Welcome to Bartholomew, Guilford,

Hamilton and Melbourne!

Our current topic is Dystopia and we will be reading and discussing Shakespeare's The Tempest in our English lessons.

Key concepts such as equality, probity, mobility, inclusivity, sustainability and criticality are built into everything we learn.

PE and Swimming

PE is every Monday across Year 5. Children should bring their PE kit in a bag. Earrings and other jewellery should not be worn on that day. Year 5 classes will be swimming in turn, your child will bring home more information when it is their class's turn. Swimming takes place on a Thursday.

Times Table Rock Stars!

You can practice your times tables on the TT Rock Stars app (iPad or Android) and on your computer. Just use the links below:

Click Here for Times Tables Rockstars

Click Here for Hit the Button

Art and Culture

In Year 5 we are committed to supporting pupils in increasing their cultural capital. Every day we engage with a variety of music, poetry and art from the world's most famous artists. Find out about who we have been studying this year below:

Arts and Culture - Poetry

Many of our poems this term link to our topic of Dystopia, in which people are not free and equal, though not all of them. We have drawn links to the themes of these poems, such as racism and injustice, in our times of collective worship each day. Children have been encouraged to think about how they may relate to their own experiences and how they may inspire them to make the world a better place.

Maya Angelou, Caged Bird

A poem about segregation in the United States.

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind   

and floats downstream   

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and   

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

[link to full poem]

[link to example recitation with prosody]

[video explaining segregation in the USA]

Edgar Allan Poe, Alone

A poem about loneliness and mental health.

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

[link to full poem]

Frances Harper, Bury Me in a Free Land

Make me a grave where’er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth’s humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

[link to full poem]

Martin Niemoller, First They Came

A poem about Fascism and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

[link to full poem]

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

A poem about decisions in life.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

[link to the full poem]

Arts and Culture - Music

We listen to music from great composers and discuss a number of aspects of these pieces:

• Interpreting the composer's intentionality and the meaning behind the music.
• Discussing our own emotional reaction to the music.
• Using musical vocabulary to describe the different facets of the music
• Using broader vocabulary to describe the music and discuss links with other art we have studied.