Junior Leadership Team Elections
It’s that time of year again where we vote for new members of the Junior Leadership Team. Do you fancy being the representative for your class? Can you listen well to other people’s ideas and opinions? Do you want to make a difference in our school? Then this is the role for you.
Make sure you take a look at this weeks homework – you will need to get writing a speech. It will need to convince others that you are the best candidate – there will be lots of competition! Make sure you mention your strengths, qualities, what you’d like to change in school and any other useful skills you might have.
Good luck!
5/6A Class Assembly
Just a quick reminder that Class 5/6A will be hosting our Class Assembly this coming Friday afternoon, and we can’t wait to welcome parents, grandparents and family members into school. The pupils have been working really hard in putting the assembly together to showcase all of their learning over the past 6 weeks.
Class 5/6A News
Hard to believe that we only have two weeks of this half-term left! Let’s catch up on what Class 5/6A have been getting up to this week.
A big thank you to everyone who came to see us in our Watch Us While We Work session earlier this week. It was great to be able to welcome you into our classrooms, and we hope you came away from the session with some useful tools to support your child’s learning at home.
Ancient Egypt has been the focus for the majority of our learning this week. In Reading, we held a debate on whether Howard Carter (who discovered the intact tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun in November 1922) was a positive figure in history. Our pupils used a variety of resources to build a case for their argument, and then practiced their debating, reasoning and listening skills to discuss the question.
In Topic, we have looked at how the Ancient Egyptians used the River Nile to survive and prosper, and wrote our names on papyrus in hieroglyphics. Science saw us delve into the murky world of bacteria and microbes, and building on our learning from earlier in the term, use Carl Linnaeus’ classification system to create a key for various microbes.
Good luck to all of our Year 6 pupils who will be competing in the cross-country competition at Brigshaw High School on Monday. We wish you the best of luck! Next Friday sees Class 5/6A hosting their class assembly. We look forward to welcoming the parents and families of Class 5/6A into school for our performance.
Just time to look back on our certificate winners for this week.
Living and Learning – Gene. Showing real maturity with his answers in class discussions, providing thoughtful responses and always showing respect to his classmates.
Sport – Bethany C. Gave 110% in our circuit training this week. Tackled every exercise with enthusiasm and a huge smile on her face.
Great learning – Amelia. Constantly produces well-presented work in all subjects, a willingness to learn and makes the right choice first time, every time!
Have a lovely weekend!
Living and Learning: I respect others
During our Living and Learning and Circle Time sessions this week, we have been focusing on what respect means to us, and how we can show respect to others. Here’s what some of our pupils have said about what respect means to them:
Helping my friend if they have hurt themselves in the playground
Looking at someone when they are speaking to you
Treating others how we want to be treated
Being kind and saying please
Not leaving people out in games
Respect comes in many different shapes and forms. To show respect, we have to understand that we are all different. We all possess characteristics, traits and values which make us unique. Our discussions this week have seen us explore the idea of our Protected Characteristics (Age, Disability, Race, Religion/Belief, Sex (Gender), Pregnancy and Maternity, Sexual Orientation, Gender Reassignment and Maternity and Pregnancy); how the law prevents discrimination against us for these reasons, and look at real-life case studies to understand this in more detail.
Our pupils now have a greater understanding of the wider world around them, a stronger appreciation of an individual’s unique characteristics, and can demonstrate respect in many different ways.
Have you lost yourself in a book this week?
Well done to all those children who are reading regularly at home – you are fantastic! We set the expectation that reading should be taking place on a daily basis and some of you have really risen to the challenge. Reading regularly helps improve knowledge, fluency and vocabulary so it’s well worth the investment.
Don’t forget that the children are all set a target page each week and a task for them to complete in their journals. These need to be returned to school every Friday. Thank you to all the parents who are supporting their children with reading at home and signing their journals – you’re making a real difference. If you need some help on how to support your child with their reading, please pop in for a chat and we will be happy to help.
Thanks again to all those avid readers!
Science: microbes
This weeks science lesson focused on microbes. There are three different types of microbe – bacteria, viruses and fungi. These are micro-organisms – they can only be seen under a microscope. The children researched six different types and made notes on each one. This linked well with our note-taking lessons in writing last week. The children had to identify the important information and record this in note form using bullet points and sub-headings. They were able to identify which microbes were friendly and which posed as a threat to our health. Following their research, they’re going to create a classification key.
Homework: weekly check
Each week, children have a times tables and spelling check. This helps us to tailor our teaching to meet the needs of individual questions. In year 5/6, we have 8 questions for times tables knowledge and 8 for spelling.
