Class 5/6A News
What a busy week it has been in Class 5/6A this week. The half-term holiday is on the horizon and our pupils will be ready for their break after working so hard all week. Let’s see what they’ve been getting up to.
Year 6 pupils have had SATS exam practice this week across Maths, Spelling and Grammar. The results at this stage provide an indication as to how on track our pupils are to reaching Age Related Expectations (AREs) and beyond, and identify areas we can support them to help achieve these. Help at home: Continue supporting your child at home by working with them on learning of spellings, and ensuring they access Times Table Rockstars on a daily basis for around 10-15 minutes.
Year 5 Maths have come to the end of their work on multiplication, looking at 3-digit by 2-digit, and 4-digit by 2-digit calculations. Pupils have worked very hard this week to cement their understanding of how to tackle such questions. In Reading, we have looked at our class novel, The Nowhere Emporium, and explored how the author, Ross Mackenzie, builds up excitement through descriptive and emotive language in the prologue to help entice the reader to continue further into the book.
Towards the end of the week in Writing we finished the first draft of persuasive letters to Graham Stuart, UK Minister for Climate, in getting him and parliament to do more to combat climate change. We will be publishing these next week with a view to sending these onto Graham. Here’s hoping our superb writing can inspire Mr. Stuart to put our plans into action.
Finally, a huge well done to all of our certificate winners today. It has been lovely to see so many of the class nominating each other for a Positive Peer award, recognising ways that they make each other’s day happier and healthier in school.
I look forward to seeing you all at Parent’s Evening next week!
Mr. Robson
Living and Learning – Internet Safety
Our focus in Living and Learning at the moment is all about recognising how we can stay safe online. Class 5/6A were joined this week by Hazel from d:side, who are an education programme aimed at providing young people with the tools they need to skilfully manage sensitive situations with peers.
Hazel spoke to our group about the various forms of social media that exist, what people should be using these for, and how to make your profile safe and secure. We had a look at what we can do to ensure we only interact online with people we know and trust, spot suspicious profiles, and watched a video about the dangers of not posting securely online.
The pupils were full of good tips for how to recognise genuine profiles and connection requests, knew who to speak to if they were subjected to anything negative online, and understood age-appropriate content.
Help at home by talking to your child about how they use the internet at home, and how they can keep themselves safe. 
Supertato!
It has been another fun week exploring ‘Supertato’ by Sue Hendra & Paul Linnet. We have been creating WANTED posters for Evil Pea. The children were able to write sentences using tricky words and known phonics.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off auto play – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
Word of the week
Every week, we look at a new adventurous word. We call this our ‘word of the week’. This week our word of the week was ‘villain’ – linked to the story ‘Supertato’. We looked at the definition. ‘A villain is the bad guy.’, drew pictures to represent villain’s and used the word villain in our everyday speech.
Evil Pea is a villain because he is mean to others.
A villain is a baddy!
I don’t like villains!
Maths
This week, the children have been exploring weight. We have focused on using mathematical vocabulary to compare different items.
heavy heavier heaviest
light lighter lightest
Phonics
This week, the children have been reading longer words. We use the chunking method to read words with more that one syllable. We have also spotted words containing double letters (e.g. rabbit) – these are diagraphs too!
Ask your child to chunk and read these words.
sunset chicken carpet carrot
Poetry Picnic
Each week, we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is Mrs Bluebird
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm. Can your child re-tell this weeks poem to you?
Reminders
Early writing presentation – Don’t forget to watch the short presentation by Mrs Payne, one of our Sphere Federation Reception teachers. It has some ideas of things that you can try at home to support your child’s learning.
Dinosaur Roar
We’ve enjoyed listening to ‘Dinosaur Roar‘ during our story times in Nursery this week. We talked about the different parts of a book, including the front and back cover, the title and blurb. As we read the story, we identified the words on the page and followed them with our finger as we read from left to right.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off auto play – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
Dinosaur roar, dinosaur squeak. Dinosaur fierce, dinosaur meek. Dinosaur fast, dinosaur slow… We looked at the illustrations and talked about the meaning of the different words in the story. Children loved working together to add lumps, spikes and claws to a giant dinosaur.
