Emmaville Primary School

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Oceania Year 5

Welcome to the Oceania Year 5 Class Page.  Here, you can find out about everything that we've been doing this term.
Friday 12th July
 
 
What a ride!  The Yorkshire residential was all it promised to be, and now it's time to catch up on sleep... The full picture can be seen on the Residentials section of the website, but here's a shot of us down at the campfire, just before toasting marshmallows and having a sing-song.
On Friday, as part of Olympics Enrichment week, we spent a lively session with Ben, who taught us the New Zealand All Blacks haka.  Fierce faces and battle cries aside, it was great fun and a good way to end the week.
Thursday 4th July
 
Wow, what a way to end the week!  Together with Antarctica class, we performed our assembly to our mums, dads, grandparents, siblings and any other proud family members who came to see us.  We spoke clearly and confidently about our art and writing, shared how we have supported other children in different ways and announced the winners of our sponsored Matchbox Challenge.  We looked back over our time in Year 5 (which you can see in the video below), performed poetry and sang beautifully, and more than anything, we did ourselves proud. Of course, it isn't over yet - our Yorkshire residential beckons...

Friday 28th June
 
The Emmaville in Bloom painting activity has presented Year 5 with the challenge of recreating white oxeye daisies.  This is no mean feat, but we rolled up our sleeves, donned our painting shirts and drew on the skills learnt during our Chinese bamboo painting lessons.  Every brush stroke counts is the main philosophy of the ancient technique, and as you can see from the photos, we rose to the challenge.  What a beautiful set of paintings, worthy of any art gallery's walls!
Friday 21st June
Sports Day kicked of the week, with lovely weather to help us sprint, throw, scramble and leap our way through lots of events.  It was great to be cheered on by our parents, too, and the morning was a great success. 

We also took part in a Primary Enterprise World workshop. Company director, Alison, began by introducing Sandra and Rachael who work for Thompsons of Prudhoe, the demolition contractors.  It was interesting to find out more about their working lives and how they look after the staff at the company and Mr Thompson himself.  They began the session by explaining that we would be constructing tetrahedron shapes (triangular-based pyramids) with sticks and rubber bands.  It was quite complicated at first, but our listening skills helped us to get to grips with the structures quickly.  Co-operation was needed, too, as once we’d built our first tetrahedron with a partner, we then worked in groups of four to combine four tetrahedra to make a much bigger pyramid.  Next came groups of eight to assemble the big shapes into one giant pyramid, reaching almost to the Hall ceiling.  The final challenge was to lift the whole structure as a class, spin it ten steps to the left, reverse and place it on the floor again without it collapsing.  You’ll be pleased to know that our structure survived intact!.

Friday 14th June
 
Last week, we learnt about three British sculptors: Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Anthony Gormley. This week, we designed our own sculptures, taking inspiration from the work of the three artists, and then began the soothing (and fragrant) process of gently carving shapes from bars of soap.  It will take us another session to finish, but initial efforts are looking good!
We also enjoyed another session of Prayer Stations, in which we were encouraged to think about giving thanks for those who protect and love us, places in the world that we would like to be kept safe, hopes and wishes that we would like to be fulfilled, and worries that we would like to be eased.  
You may recall our work to survey the natural areas around our school, and that we identified the woodland areas as needing a little help with their biodiversity.  Well, now it's time for some action! Over the next few days, we will be completing a sponsored matchbox challenge, in which we will be trying to cram as much as humanly possible into a small box.  All proceeds from our endeavours will be used to buy a variety of wildlife boxes and feeders, which we hope will attract lots of different animals to our school grounds.
Friday 7th June
 
Firstly, some lovely news - together with children from Year 4, Oceania and Antarctica classes made some birthday cards for Jack who lives at Ryton Towers.  He has lived his whole life in the village, and turned 101 years of age on the 30th May.  Ewan (whose mum works at Ryton Towers), Ethan and Theo took time to deliver the cards last Thursday.  Jack loved receiving all the birthday wishes, and it really helped to make the day even more special.
We've been out surveying our school grounds again today, specifically looking at our tree areas.  After 'meeting a tree' and making some close observations, we then spent time in groups counting all the evergreen and broadleaved trees around our back yard area.  It turns out that there are many more trees than we had previously realised, and that we have two distinct areas - one area of mixed woodland and one of broadleaved woodland.  Once we'd found this out, we were able to enter the data for our school on the Education National Nature Parks website.
We were also challenged this week to write and perform a speech for our final Oracy Competition of the year.  The theme was "What is your favourite outdoor activity, and why?", which gave us a vary wide brief.  This resulted in speeches on all sorts of topics, ranging from playing football and tennis to drawing and reading.  After a couple of days planning and writing, we all (without exception!) performed our speeches to an audience.  There were some interesting explanations, detailed descriptions and plenty of impassioned persuasion. 
 
There can, of course, be only one winner for our class, and this honour goes to Emma, who discussed the joys of reading outdoors.  She structured her speech very carefully and used lots of expression as she spoke, so we wish her good luck as she will now be judged with the rest of the school's winners!