As you can see in the picture, the times tables check covers multiplication, division, inverse calculations and scaling by 10 or 100. Use this as a guide when working with your children at home. Little and often will help children to retain key facts. Perhaps, while cooking, walking to school or just after a five minute daily session on Timestables Rockstars.
Class 5/6A News w/e 30th September
Another week has flown by in Class 5/6A. Let’s see what the pupils have been getting up to this week …
Our Writing focus this week has been on effective note taking and using these to create informative summaries. A whole host of topics were covered in their summaries, ranging from Shrek and Leeds Rhinos, through to the Isle of Arran and The Queen! It’s been lovely to see the pupils engage enthusiastically with subjects they are so passionate about.
In Topic, we have travelled all the way back to 3,000BCE and explored some of the ancient civilisations that existed at the time, namely the Shang Dynasty, Ancient Sumer and the Indus Valley. Next stop, Ancient Egypt. Circle Time has been reintroduced into our weekly timetable and allows the pupils the opportunity to discuss our Living and Learning focus in more depth and share their thoughts on a range of topics.
We are looking forward to welcoming parents to our ‘Watch us while we work’ session on Tuesday morning and be able to see our pupils in action in the classroom. It’s been very pleasing to see the number of pupils who had completed their reading records this week. A big well done to pupils and parents for keeping on track with their reading! Remember to keep working hard on your times tables practice. If you need access to your TT Rockstars or Numbots account, do let me know and I’ll provide you with login details.
Finally, over to our certificate winners for this week:
Summer (Learning) – Making huge progress towards independent learning in Maths, a brilliant summary on the life of The Queen, and an overall positive attitude.
Emilia (Sport) – Infectious enthusiasm which rubs off on her classmates. Showing real flair in her volleyball serving and passing.
Amelie (Living and Learning) – Constantly providing insightful and mature answers in group discussions, and for embracing our Circle Time values.
Have a great weekend!
Interpreting characters
We have been reading some extracts from ‘Fireborn’, a children’s novel written by Aisling Fowler. This book is set in a snowy forest in a prehistoric world and we meet the character, Twelve. The children read the extracts and highlighted key points that they thought identified what the characters were like. What are their personalities like? How do we know? The children then focused on a character called Weaponmaster Victory – a fierce, strict character that we decided we wouldn’t really like to meet!
They commented in their books, their thoughts.
” I think she is scary because she is strict with her class and they are afraid that she will punish them.’
“I think she is scary and I wouldn’t like her teaching me!”
We are getting the exciting opportunity to meet Aisling Fowler later this term as part of an author interview on Zoom. We are really looking forward to this.
Where has that week gone?
It’s hard to imagine we are at the end of our third week of term, time is flying by so fast at the moment! Another superb week of learning in Class 5/6A. Year 5 started the week by reading the Hilaire Belloc poem “Matilda” and using our inference reading skills to determine how certain characters acted when experiencing particular emotions. In Maths, Y5 have been using Gattegno charts to answer place value questions, and partitioning numbers up to 1,000,000!
I am immensely proud of all of Class 5/6A for their efforts in Writing this week. All week we have been building up towards writing a passage to depict how we would open the package if we were in Lil’s shoes in our class novel; “Secrets of a Sun King”. Using a variety of sentence starters, similes, metaphors and adverbials, they have produced some superb pieces which will be adorning the walls of the classroom next week. Our Y5 class ended the week practising our debating skills; using structured sentence openers to put their point across whilst respecting the opinions of others. We had some entertaining debates over how fun poetry can be, and if tomato ketchup was the best accompaniment for chips.
If your child comes home tonight shouting “Salve!” (Pronounced ‘sal-way’), then they are greeting you in Latin. We have had a lot of fun today greeting each other and beginning our journey for this year into Latin.
Finally to this week’s winners ………
For great learning…
Sadie – consistently working hard in all lessons, showing a significant improvement in her arithmetic test score, and producing an excellent piece of writing to depict a character’s dilemma on opening a parcel which didn’t belong to her.
For sport and physical activity…
Elisa– Raring to go after injury, she has given 110% in P.E this week. Displaying great teamworking skills in our warm-up games, and excellent hand-eye coordination in our volleyball passing.
For living and learning…
Travis– Our focus this week has been using good manners and throughout school you are always showing this; warm greetings for friends and teachers, using please and thank you, and asking questions in a respectful manner. Great job!
Have a great weekend!