Welcome to our families! We are the Year 5 class, taught by Ms Courtney, with the support of our wonderful Teaching Assistant, Mrs Liley. We are excited for the year ahead with you, as an integral part of Elm Class, and look forward to working together to support your child’s educational journey where they will endeavour to become the best that they can be!
We have an exciting year ahead, packed with fascinating topics, new experiences and plenty of opportunities to ask questions, explore ideas and discover something new.
We will begin our journey by travelling back in time to the world of the Vikings. We will uncover the truth behind the image of the fierce Viking raider and discover how Vikings became settlers, exploring the impact they had on Britain’s landscape, laws and communities.
Following on from this, we will delve into the world of the Tudors studying texts from Shakespeare as well as taking a trip to Mary Arden’s house to understand life for ordinary people during this iconic period. Finally, we will journey even further back in time to discover the Ancient Greeks. We will explore their fascinating mythology and Gods, investigate how they governed themselves and discover philosophical ideas that continue to influence our world today.
We can’t wait to begin with so much interesting information to learn.
In English, we are committed to fostering the love of reading which is so important to Howes. We have carefully selected tantalising texts to link our learning to. We will begin with ‘The One and Only Ivan,’ a moving story which explores the emotional impact of animals living in captivity. Inspired by the text, we will write an emotive diary entry before developing our persuasive writing skills by creating a campaign. We will then become experts on gorillas as we research and write an in-depth non-chronological report. Throughout the year, we will continue to build upon the writing skills developed in previous years. We will experiment with relative clauses, parenthesis and modal verbs, while developing ambitious vocabulary and learning how to craft writing that is both creative and purposeful.
In Maths, we will develop our confidence and understanding of increasingly challenging mathematical concepts. We will begin by exploring place value up to 1,000,000, including negative numbers, before becoming fractions experts! We will investigate equivalent fractions and use our knowledge to add and subtract increasingly complex fractions. We will then transfer this understanding to decimals and percentages — skills which will certainly come in handy when spotting a bargain! Alongside our mathematical knowledge, we will develop our reasoning, problem-solving and resilience, learning that sometimes the most important part of Maths is explaining how we know.
If you have any questions, concerns or information you would like to discuss, please do not hesitate to come and speak to us.
We are looking forward to a fantastic year of fun in Elm Class!
The Elm Class Team
There is certainly plenty to discover — and we can’t wait to get started!
Elm Class Parent Information Meeting 2026