What a fantastic start to 2023 we’ve had. The children have been busy learning, take a look…

Rowan Class and Yew Class have had their first ever school trip to Whipsnade Zoo. Poplar Class are going next week and they have been hearing all about from their friends.

The children are studying Living things in their habitats in Science and were lucky enough to have a workshop at the zoo, where the children had to look at the clues to identify the different habitats which animals could be found in. The children found this hands on activity very engaging.

After lunch the children were explorers – finding the huge variety of animals in the zoo and finding out which habitat they live in.

It was a fun but tiring and very chilly day. Thank you to all the children for being well behaved.

In English and reading we are looking at this book:

We have been predicting what will happen next, comparing characters and practising reading with fluency. This week we have also listened to the text and drawn a picture – visualising the picture from the words.

The text said ” The Last Wolf was living in a cosy tree-cave, along with the Last Lynx and the Last Bear.” – this is what we visualised…

What a fantastic start to the year we have had in year 3! With new teachers beginning this year, there have been lots of changes and the children have settled really well with their new teachers and have been showing some fantastic pieces of work. Let’s have a look and see what year 3 have been up to…

English

We have been reading The Great Kapok Tree and have really enjoyed the book and learning about all the fascinating animals of the rainforest. We began the year by looking at what we might see in the rainforest and describing these animals using super adjectives. We made these descriptions of our animals into short descriptive paragraphs where the children were learning how to extend sentences using verbs, adverbs and well-chosen adjectives and we even looked at using speech! The children were given the opportunity to use this text to help them innovate their own story and write their own. Have a look below at some great examples of the hard work that year 3 have been putting in…

Maths

It has been a busy few weeks with our learning in maths. Lots of work on multiplication and division and the different methods we can use to solve calculations involving both of these operations. We had a look at some key vocabulary that the children may come across and learnt some of the synonyms for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. To help with our times tables, you would have seen the colourful times table chart that the children brought home this week. This is to help them with their times table knowledge up to 12×12 and is there to help them learn them. Each morning in our maths lessons we are performing a ‘TT Rockstars’ times table challenge. This is a personal challenge for the children and we are already seeing them beat their previous scores which is fantastic progress! They are really enjoying doing it so we hope that this will help them with their calculations in class. Have a look below at some wonderful examples of the hard work from the children in year 3 in maths…

History

Let’s go back to The Stone Age! What a fantastic topic we have had and we have learnt so many facts about The Stone Age. The children have produced some wonderful work in this topic and have really enjoyed it. They particularly enjoyed our cave painting lesson where the classrooms were transformed into real life caves, with paintings stuck under tables and children exploring them like they would have done back in the stone age! They then created some truly excellent cave paintings using charcoal and oil pastels. They used their skills of smudging and blending of colours and then scrunched their papers up to give them the effect of cave walls! We are very excited to take part in our Stone Age day next week on Tuesday and look forward to dressing up too! Have a look below at some of the brilliant work the children have produced…

Year 6 have been busy since the start of term, working hard to improve our maths and English skills whilst also finding out about what goes on inside our bodies-particularly our circulatory system.

In preparation for SATs in May we have had intervention lessons on reading comprehension and maths every week on Tuesday and Wednesday PM

In English we have been writing our own adventure tale based on a kidnap and learning how to weave a “Flashback” into our stories. Alongside this, we have been reading the book “Stormbreaker” by Anthony Horowitz which tells the story of a teenage spy and working on  improving our comprehension skills by analysing and discussing characters and actions.

Our maths topic this term has been fractions and decimals (a perennial favourite with pupils and parents alike). We have been learning how to: change improper fractions into mixed numbers and vice versa; add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions by whole numbers and other fractions and find equivalent fractions and simplify them. If that wasn’t enough, we have been learning about decimals and place value.

In science this half-term, we have completed our topic on Animals including humans, where we focused on the workings of the circulatory system-heart, lungs and blood. I can assure you that no children were harmed in the teaching of this topic!

In other areas of the curriculum, we have been revising greetings in French and in music we have been listening, appraising and singing the Carole King song, “You’ve got a friend”. In PHSE we have been looking at out strengths and weaknesses and setting goals for the future, both in school and outside.

In the remaining 2 weeks of this half-term in English, we will be: editing our Kidnapped story and producing a final piece; continuing to read Stormbreaker and interrogating the text and learning Yr 5/6 spellings weekly.

In maths we will be carrying on with work on decimals.

In science we have started a new topic on Light in which we will investigate How light travels  and light sources.

Next week (30th January) we will be carrying out mock SATs in Grammar and Spelling,  Reading and 3 Maths papers.

Spring 2

In English we will be working on creating a discussion text based on Stormbreaker  entitled  “Should children become spies”.

In maths we will be going on to look at Shape and the properties of different 2D and  3D shapes.

In science we will be continuing our work on Light where we will: carry out investigations on shadows and their sizes; look at the parts of the eye and optical illusions.

In other areas, we are carrying on with the Carole King song in music, looking at La Date – months, days and weeks in French and Dreams and Goals in PHSE.

A quick reminder that parents’ evening will be on the 28th and 29th March.

The year 6 team wish you all a fabulous February and and a marvelous March.

The Year 6 team

What a term!

Wow! What a term! From trips, to sculpting, to learning about climate change. Below are a few pictures of what we have been up to this term!

Thank you to the children for being so great this term and thank you to the parents for your support at home.

