Art Day – Year 5 Vincent Van Gogh

By L Forster5th July 2016

On Friday the 1st of July, Year 5 had their art day. We looked at the life, art and style of Vincent Van Gogh.

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He is considered one of the greatest painters of all time, but only sold 1 piece of art while he lived.

We learned about his life, before planning and sketching our own versions of Starry Night.

“The Starry Night” – Painted in 1889.

To design our own versions of Starry Night, we wanted to included the night sky, similar to Van Gogh, but we wanted to include local landmarks infront of the sky. We decided on some of the following landmarks: Penshaw Monument, Tyne Bridge, Arbeia, Angel of the North and Souter Lighthouse.

First we sketched them and tried to recreate the swirly sky in our art books with both pencils and felt pens, before recreating them on a canvas with paint.

We also tried to recreate his style when doing our own self-portraits and used the internet to find information about him on the internet to create a fact booklet about Vincent.

For a piece of art to be considered Vincent Van Gogh, it must have to following:

  • Brushstrokes bend, whirl and zig-zag
  • Feel movement and feel colour
  • Make you feel emotions or moods when you study it, such as saf, scared, tired or happy.
  • It must have a single word ‘VIncent’ written in cursive on the painting

How did we do?

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Les Olympiques! A production in French for Y4 and Y5.

By S Robson28th June 2016

Year 4 and 5 have been preparing for a visit from our friends from the theatre. The theatre group perform entirely in French, so we have been learning five songs on an Olympics theme to enable us to join in with confidence. As well  as enjoying the performance, 60 children will have the opportunity to participate in a workshop, prior to the performance.

Writing workshops with Anjum Malik.

By S Robson17th June 2016

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In Year 4 and 5, we welcomed the well-established poet and scriptwriter, Anjum Malik. Anjum has worked with our school before, at Arvon’s Lumb Bank, where she inspired a group of Year 6 children into writing some amazing poetry.

She was looking forward to working with Harton Primary again, and led workshops in Creative Writing, and Writing Monologues over the course of two days.

Year 4 started with some Indian dance, then were shown how a simple scarf could be transformed into just about anything! The scarves inspired the children to role play a scenario, then write in any genre. They really had a great time.

The Year 5 children attended a ‘read through’ of Anjum’s playscript Monologue, just like real actors do. The monologue was about a Bangladeshi family’s experience of racism in a different culture, and finding a place in that society.

Year 4 and 5 came together to perform their work – there were some very well written and original pieces. Well done everyone.

 

T

 

Show Racism the Red Card

By L Forster14th June 2016

In Year Five today, we have had some visitors to look in depth at the issue of racism. We watched a video about people who have experienced racism, footballers in particular, and how it affected them. This was to see how times and attitudes towards differences have changed over the years.

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Our discussion included looking at images of people and trying to make judgements about them as a person, such as their name, gender, religion and birthplace. We judged information based on where it comes from and how information can be changed from person to person.

This was shown in a game of “Whispers” where the statement  “My friend Elvis drives a big purple van” turned into “my mouth cookie cookie”, highlighting the problem with gossip, and not to take information seriously without knowing about the provider’s ‘world view’.

To look at our own opinions, and whether they were true or false, we were asked questions such as ‘Is it racist to call someone because of the colour of their hair?’ and ‘Is racism is a new problem?’

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We completed a game called ‘Racist or Not Racist’, where we had to decide if a statement was racist or not, to look at common situation or problems and deem whether or not they are racist situations.

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We now know about the problem of racism and are beginning to understand the steps we need to take if unsure about a situation, and be able to decide whether or not it is racist.

 

“Live” Radio from Y5F!

By L Forster14th May 2016

We have been writing non-fiction about the history of ancient Maya, so end our unit, we decided to create our own podcasts about them.

A podcast is similar to a radio show.

Each group needed to have a bubbly and enthusiastic personality to host the show, interview the ‘experts’ on each section of ancient Maya and question them.

After recording, we spent the afternoon editing out our mistakes and finally adding music to the podcast, to make it more entertaining.

BACK TO THE PAST

EDUCATIONAL RADIO SHOW

FANTASTIC 5 PLUS MARLEY

HISTORY

HISTORY WORLD

Visit from the Mayan Warrior Nohoch Ni’

By L Forster4th May 2016

Year 5 have had the honor of hosting a visit from a Mayan warrior this week. Each class had a full day to learn about the Mayan people and traditions before we start our history unit. This visit also allowed us to produce a piece of literacy writing in the form of a recount. To tell you all about the visit, here is one of our recounts:

“On the 27th of April, a Mayan came in and told us about the Mayans. He said his name was Nohoch Ni’, (which means Big Nose), but his real name was Robert, and he told us how to say ‘My name is’ in Mayan.

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Firstly we learned how to count 1-10 in Mayan, for instance 1 was oon and 10 was la-oon. Then we played the sacrifice game, but nobody got killed for real. In the game, Big Nose shouted some numbers in Mayan and if we didn’t get into a group of that number we would get sacrificed. Kurtis and myself won the game.

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After that, he told us that you are more likely to get a boy or girl friend if you have a big head and crossed eyes. After play Mr Forster and Miss Winter did the Mayan ‘Creation Story’ and everyone thought that they were funny. They had some people get up and do drama too.

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Eventually we tried cocoa beans and Mr Forster said that Kaitlyn should do it, because he never sees a reaction out of her. When she her face was so funny! As well as that, Anna had her hands covering her face when she tried.

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After dinner, we finished our drama then did some more drama about the Gods. When we were doing the God drama, I was the God and Jamie and Sam were the men we killed and Kaitlyn, Marley and Sienna were the servants.

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Finally, I thought our Mayan visitor was funny, because he was making the facts about olden days into lots of fun activities for us. I learned that they had more than 150 Gods. I recommend that years 2 and 4 should do it, because year 2 learn about Mexico and year 4 will be coming into year 5 next year.”

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Year 5 – Air Resistance

By L Forster19th April 2016

In developing our understanding of forces in the world, we have looked at air resistance. We now understand that forces work in pairs, and a force is always opposed by another. Do you know what force is opposite to air resistance?

To investigate air resistance, we designed parachutes for Lego men. To test how air resistance affects speed a parachuter (or Lego parachuter) falls, we made different size parachutes.

Were our predictions correct, that the biggest parachute would travel to the ground slower because the air resistance would be stronger on a bigger surface area?

Spelling Bee 2016

By L Forster24th February 2016

Y5F took part in an inter-school spelling competition, through the use of video chat, which was held by the OpenZone.

After an afternoon of spelling challenges on Monday, our team consisted off: Team Captain Khai and teammates Libby, Melissa and Rio.File_000

It was very tough! Each member had to spell 5 words in their own individual rounds. The team round consisted of: choosing which word – out of three choices – was spelt incorrectly; finding the longest word we could out of 9 letters (Mr Forster was proud we found the word ‘Gotham’); and solving anagrams.

We came second in this days heat, and third overall (so far). The class was very proud of their spelling, shown by their support throughout the challenge with banners and cheering for each player.