World Book Day!
Yesterday we celebrated World Book Day by visiting the younger classes to enjoy a good book. Year 5 headed to Mrs Latham’s class where we were met by some very enthusiastic readers. Some year 5’s read to the younger children, whilst some of Mrs Latham’s class showed off their amazing fluent reading to their older peers. I even enjoyed Mahli reading ‘Funnybones’ to me – my favourite book when I was little. What an awesome reader she was!
World Book Day
This morning, year 6 children took a trip over to nursery. They read stories and talked about their favourite characters.
Science: We are chemists
We have continued to be chemists in our science learning and conducted an experiment that produced a chemical reaction. The children mixed two liquids – vinegar and warm milk. The vinegar altered the acidity in the milk and made it curdle. The children sieved the liquid to retrieve the curdled mixture and then moulded and dried it. This chemical reaction had created a type of plastic. The children recognised that this was an irreversible change as it could not be returned to its original state. We were quite amazed by the whole process and also quite overwhelmed by the weird smell that the mixture made!
Help at home: Could you recreate this experiment at home so your child can talk you through the process? Can they use any scientific vocabulary in their explanation?
Reading: book club
This half term, the children will be bringing home a group reader book. They were given the opportunity to look at a range of books and read the blurbs. They discussed which books they liked and which they disliked. They then grouped together according to the book they’d selected. The children will still be set a target page each week and they will be choosing their weekly task – this will still be recorded in their journals. The team that reach their target page and complete their tasks well, stand a chance of being our weekly trophy winners. Who will it be this week?
Help at home: continue to read daily with your child. This will improve understanding and fluency. Reading to an adult can also increase a child’s enjoyment of a book.
Class 5/6A News
A big welcome back to all of our pupils following the half-term break. I hope you are all relaxed and refreshed and ready for the new half-term. Already a jam packed week of learning is behind us. Let’s catch up with what Class 5/6A have been up to.
In Maths we are revisiting fractions, looking at multiplying an integer by a unit and non-unit fraction. Using our existing fractions and times table knowledge, our Year 5 pupils have made an excellent start to the half-term. How to help: continue to support your child’s maths learning at home by encouraging daily use of Times Table Rockstars.
In Writing, we are working towards writing a spooky narrative and setting description. This week we have watched an animation of Whitby Abbey to help us generate some vocabulary which we can use in our piece. We have also brainstormed figurative language to describe a number of spooky scenes such as darkened forests, lightning and moonlight skies. Our pupils have come up with some excellent description, and I can’t wait to see the pieces they produced.
The spooky theme has also appeared in our Reading work. We have been reading passages from Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ and using descriptive language from them to recreate drawings of the lead character and his surroundings.
Also in Reading we have our Friday Book Club. This half-term pupils have been given a selection of texts to choose from, which they can take home to read alongside their classmates. On Fridays we will get together to share our thoughts on what we have read so far, identify similarities between texts, and share our opinions.
We are Chemists this half-term in Science. Our work this week has seen us mixing bicarbonate of soda with vinegar and using balloons to test how much carbon dioxide can be created to inflate a balloon. Once a test experiment had been established, pupils then changed some of the variables of the experiment to see how this would affect the outcome.
Being able to recognise both positive and negative feelings and understand how to deal with them has been focus in Living and Learning. Our circle time discussion has seen us look at a wider range of vocabulary to describe feelings we experience every day, how we can express these, and what to do if we experience a feeling we are not sure of. Pupils discussed how they would support a peer who was struggling to deal with a particular scenario, and turn it into a positive.
Science: we are chemists
The children have been focusing on scientific enquiry this week – looking at fair and comparative tests. They got the opportunity to see that when you mix baking powder with vinegar, it causes a chemical reaction. This reaction produces carbon dioxide. The children created this chemical reaction within a plastic bottle with a balloon attached to the top. The carbon dioxide caused the balloon to inflate. The children were able to alter the variables in the experiment and compare results. For example, some children increased the amount of baking powder, whilst others increased the amount of vinegar. We had great fun observing the results. They were able to recognise that this chemical reaction was irreversible. They also applied some previously learnt vocabulary to their explanations, such as solute and solution.
Luckily, we all survived the experiment without any big explosions!
Help at home: Can yo help your child learn the science vocabulary for this half term?
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. 
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.
Year 6 Football club
At the beginning of this half-term we started to run an after-school football club for Year 6 pupils. So far we have had a great turn out, with around 12-13 players turning up each week for training.
After half-term we hope to begin training towards playing competitive matches against other schools in the area.
New players are always welcome. Please speak to the school office for details on how to sign up.