Autumn Term

When we arrived back at school in our new class for Year 5, we discovered that this half-term the topic we are studying is The Alps!

During our first day, we produced some wonderful watercolour artwork featuring mountains. You can see some of them below!

Our Class Read - The Brockenspectre

Tomas wants to be like his father – strong, brave and fearless. Pappi is a mountain guide, often away from home. He has taught Tomas to love the mountains, but also to fear their dangers – the winds and blizzards, the treacherous paths, the giddying slopes.

Above all, Tomas fears the Brockenspectre – a huge, shadowy creature that lives alone in the heights, waiting for unwary climbers. Its looming figure haunts his thoughts and his dreams.

When Pappi goes out one day and fails to return, Tomas knows it’s up to him to search – up on the high mountain passes, where dangers await.

Will Tomas find his father . . . or will the Brockenspectre find him?

During our English lessons, we are using The Brockenspectre book to write our own Non-Chronological Reports about our own versions of what this creature could be. We imagined its appearance, habitat (somewhere in The Alps), behaviour and diet in our writing. In addition, we used lots of technical language, and ensured to include relative clauses, fronted adverbials and rhetorical questions. We enjoyed reading our reports to each other and finding out about everyone's different imaginings.

In Art, we have been looking at the artist M.C Escher, and how he used illusion in his drawings. Using his techniques, we created our own illusionist artwork featuring mountainous landscapes. We used different pencil types to add shading and tone to our work.