This half term, we will be studying the book 'Boy in the Tower' by Polly Ho -Yen.  It explores the life of Ade, the main character who lives in apartment block with his mother. From the seventeenth floor of the tower block, Ade watches as the buildings fall around him. The Bluchers - a strange and terrible kind of plant - are taking over the city, and everyone is being forced to evacuate, but his mother is refusing to leave her room. Ade watches alone as the city slowly empties, and the Bluchers creep ever closer. We will be completing lots of short burst writes from unpicking key vocabulary, whilst developing our inference, retrieval and comparison skills. We will then move onto application of grammar and punctuation, by focusing on dialogue in narratives. 

Year 5 will start 2022 by studying the eye-opening book, 'Journey to Jo'Burg' by Beverley Naidoo. This story is about two children who live in a poor village in South Africa. Their mother works far away in Johannesburg and their father died from a disease caught in the mines. Their little sister is desperately ill and the two children decide to walk to the city to bring their mother home. The story tells of their awakening to the situation in their country of the appalling treatment of blacks by the rich white people. The children finally find their mother, but their troubles are not yet over. Things are not as simple as they thought they would be. They have to stay with their new friend for the night, then travel back with their mother the next day. They experience a tense few days while Dineo is in hospital. This part of the story opens the children’s eyes even more to the uncertainties and dangers of life in South Africa. 

We will then move onto biographical writing centred around the life of Nelson Mandela. This version is the amazing story of a true hero of our times; his famous biography has been specially adapted for children in a beautiful illustrated picture book format. Discover how a little boy whose father called him "troublemaker" grew up to fight apartheid, become South Africa's first black president and campaign for freedom and justice throughout the world. 

This half term, Year 5 are writing for different purposes and audiences. We will be writing a speech to share far and wide, using other famous speeches to help us structure and persuade larger audiences to take notice of our sustainable palm oil project. We will then consider different members of Liverpool City Council to be the recipient of our persuasive letter, written in a formal style. We will also be taking over Twitter as we look at very structured and word-limited speech for worldwide audiences, before creating, drafting and publishing our very own podcast using an app called Anchor. 

We will finish the half term by writing short narratives based on the book, 'The Mysteries of Harris Burdick'. This text is a 1984 picture book by the American author Chris Van Allsburg. It consists of a series of images, ostensibly created by Harris Burdick, a man who has mysteriously disappeared. Each image is accompanied by a title and a single line of text, which encourage readers to create their own stories.

This half term, our texts will be a whole school approach. 'The Wonder Garden and 'There's a Rang-Tan in my bedroom'. 

The Wonder Garden is a beautifully illustrated book which allows its readers to 'wander through five habitats to discover eighty amazing animals.

The book entices children and adults alike through the golden gates on the cover and into the wondrous garden that is planet Earth.  From deserts, rainforests and mountains to oceans we are met by double spread after double spread of richly illustrated landscapes and beautifully drawn creatures.

The language used in the text is challenging also using the latin names of the animals alongside the common. The author describes the creatures vividly, using poetic language amongst the technical.

In Year 5 we will be specifically looking at the Himalayan Mountains. 

'There's a Rang-Tan in my bedroom' will raise children's consciousness about conservation and will link with our Chester Zoo project.