Autumn 1

Art

We started our new school year with an art project, to create self portraits for display in the Link. Pupils used charcoal to create their artwork and we are delighted with how they have turned out. (05.09.25)

English

Ancient Egypt is our history theme this half term and our class novel, Secrets of a Sun King by Emma Carroll, is the perfect fit for our curriculum work linked to the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

A discovery from ancient Egypt…

A cursed package…

The story of a young pharaoh…

LONDON, 1922

When Lilian Kaye finds a parcel on her grandad's doorstep, she is shocked to see who sent it: a famous Egyptologist, found dead that very morning, according to every newspaper in England!

Children in 5M have been immersing themselves in the story so far, by acting out the moment Lil found the mysterious parcel and freeze-framing to talk about her thoughts and feelings. (10.09.25)

Mrs Murphy surprised us with our own packages to unwrap, containing Ancient Egyptian artefacts, which we described using expanded noun phrases. (14.09.25)

Now we are writing our own narrative, sharing ideas of what's in the box that Lil found on grandad's doorstep and detailing her emotional journey.

PE

In PE this half term, we have been learning how to play games involving a net. We started with volleyball, finding out how to serve and working together to gain points. We will transfer some of these skills when we move onto badminton shortly. (24.09.25)

History

This week in history (25.09.25), we have been finding out more about Ancient Egyptian pyramids and who built them. We watched a clip of the Prince of Egypt and came up with the hypothesis that slaves built the pyramids. We then had a treasure hunt in the classroom to find facts which could help us come to a conclusion. We shared our facts with each other then used the idea of balance scales to help us make an informed decision.

So what was the result?

An overwhelming majority decided that based on the evidence, slaves didn't build the pyramids. We found out from the British Museum that it was mostly farmers while waiting for their crops to grow.

Art

Following on from our self portraits, children in 5M are studying Retrofuturistic art with a view to creating their own mixed media pieces of artwork. They began with a study of Dutch artist Teis Albers, before recreating space images experimenting with different mediums, including charcoal, oil pastels, pencil, ripped paper. (29.09.25)

Ancient Egyptian Workshop at Cliffe Castle

Children in Year 5 had a fantastic day trip to Cliffe Castle (30.09.25), learning more about our history topic of Ancient Egypt. We started in the Egyptian Gallery, exploring and investigating different artefacts, sharing our new knowledge with each other.

Then we moved onto learning about the importance of the River Nile to the ancient Egyptians and how it was their source of food, water, transport, building materials and fertile soil for farming. We mapped out the journey of the river, looking at the physical and human features along the way.

Finally, we took part in the ancient Egyptian ritual of the mummification of a body. This included instructions from Anubis, removing the brain through the nose with a hook, removing other organs, drying them and the body out with Natron (salt). They then placed the organs in canopic jars but returned the heart to the body. They covered the body with wine and herbs/spices before wrapping it in bandages and putting it into a sarcophagus. The heart was then weighed against a feather to decide what would happen to that person in the afterlife. An excellent workshop and fantastic start to our next writing learning journey, where we will be writing instructions on how to mummify a body.

Great Athlete Challenge

On 6th October, GB wheelchair tennis player, Antony Cotterill came to visit and insired us to get sporty and complete circuits to raise money for PE equipment at our school.

Remembrance

We have been preparing for Remembrance Day by writing poetry in English. We had guidance from poet, Tomos Roberts aka Tomfoolery and West Yorkshire's Young Poet Laureate, Max. The children were incredibly proud of the poems they created and performed. We will share some of these poems during our whole school Remembrance Service on 11th November.