Class 5/6A News
This time next week we will have wrapped up our first term of the year! Our pupils and staff are working flat-out at the moment, having survived test week, and the end is in sight. Let’s see what we have been getting up to this week.
Maths, Reading, Grammar and Spelling tests have been on the agenda for our Year 5 pupils this week, whilst our Year 6 pupils have tackled Maths and English SATS papers. We are proud of how our students have adapted to test week and the effort they have put in. Learning Updates will be sent home with pupils on Wednesday. These will provide an update on your pupils attainment, progress and attitude to learning during the first term, with targets on how you can help support your child’s learning at home.
Whilst we have the Year 5/6 Christmas party to look forward to on Wednesday, it will be business as usual next week in terms of learning. Pupils have today been issued Book Club homework as well as a list of spellings and times tables ahead of our regular tests on a Friday morning.
Help at home: Help your child with their spelling practice by testing them daily on this week’s words in the car, around the dinner table or on the journey to school. Practising everyday can make a big impact on a child’s retention of these spellings.
A slightly shorter Class News this week (I’ve been out of school for a couple of days due to illness), but I promise to make up for it with a bumper post next week. Just time for our certificate winners:
Certificate winners:
Living and Learning – Ella. Provided some excellent ideas on how we can use self-care to help protect our own mental health.
Great learning – Amelie. Pushing herself in every subject, particularly in Maths, to be the best version of herself.
P.E – Arthur. A ‘pocket rocket’ who has dazzled on the football pitch this week.
Peer recognition – Luella. A real role model for learning and friendship. Never without a smile on her face. Freya – providing a shoulder to cry on and support for a classmate who was in need.
Printing masterpieces
We are sadly coming to the end of our Art topic and we have spent the week finalising our prints and adding the last final touches. The children were working on overlaying their prints with different colours or adding detail to their designs. The children really thought carefully about their colour choices, choosing complementary colours or vivid contrasting ones.
Some children took their designing skills further and designed a new printing tile – still inspired by nature. They created new designs of different sizes and their aim was to try and create their own repetitive patterns, very much like wallpaper. They considered colours carefully again. Here are some fabulous pictures of their finished pieces. Parents, you can breathe a sigh of relief as hopefully they won’t be coming home with much paint on them next week!
Class News: 5/6A
How is it Friday evening already? Another jam-packed week of learning and fun has come to an end in Class 5/6A. Let’s take a look at what our pupils have been up to this week.
Firstly, a huge thank you to all parents who came today to join us for our Topic Review. We took part in a quiz which saw us reflect upon all of our Topic learning since the beginning of September. With the parents writing the answers, pupils had to use their books to retrieve information on the Stone Age, druids, mummification and William Morris amongst other things.
Our Writing work this week has seen us complete a set of instructions, linked to our Topic work of creating a lead print. Students have been looking at using parenthesis (brackets, dashes and commas) to join two independent clauses together, as well as structuring equipment lists and putting instructions in a chronological order.
Despite the cold weather this week, our class have been red hot on the hockey pitch in P.E this week. We have developed our skills by working on our defensive blocks – the jab and the block tackles. After practising preventing our opponent from dribbling past us, we then turned into attackers and honed our shooting skills.
Living and Learning this week has seen us continue our discussions around Mental Health, and recognising the importance of talking about how we feel. Identifying those we feel close enough to to share our feelings with is absolutely vital to help young people deal with the wide variety of emotions that they experience.
This week’s Talk Time homework poses a moral question:
Is physical health more important than mental health?
Certificate winners:
Living and Learning – Will. Provided some excellent ideas on how we can use self-care to help protect our own mental health.
Great learning – Elisa. Pushing herself in every subject, particularly in Maths, to be the best version of herself.
P.E – Amelia B. Super dribbling and passing skills in hockey. Fantastic control and awareness.
Peer recognition – Sam Webb. Giving up his own lunchtime to support an injured friend who could not play outside.
Have a great weekend!
Mr. Robson
Living and Learning: Mental Health
Over the past couple of weeks, we have been focusing on the topic of Mental Health in our Living and Learning sessions. In class we have had numerous discussions about what we understand by the term ‘Mental Health’, how do we recognise our own feelings and those of others, and what we can do to provide “self-care”.
We have also explored the importance of talking about our feelings. Talking about our feelings, whether they’re big or small feelings, is a great way to have good mental health. Sometimes it’s starting to talk about things which is the hardest thing to do. As a group we explored our ‘support circles’, recognising those individuals who we have close connections with that we may be able to talk to in times of need.
Printing fun!
