Stokenham Area Primary School

Year 5 Outline Planning

Autumn Term 2025

Dear Parents and Carers,

Firstly, I’d like to welcome you back to school. I hope that you have all enjoyed a wonderful summer and are ready to get back to learning!

Please find below the curriculum outline for this Autumn.

English

We begin our English lessons this year by studying a Science Fiction book called Robot Girl. This fiction book will give us opportunities to develop our character description and plot planning as well as supporting the children to create effective dialogue. We will then explore two more fiction texts which allow us to develop our own fairy tale narratives and diary writing. We will finish off the autumn term by exploring a non-narrative poetry book, whereby we will create biographies, recounts and our own narrative poems. Throughout the texts the children will develop and integrate learnt grammar skills within their writing, practising editing and redrafting before publishing their final creations.

Reading

Our class novel for the first half term is The Legend of Podkin One-Ear by Kieran Larwood. We will then move on to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens for our Autumn two text. We shall use these texts each week to work on the comprehension skills of summarising and predicting. In addition, each week we will use an extract to learn how to retrieve, explain and infer information from a text. We plan to use a variety of texts from different areas of the curriculum as well as poetry and classics. Together, this ensures the children have a reading comprehension lesson each day. There will also be opportunities for children to pursue their enjoyment of reading independently. Please keep reading at home as much as you can!

Handwriting

The children practise handwriting each day. We will work hard to ensure that handwriting skills are applied in every subject and that our letter formation stays consistent. The children will work to make sure that their handwriting is joined and legible at all times.

Spelling

Monday to Thursday we practise spellings using a variety of techniques for a spelling test on Friday. We give out new spellings on Fridays which we will share with you on Google Classroom and send home with the children in their reading records.

Maths

In maths this term we will begin by focusing on decimal fractions, whereby we will be composing and counting decimal numbers and ordering and comparing fractions with up to 3 decimal places.

We will then move on to money, where the children will apply their decimal knowledge to represent pounds and pence.

Towards the end of the term we will move on to focus on negative numbers and short multiplication and short division.  

Science

This term our two science topics will be Separating Mixtures (chemistry) and Energy (physics).

We will be able to use knowledge of solids, liquids and gases to decide how mixtures might be separated, as well as being able to determine between reversible and irreversible changes.

After half term we will start by identifying different types of energy, including fossil fuels and renewable energy. We will explore the different ways that energy sources can be used up, as well as discovering that food chains are a source of energy that start with the sun.

Geography

In our unit ‘Investigating World Trade’, the children will explore examples of natural resources like wood and water, as well as fossil fuels. They will be able to identify that these resources are ‘unevenly’ spread across the world and note that trading and importing / exporting are ways that these goods can be brought in and out of a country. We will explore how food is imported across the world and note the role that agriculture and farming has within this. We will explore Fairtrade items and develop an understanding about why this is important to the farmers that produce and farm these products.

History

In our unit ‘Ancient Rome’, the children will be expanding on their knowledge of the Roman Empire by investigating what came before it. We will begin by locating Ancient Rome on the timeline and comparing it to other civilizations that we have learnt about, like the Egyptians and the Maya. We will learn about Roman citizens and begin to explore the differences in what life looked like for men and women. We will explore how Ancient Rome was governed as well as looking at religion and the role of Christianity. Finally, we will make links to Roman science and technology and explain why this helped the Romans expand their empire.

Art, Craft and Design

Our topic for Art, Craft and Design is ‘Typography and Maps’. The children will create letters in a playful way using pen, pencil, cutting and collage. They will be able to make drawings appear visually stronger by working over printed surfaces and using a variety of mark making techniques. By the end of our unit, they will create their own visual map, using symbols, drawing elements and typography to express a theme that is important to them.

Design Technology

After half term, we will be learning about “interactive display’, where we will be using crumble computer systems to code information displays for a context decided by the pupils.

Computing

In our unit ‘Computer Systems’ we will be able to explain that computers can be connected together to form systems. The children will be able to recognise the role of computers in our everyday lives and recognise how information is transferred over the internet. After half term, our unit ‘Creating Media’ will allow the children to use a digital device to record video and capture media using a range of techniques. They will create a storyboard and film a sequence of video using reshooting and editing.

French

In our first autumn unit, ‘ As-tu un animal’, the children will be able to name 8 pets using the correct gender. They will be able to say whether or not they have a pet and ask someone else if they have one. The children will use conjunctions ‘et’ and ‘mais’ to expand on sentences about their pets. After half term, the children will be able to recognise and recall the 12 months of the year, ask and say what the date is and have a 2-way conversation, stating when their birthday is. This will be learnt in our second Autumn topic – ‘Quelle est la date aujord’hui?’

P.E.

Our class will have a lesson every Tuesday afternoon as well as enjoying a PE session with our Sports Specialists on Friday. Please could the children bring their PE kits into school so that they are ready for these sessions.

P.S.H.E.

We will be learning about friends and families for the first half of the term. We will be able to identify strategies for maintaining healthy friendships and how to make people feel included. We will explore peer influence and how it can make people feel or behave and use strategies to manage this influence and the need for peer approval. We will explore examples of physical touch and discuss when this is acceptable, unacceptable, wanted or unwanted in different situations. We will discuss ways of responding to this and know who to tell if we are concerned about unwanted physical touch.

R.E.

In the first half of the Autumn term, our RE lessons will be focused on Christianity. We will be exploring the big question “What does it mean if Christians believe God is Holy and Loving?”

After half term, we will move on to Islam. We will be using our RE lessons to gain knowledge to answer the question “What does it mean to be a Muslim in Britain today?”

Music

In music we will be exploring a range of musical genres and thinking about how music brings people together. During the autumn term we will be focusing on the genre of rock music. We will explore some key features of rock music and know a rock song by heart, being able to perform it with control and expression.

Autumn’s curriculum is bursting with variety to enthuse the children and help them develop the range of knowledge and skills they need. We always encourage children to extend their learning beyond the classroom and we welcome them to share this in class, as this is always inspiring for everyone. 

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss your child or have any questions.

Kind regards,

Imogen Woollard

r’s Curriculum

Stokenham Area Primary School Curriculum Map

If you would like further information in relation to the curriculum please feel free to contact the school office.