In our maths area, children have been counting and sorting dinosaurs by type and colour.
We’re also learning about the number two. We found a domino that had one spot on one end, and one spot on the other. When we looked at the spots together, there were two. Children knew that they had 2 eyes, 2 ears and 2 feet. We jumped twice and counted two claps. Have a look at home – What can you find two of? You might see two wheels on your bike or 2 eggs left in the box. Can you spot any number twos on doors or number plates?
In the sensory area, we loved playing with the slime in our dinosaur swamp! Ergh.. it’s very sticky!
Outside, we talked about the changes in the weather. It was very, very windy on Wednesday and we could hear it blowing through the branches in the trees. Children enjoyed holding onto a piece of fabric to feel, and see it blowing in the wind.
Maths frame multiplication check
Today, our Y4 children have been practising their times tables using Mathsframe multiplication check. They all did really well! Thank you for all your hard work and effort helping them at home.
It’s good practice to use this version (rather than TTRS) as it resembles the test they will take in the summer.
If you would like extra practice with your child then you can find the website here.
Living and Learning – Internet Safety
- As part of our living and learning time this week, we have been looking at internet safety. We had a visit from D:side yesterday, who spoke to the children about internet safety. They explained how and why you need to stay safe on the internet as well as teaching the children three clear rules to follow whilst online:
- Ask an adults permission.
- Only talk to people that you know.
- Stick to places that are right for you.
Help at home by reminding your children of these rules before they use the internet.
PE: we love the gym equipment!
This term KS1 have been using the gym equipment in the hall during PE lessons. We have been climbing on the climbing frame, balancing on benches and practicing our best forward rolls! We have also been using our super strength to climb vertical ropes and ladders.
The children are fantastic at knowing what is safe and not safe when using the equipment.
1 – always have a partner.
2 – gymnastics can only be performed with an adult.
3 – climbing too high is unsafe.
Help at home: by encouraging children to discuss safety during PE lessons. Discourage attempting gymnastics without a mat or an adult close by.
Topic: we’re geographers
The children have continued to think like geographers and have been looking at the Holderness coastline this week. They had the opportunity to use Digi-maps to compare the rate of erosion over time caused by the sea. We looked at two locations, Skipsea and Hornsea. They were able to use tools within the map to plot out the changing cliff lines and measure the amount of erosion. Hornsea had coastal defences installed in the early 1900s. Can your child name a type of coastal defence? This has limited the amount of erosion over time. The children could clearly see the differences between the locations.
Help at home by continuing to help your child learn our geography vocabulary. Play Pictionary or read some definitions and your child has to identify the word.
3,4B: we’re geographers (and presenters)
We’ve been loving our current geography topic all about volcanoes.
You might remember we learnt about the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (Iceland) in 2010. Recently, we’ve carried out another case study. This time on Mount Vesuvius (Italy).
We thought about the negative aspects of living near a volcano and found out there’re lots of positives, too: the soil is good for farming, volcanoes bring a lot of tourism and diamonds are often found in volcanic rock which can be mined then sold.
Then, to demonstrate our knowledge we wrote, practised and performed a short news report about our learning. One of us was the presenter and one of us played the part of a local resident who had to justify why they live so close to Vesuvius (an active, deadly volcano!).
Help at home by asking your child why volcanoes are both good and bad.
3,4 A Class News
Last week, we continued our Geography topic by learning about Mount Vesuvius and how volcanoes can impact people positively as well as negatively. We discussed why so many people still live near to the active volcano today and filmed our own ‘news report’ interviews.
In Science, we continued our ‘Rocks, Fossils & Soils’ learning by finding out what soil contains: rock, humus (not the kind you dip carrot sticks in!), air and water. We collected some soil from the school grounds to investigate and discussed whether this soil was sandy, clay or loam.
Help at home by…
- asking your child about their learning
- discussing technical vocabulary such as ‘humus’ and ‘loam’