What makes Year 5 different?

Year 5 is an opportunity to embed all of the knowledge learnt in lower Key Stage 2. It is expected that all the foundations of learning are now well embedded and children are supported to apply their knowledge in a more creative way. In Year 5, children gain greater independence and confidence from being given more responsibility in their learning.

Writing in Year 5

Our English curriculum exposes the children to a range of high-quality texts through both reading and writing. In writing, new punctuation is introduced (such as brackets, dashes and commas to indicate parenthesis). There is also a greater emphases on grammatical features too (modal verbs and relative clauses).

The English is carefully planned so that the children can explore a range of different text types and gradually build up to writing their own versions, with careful attention towards audience and purpose. The children will also explore subject specific vocabulary and will have the opportunity to edit and improve their writing.

The main areas of grammar that will be taught this year include:

• Relative clauses (beginning with who, which, where, why, whose, that).
• Indicating degress of possibility using modal verbs (e.g. should, could, might) or adverbs (e.g. surely, perhaps).
• Devices to build cohesion within a paragraph (e.g. then, after, that, this, firstly).
• Linking ideas across paragraphs using adverbials of time (e.g. later), place (e.g. nearby) and number (e.g firstly).
• Bracket, dashes or commas to indicate parenthesis.
• Use of commas to clarify meaning or avoid ambiguity.

Reading in Year 5

Reading is such an important life skill and we want all children to develop a love reading as well as develop their reading comprehension skills. Reading is all about sharing books together – this can be through hearing your child read as well as reading to them, talking about books and allowing children to develop their vocabulary stamina and knowledge around them.