Thursday 23rd May

We were ‘Habitat Heroes’ this week, exploring different areas of the school grounds, in order to assess the suitability of different habitats for wildlife.  The school is now part of the Education National Park, an initiative set up by the government to pool together all the green spaces of schools in the UK; together, we’ll be able to make changes to our school grounds to increase biodiversity. Along with Antarctica class, we started Emmaville’s journey by looking at  the different types of habitat that we have, and have begun to consider what we can do to attract more wildlife.  Hopefully, this will result in some exciting ideas and projects in the near future…

Friday 17th May
 
Firstly, a massive well done to the fourteen girls from Year 5  who represented our school at the Gateshead Girls United Year 4/5 Girls Football tournament, at the Powerleague.  They played as two teams, and between them won two matches and drew two, showing fantastic determination, resilience and enthusiasm.  
Last week, we learnt about the incredible changes that go on inside a hen's egg once it's been fertilised, as part of our Lifecycles topic in Science.  It was very fortunate, then, that we were able to pay a quick visit to the Nursery classroom to see some newly-hatched chicks.  They were so small, so fragile and so fluffy, but it was incredible to think that less that 23 days ago, they had not even started developing.  Did you know that on just day two of a chick embryo's development that there is a beating heart?
Our final lesson of the week was DT, in which we have been learning about healthy diets and where our food comes from.  This week, we sampled some healthy snacks and dips, rating them and making tasting notes.  As you can see from some of the expressions on our faces, some of us really enjoyed the food, whilst other didn't enjoy the experience.  Everyone did at least try, which was the main thing!
Friday 10th May
 
We finally got to meet our Linking Class this week, at the Laing Art gallery in Newcastle.  We were a little nervous at first, but once we'd said our first ''hello''s, we quickly got to know the children from the Year 5/6 class at Woodlawn School, West Monkseaton.  There were circle games and lots of partnered activities in two of the main galleries, and it wasn't long before we began to make new friends.  There were circle games, a back-to-back painting-describing and drawing activity, a group story-telling task, some body-sculpting games and landscape sculpture challenge.  The day seem to fly by, but it was great to meet new people and there were some lovely examples of co-operation and kindness. 
Friday 3rd May
 
Our week started with a visit from Sam Cree and her friends, who came on Monday afternoon to deliver three sessions based around St. Luke's Gospel.  In the workshops, we looked at a version of the Gospel written and illustrated by Gemma Willis, which contains lots of cartoons and captions telling the stories of Jesus and his early life in the style of the 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' books.  We filled in comprehension quiz questions, drew our own cartoon strips to keep in decorated matchboxes and took part in some drama.  All the adults leading the activities were super-impressed with how well all of us engaged in them.  
On Tuesday, we all paid a visit to the SafetyWorks centre in Newcastle.  There, we were taken though five fast-paced workshops that were packed full of brilliant advice that may one day save our lives.  The workshops were lead by a variety of professionals from organisations like St John Ambulance, Blue Cross, the Fire Service and the RNLI, and were all delivered in mock-ups of real places.  We learned how to read the body language of dogs that we don't know; how to pack for a safe day out in the sun; how to stay safe at a Metro station; how to be safe around water, whether it be the sea or a river; how to phone the emergency services; how to cross roads safely; and how to be safe in the garden around bonfires and barbecues.  It really was amazing and we learnt so much.
Friday 25th April
 
No time to blink this week, with lessons on fractions in Maths, action stories in English, the life cycle of birds in Science and our future careers in PSHE. 
 
We also spent the whole of Tuesday immersed in the Shang Dynasty, during our visit to the Oriental Museum in Durham.  There, we took part in an interactive quiz in the newly-refurbished main gallery (the first school group to use it, actually), investigated some Shang artefacts, created foil-embossed taotie (hidden face) pots, and used drama to re-tell the story of the last Shang king, Di Xin.  Our tour guide, John, was really helpful and full of interesting facts, and he was very impressed with our knowledge of Ancient China. 
We also made some fruit kebabs in DT; following some simple instructions, using a knife safely to cut portions and choosing a range of different fruit to skewer into a colourful kebab.  Many of us discovered that we had a taste for fruits that we'd never tried before, like kiwi fruit and pineapple.  Tasting the (healthy) rainbow was a lot of fun!
Friday 19th April
Back with a busy week, that's included the start of our 'BikeAbility' lessons, which began with some basic assessments on the playground.  Our instructors, Mark and Zara, were looking for enough confidence on the bicycles to ride in a straight line, turn, signal and stop safely.  The good news is that everyone who has ridden this week is through to the next round, as it were - we'll be going out in small groups to practise skills on the roads from next week.
We also enjoyed another session from the Music Workshop team, who delivered a lively lesson on patterns and rhythms using instruments form around the World.  Counting aloud is the key to keeping a steady pulse, and it was fun to try this on a variety of instruments, such as Agogo bells, Surdos and Ganzás.