Year 5/6 have been busy creating more prints this week as part of our art topic. The children in a previous lesson had already created a leaf design on a polystyrene tile. They’d used this to create a simple print using acrylic paint. Moving on, the children have now added more detail to their leaves, such as veins and blemishes. The children selected alternative colours this time to print over the top of their original prints. The children thought really carefully about their colour choice. Did they want vibrant colours or complementary colours? It was great to see the children discussing their art with each other and thinking of changes and improvements to their original designs.
Science: water resistance
Does the shape of an object affect how quickly it moves through water?
Children carried out a very wet experiment today. They used modelling clay to create different shapes that would cut through the water.
Living and Learning: self-care techniques
This week, year 5/6 have been discussing how they could improve their mental health through self-care techniques.
We watched this short video to gain a better understanding of self-care techniques and get some ideas about what we can do.
At home, set aside some time to discuss which self-care techniques work for you. Remember, not all self-care techniques work for everyone. Give them a go and if you enjoy it, try to make it a regular thing.
Some children decided that they would try deep breathing. Others suggested that spending more time with their parents might help. Finding time for yourself or being around positive people can have a dramatic influence on lowering your stress levels and boosting your engery.
Class 5/6A News
Phew! What a week that has been. Not only have the pupils crammed in a huge amount of learning, we’ve also been cheering England and Wales to World Cup glory! Let’s catch up on the goings on in Mr. Robson’s class this week.
In Maths, Year 5 have been getting to grips with mixed numbers and improper fractions, and being able to convert one into the other. One of the key skills to success in this is sold times table knowledge, which we have reinforced this week with Times Table Rockstars sessions at every opportunity. Having that solid times table knowledge helps to unlock a whole host of mathematical understanding.
Ever wondered what it’s like to interview a snowman? Well we managed to put one in the hot seat this week along with their friend Lily. Our Reading focus has been on the heart-warming Christmas tale of “Lily and the Snowman”, where a snowman magically comes to life in Lily’s garden, the two build up a strong bond only for Lily to grow up and the pair drift apart (all while the snowman lived in Lily’s fridge). Our pupils took turns to be the main characters, whilst the rest of the class used their inference skills to ask questions about how they might have felt at certain parts of the story.
Water resistance was the focus of our Science experiments this week. Tasked with investigating how changing the shape of an object affected the amount of water resistance it was subjected to, the class took part in a competition to see who could create a shape which would reach the bottom of the tank the quickest. Some very creative designs were on show, but congratulations to Amelie whose effort reached the surface in 0.38 seconds.
The class have been under strict instructions to follow instructions this week, as creating a clear and concise set of instructions is our Writing focus at present. Eary in the week they got to grips with tying a necktie, drawing a house and creating origami. We will build on this further in the coming week and identify the key language and layout that makes a good set of instructions.
There’s just time to see who our lucky certificate winners were this week:
P.E – Sam Wilkinson: Always on task, gives 110% effort in every game.
Learning – Harry: A Strong week all round for Harry, but he has particularly shone on his fractions work in Maths.
Living & Learning: Millie – A mature, confident student who is always demonstrating the best version of herself.
Enjoy the weekend!
Mr. Robson
Year 5 reading
This week in reading, Year 5 have been enjoying a video called ‘Lily and the snowman.’ The video is a story about a child who builds a snowman and he comes to life. When the snowman starts to melt, Lily puts him in the freezer in the garage. Each day she brings him out and they sit and share stories together. Over time, Lily forgets about the snowman and she no longer visits him. Many years later, she remembers that he is still in the freezer in the garage and that she has forgotten all about him now that she is older and has so much to do. She returns to her parents house to see if he is still there – he is! The video is about always making time for the things you love. It might make you shed a tear – I nearly did!
The children have used the video to complete lots of learning over the week. They have thought of questions they could ask Lily and the Snowman. We then did a hot-seating activity in which a child takes on the role of a character. They must answer the questions as if they are the character. The children were also able to apply their oracy skills – voice projection, prosody and clarity and pronunciation.
Have a look at the video at home with your child. What do they like/dislike about it? Can they create some questions for the video? Can they infer what the characters are thinking or feeling?
Science investigation
Our mission, in science this week, was to investigate the effects of water resistance on objects. This followed on from our previous learning about how air resistance effects objects, in which the children found that the impact of air resistance increases, the larger the surface area of the object. We wondered if the same rule applied this time.
The children created five different shapes using plasticine. They had to ensure the mass of each one was the same, but the surface area needed to be different. This is known as the independent variable. The children dropped the shapes into a container of water and timed how long they took to reach the bottom. We had to be very quick at timing! The results were recorded in a table and our next job is to work out the average time for each shape and analyse the results. From this, the children will write a scientific conclusion.
Ask your child about the investigation. Can they tell you about different types of variables withing investigations? You could even set up a similar activity at home and see what results you get.
