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!
Remarkable readers!
5/6 B have been working tremendously hard at home on their learning. We set the expectation that reading should be taking place at home on a daily basis. Some children have made sure that reading is a priority for them and have read regularly – well done. Their aim has been to make it onto the class podium – gold, silver or bronze position. If you check your child’s reading journal, you might spot a coloured star. This will tell you if they’ve made it onto the podium that week. One amazing child, Noah, read so much that I’ve put his name on the class ceiling as he aimed so high with his reading – he read seven times last week.
Thank you to those parents who are supporting reading at home – it will really benefit your child. Please continue to get your child to complete the weekly task – this will be recorded in their journal every Friday along with a target page. Thanks again to the parents who are signing the journals too.
Class novel
In the 5/6 phase, we have begun our new class novel – Secrets of the Sun King by Emma Carroll. This is a historical text that links well with our topic learning about Ancient Egypt. Emma Carroll is an author who the children will meet again later in the year when they learn about World War II and they read Letters from the Lighthouse.
This current book is set in 1922 when the world was waiting for news about the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt. Lil (the main character) finds a mysterious package on her grandad’s doorstep, just as he becomes very ill.
The parcel was sent by a famous Egytologist who has just been found dead. Ask your child about this part of the book! Lil decides, with the help of her new friends, that the only way to help her grandad is to return the package to its rightful resting place in Egypt. The children are already enjoying the twists and turns of this exciting adventure.
Maths: Year 6 arithmetic checks
Children in year 6 have gone home today with their first arithmetic check. These checks will happen most weeks throughout the year. Each week, in class, we focus on two or three specfic questions. This should result in their checks being two or three marks higher each week. This is a marathon rather than a sprint. Don’t expect 40/40 in the first few weeks.
This week we’re focusing on three areas for development:
- lining up the digits
- multiplying by 10, 100 and 1000
- dividing by 10, 100 and 1000
Support your child at home by practising similar questions to the ones in the arithmetic booklet.
Line up the digits e.g. 3.521 + 2.1 = 5.621 rather than 3.541. Top tip: the decimal place stays in the same place (because he’s rather lazy).
Multiply by 10, 100, 1000 – Ask your chidren to show you how to “move all the digits to the left to the left.” What does it mean by “Show the jumps?”
As with all learning, little and often is the key to success.
Reading: Book Club
Year 6 children in Mr Lindsay’s reading group have been showing off their drawing skills in this week’s reading activity. Children recreated scences from their reading book with fantastic results.
Thank you for supporting your child at home. All children had signed reading records and talked with enthusiasm about their chosen books. Reading for 15 minutes each night with your child has a dramatic impact on on their learning across the curriculum.
This week’s reading activity is a comic strip. In addition to this, children should find out a bit about the author of their book:
- How many books have they written?
- What inspires them to write?
- Do they have any common themes in their books?
The week that was
It’s been a very busy week in Class 5/6A. Let’s look back on what the pupils have been getting up to …
This week has really seen our pupils demonstrate their 8Rs of Learning across all subjects. Monday saw our pupils ready to tackle our new Maths topic of Place Value for numbers up to 1 million. They demonstrated their resourcefulness and resilience through use of Place Value charts and counters to complete their work this week. In Writing, we were risk takers in scripting a short dialogue to perform in front of our classmates to show the moral dilemma Lil would face in opening her grandfather’s package, from our class novel Secrets of a Sun King. The pupils were fantastic and showcased some very thought-provoking dilemmas.
Our Topic work focused on the innovations seen within the Stone Age, and the pupils then took responsibility for their own learning in creating posters and presentations to show facts which they had found themselves about the Bronze Age. Our Living and Learning session allowed us to remember our school and class rules, reflect on the good choices we make and create our own Classroom Charter for learning.
Finally, our certificate winners for this week are…
For great learning…
Sam Webb– consistently working hard in all lessons and demonstrating a real positive attitude. I was particularly impressed by your recognition of different sentence starters.
For sport and physical activity…
Freya– A real team player. You took part enthusiastically in our P.E lessons this week; showing real determination and respect to your teammates.
For living and learning…
Arthur– You contributed fantastically to our discussion on the 8Rs of Learning and helped create some great rules for our Classroom Charter.
Have a great weekend!
PE: volleyball
5,6B have been warming up their volleyball skills. They worked in pairs to learn and develop some basic serves and passes. They enjoyed being able to ‘bump’ the ball to their partner and then progressed further to an overhand serve. They had to think about the position of their feet, hands and the ball in order to project the ball accurately. The end of the sessions saw us trying our hand at some actual games of volleyball. The children set up a small court and created a point system to see who won. We will keep working on these skills over the next few weeks.