Author: Mrs Hogarth

We were lucky enough in 5,6B to start Community week off by visiting Scholes library. Even though it is only two minutes from school, it was great to be reminded of what a little gem it is. We were given a talk on how the library runs by Madeline and what books are stocked in the library. She emphasised how easy it is to get a library card and be able to borrow books to enjoy at home. We then spent some time perusing the shelves in order to select a few books to bring back and enjoy in class.

Help at home: Encourage your child to visit the library and access this brilliant resource. It will get your child enthusiastic about reading at home!

Democracy is a key part of British Values and during this week, our classes have cast their votes for who they would like to represent their class on the JLT. We were absolutely overwhelmed by the number of children that wrote speeches. These were well written, full of ideas and showed off their best qualities such as leadership, good listening skills and initiative.
The votes were counted and the new members have been announced!
Here are our new members:
5,6A – Ben
5,6B – Lilly
5,6C – Jeevan
3,4A – Bradley
3,4B – Violet
3,4C – Adam
2C – Ted
1,2B – Mollie
1A – Rupert
Well done to each of you. I’m looking forward to working with you this year and can’t wait to get started.

This week in Science we have started our new unit all about electricity. We began by seeing what we could remember about our previous learning and then shared this with our talk partners. We discussed that we would be using electrical components and that we needed to stay safe using equipment such as batteries. We worked together to create a series circuit and then added additional components to see the impact it had. The children drew scientific diagrams of their circuits and used the appropriate symbols. The children also used an app on the ipads to explore this further.

Help at home: Ask your child what a series circuit is and what the components are that make up a circuit.

This week in reading we are linking our learning to our history topic – Ancient Egypt. The children studied labelled diagrams of the pyramids and how they are structured. The children had to research whether the sources of information were reliable – they used websites to validate the information and to also study the websites to see if they were trustworthy. The children were able to identify how one source of information was unreliable as it wasn’t a secure site. They were able to validate information by finding similar information elsewhere.

The year 5, 6 phase have been working really hard producing some recounts over the last couple of weeks. We used part of our class novel ‘Secrets of a Sun King’ by Emma Carroll as inspiration for our writing. There is a section of the novel in which the main character finds a parcel and has the dilemma of whether to open it or not. As writers, the children created descriptive paragraphs using adventurous vocabulary and they created tension for the reader. We worked hard to think about how to start sentences in different ways, such as using a verb or a question. We also added adverbials to add more information to the verb.

Help at home: Can your child write some sentences beginning with a verb that ends in -ed or -ing. For example:

Drifting down, the leaves suffocated the ground as the silence engulfed the darkness.

Today, the year 6’s enjoyed the opportunity to spend a day in the life of a high school student. Upon arrival, we kicked off the day with PE and and food technology. The children were challenged to  beat their best times possible on the rowing machines. This resulted in lots of sweating and competitiveness. In food technology, we cooked a healthy vegetable stir fry. The children were able to apply their cutting and chopping skills that they had learnt at Scholes to this lesson.

Drama gave the children an opportunity to work collaboratively to create freeze frames to express their interpretation on different images. Finally, we applied our coding knowledge to crack a code and create a game.

We are learning a new sport this half term -hockey!

The children were very excited to be introduced to the game of hockey. They were even more excited to be able to use some brand new equipment! We played some warm up games first to get us warmed up and our hearts pumping faster – we love these!

The hockey sticks were handed out and our first job was to make sure we could grip the sticks accurately. The children were then allowed to explore with the hockey stick and a ball. This allowed the children to get used to handling the ball.

They then worked in pairs to learn how to pass accurately with the ball and by the end of the session they were much better and even played a game of possession ball.

Our living and learning statement has allowed the children to reflect on the skills they use in school. They quickly recalled all the 8Rs for learning and were able to match them with the images that are displayed in class. They talked about which ones they had used in class this week.

“I am always ready when my lessons are starting.”

“I was resilient when I found comparing numbers difficult this week.”

The children were able to also identify which of the 8Rs they would like to improve on.