings in Trellech using her style, ready for painting.  We have been analysing the weather in Monmouth and creating a database of our results. Have a lovely weekend and we look forward to seeing you at the Christmas service in St Nicholas church in the last week of term.

11.11.24-22.11.24

What a fun filled two weeks of learning we have had in dosbarth 5. We have been incredibly fortunate to join with E-sgol and the Goethe Institute to start our German lessons. We even managed to get our singing of the Auf Weidershen song played to everyone on the course – over 900 pupils across the country! Amazing work! We have now finished our swimming lessons, and everyone has made brilliant progress, through refining techniques and gaining confidence. Our literacy has seen us writing and recording a news reel about the blitz in true 1940’s style. They have focussed on what would make the script suitable for the time period as well as making sure they have used the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, why). We have also been analysing the features of a diary entry and have planned a diary for a child living through the blitz. Children in Need was a wonderful day for us, running with our reading buddies and creating eco Pudsey’s in forest school. We are incredibly grateful for all your donations and dosbarth 5 ran a total of 210 laps between them.  Using a series of primary sources, we have investigated the roles of the Civil Defence Corps in World War Two, what their job involved and the items they would have needed to complete their job properly. The highlight of our week this week has been the visit to Shire Hall for the sirens and shelters workshop. Many thanks to the PTFA for funding this wonderful opportunity for us.  The children put their investigative skills to the test by analysing sources and trying to match their objects to different people. They were then fortunate enough to go into the underground shelter of the Shire Hall and experience what it would have been like to stay in one and how people fed and entertained themselves whilst there. Our maths has seen us tessellating shapes and exploring 3d shapes and their respective nets.  Using their knowledge of nets, the class have recreated a building in Trellech, having to analyse the 3d shapes of the building and then select/create the nets to make it.  This has made us look very closely at the buildings on our doorstep. We then used this knowledge to help with our expressive arts as we followed a tutorial from Welsh artist Helen Elliot. They used her style of contemporary colourism to draw their own home.  Have a lovely weekend.

21.10.24-8.11.24 

Welcome back after half term, it has been lovely to welcome everyone back to class.  Before half term we began planning a video book trailer for our text we are studying called “Valley of the Lost Secrets”.  We analysed what would make a captivating trailer and would make us want to read the book, then planned out the trailers using a storyboard. This week we have made them come to life using Adobe and AI to create the specific images we needed. The results were fabulous with everyone paying such close attention to the success criteria. In numeracy, we finished our work on timetables and are now more confident in calculating time differences using a timetable. We then moved onto triangles and 2D shapes, learning how to identify them, draw them accurately using a protractor and ruler, tesselate them and reflect them.  Year 5 have definitely been keeping fit and healthy with swimming lessons and Newport County and have even started to design a fitness gadget for the BBC gladiators in a national competition!  For Welsh, we have begun to tell the time, focussing on o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past. Using our topic of On Our Doorstep, we have been learning about how ships were targeted during World War Two to disrupt the supply chain. We likened this to the game “Battleships” so year 5 have created their own digital game of battleships using scratch. Their coding skills improved dramatically during the week as they learnt how to code different sprites and turn the screen into a playable game – arddechog blwyddn 5. For science, we have completed the experiment into the solubility of different materials, analysing the results and deciding why we think they dissolved as they did. There were lots of great ideas of how we could change and improve our experiment if we did it again. The children showed themselves to be incredibly respectful with their tributes to Remembrance Day by creating some stunning digital art and blackout poems. Forest school begins next week for dosbarth 5. Have a lovely weekend. 

23.9.24-4.10.24 

It may have been a rather wet fortnight, but it certainly hasn’t dampened the spirits in Dosbarth 5! We have been delving further into the novel “The Valley of the Lost Secrets” by analysing the main characters and writing a letter home as if they were an evacuee. To do this they have understood the process of using paragraphs and how they contain a specific theme or idea. We had some very interesting class discussions about what it would feel like to receive evacuees into our Welsh school as they did in our novel. Numeracy has consolidated our knowledge of subtraction, multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000 and then multiplying by multiples of 10. It is wonderful to see the enthusiasm in the class for maths and to see everyone’s confidence growing. For humanities, we have been analysing the reasons for the beginning of the Second World War and created information posters to display this. Dosbarth 5 have started to learn German during the last two weeks, identifying the difference between the long “a” and short “a” sound, as well as greeting each other in both formal and informal ways. We have linked our ICT and expressive arts together by learning new photography skills in readiness to take photographs “On Our Doorstep”, to tie in with our topic. We have studied the rule of thirds in composition and experimented with different lighting techniques. Our science lessons have seen us compare the three states of matter – solid, liquid and gas – comparing their differences and similarities.  County in the Community have been teaching us how to eat well by looking at the different food groups as well as planning a balanced meal. Wishing you all a lovely weekend. 

2.9.24-20.9.24 

We have had a wonderful first three weeks of the Autumn term. It has been lovely getting to know everyone properly and settling in to our new year 5 routines.  This terms topic is Ble rwyt ti’n byw? Where do you live? With our class topic ‘On Our Doorstep’. We will be focussing on the current geographical features of Trellech and then stepping back in time to see what would have been on our doorstep during World War Two. The children have come up with some wonderful ideas during our pupil voice sessions on what they would like to learn about during the topic. We have begun in earnest by walking around the village with Dosbarth 6, identifying human and physical geographical features, noting their location and purpose. For literacy, we are reading the novel “The Valley of the Lost Secrets”, set in the Welsh valleys during World War Two. We have begun to map out the characters and the connections they have with each other. On Wednesday we were incredibly lucky to have a live lesson with the author Katherine Rundell on her new novel “Impossible Creatures” which we are reading together at the end of the day. The children gained lots of tips and tricks from such an acclaimed author. Shortly, years 5 and 6 will be launching our Caffi Cynefin so our ICT lessons have focussed on creating advertising using Adobe. These are contained in the newsletter so please take a look and we very much hope you will be able to join us. We have definitely had a healthy start to the year as each Monday we are fortunate to have Newport County football join us to teach us. This week was about strength, stamina and fitness and the sports that require different combinations of these skills. Finally, today we joined our other cluster schools in Usk Primary School for a sports event. Diolch to MonLife for organising such a fun event where the children all got to participate in such a range of exciting activities. Have a lovely weekend.