Happy holidays,

Mr Pateman, Mrs Feagan, Miss Shah & Miss Jenkins.

What we have been up to

We have had a busy time in year 6, what with Christmas craft morning and our trips to the mosque. Thank you to the parents that came to our Christmas craft activities session-we hope you enjoyed being back in primary school for the morning. You and your children’s handiwork will be on sale (for a small donation) at the Christmas bizarre on Friday 9th December.

The children and adults enjoyed their visit to the mosque this week. It was lovely to be able to take the children out of school for an educational visit for the first time in two and a half years. The children learnt a lot, were very respectful and behaved extremely well. Our thanks go to Mr Ali and Mr Addison for getting us there safely every day and to the imam and Sameen for guiding us so expertly around the mosque.

In English we have been writing our own suspense story based on The Spiderwick Chronicles and in the two and a half weeks before Christmas we have completed some work about the 1914 Christmas Day ceasefire between the allies and the Germans in the 1st World War. The children have written a letter as a British “Tommy” back to their family recounting the day’s events and we will finish the unit by writing a 3 verse poem based on a poem by Carol Ann Duffy (previous poet laureate).

In our reading lessons we have finished the book Skellig by David Almond and have started looking at a book called Mama Miti which is set in Kenya and is about how the people of the country helped themselves to become self-sufficient.

In maths the children have been studying reflection and translation using co-ordinates and learning about ratio and proportion and have performed well with quite a tricky area of maths.

In topic the children completed their Greek tapestry on the myth of The 12 tasks of Heracles (Greek spelling-Hercules is Roman-you learn something new every day) and evaluated their finished piece.

In science, year 6 have been studying the heart and circulatory system. They have learnt about the 4 chambers of the heart and how the heart and lungs are linked to keep our body moving.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays the children have been looking at maths and reading SAT type papers. During these sessions, the children are able to talk together about answers they give to set questions and learn how to answer questions using the teacher and each other. This is a vital part of SATs preparation and will hopefully give your children the tools to do as well as they can in May.

Early Spring Term

In English we will be writing an adventure story based on the spy genre. Alongside this unit we will be reading Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz which is all about a teenage secret agent. Within this unit we will be teaching the children how to use flashback to help tell a story.

We will complete our reading work on the book Mama Miti.

In maths we will be starting a long unit on fractions, which constitutes a fairly high percentage of questions in the SAT papers so is a very important part of the maths curriculum.

In science we will continue our topic on Animals including humans by looking at the lungs, the blood and staying healthy.

In French we will be looking at the vocabulary of telling the time (which will link nicely to maths)

We hope you all have a very merry Christmas and look forward to seeing the children back at school on Wednesday 4th January 2023.

Computing 

In our Computing lessons, the children have enjoyed reading and creating code to create their own catching game, traffic light simulation and more recently, our Alien Blast game. Within this game, the aim was for the rocket to blast the aliens when it collides with them. We used a variable that is a string. In the coding, we used strings to keep the player informed of their progress. Can you see them? Can your read the code below? Why not ask your child to login into their Purple Mash account and show you their game?

PSHE- Anti-bullying week

This year’s theme for anti-bullying week was “Reach out.” Year 5 learnt that bullying can be
presented in different forms: physical, verbal, online and written, to name a few. Most importantly, they learnt how to STAMP IT OUT by reaching out in a number of ways such as: speaking to a trusted adult, speaking up for victims (don’t be a bystander!) telling the bully to stop and choosing not to participate in unkind acts. Linden class made an amazing, effective and clever poster; Hawthorn created a thoughtful acrostic poem and Beech performed 4 skits showcasing the different forms of bullying and how we can REACH OUT!

Reading 

In our reading lessons, we have been reading a non-fiction book called ‘Everything
Ancient Egypt’. This ties in with our topic this term (Ancient Egypt) and the children
have really enjoyed it. They have developed their understanding of the navigational skills required when using a non-fiction text- for example, knowing the purpose of a
contents page, glossary, index and how to use them. We have also used our retrieval
and inference skills to answer questions about the text. Once a week, a reading lesson
if dedicated to developing the children’s reading fluency and they are given the
opportunity to read out loud with expression, pace and intonation.

Maths

All of our enthusiastic mathematicians have completed the unit of work on statistics and have now moved on to multiplication and division. They have demonstrated a good understanding of multiples, factors, prime, square and cube numbers through a range of whole class and independent activities.  For the remainder of the term, the children will continue to strengthen their understanding of multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000 and develop their reasoning and problem-solving skills, before moving on to area and perimeter. Please make sure that children are practicing their times tables at home to develop their fluency and do remember to login to Mathletics to complete the homework being set by class teachers.

Have a look at some of the fantastic work below.

Maths

Year 4 have started learning about multiplication and division in maths. This is a really important unit in Year 4 as we have our times table check in June. Below you can see how hard the children are working! Please make sure that you are helping your child practice their times tables on a regular basis.

Computing

We have been continuing to learn how to code! This week, the children have been learning coding a lamp to become a genie once it has been clicked three times. See if your child can explain the code below…

Anti-bullying week

As part of the Reach Out! Campaign, Year 4 have been hard at work creating an anti-bullying village! The children worked in pairs to design a house that contained messages of positivity for anyone going through bullying. Take a look at some of our houses!

This half term we are reading…

Thanks everyone!

Mr Pateman, Mrs Feagan and Miss Shah.