Friday 5th December
Happy Friday everyone! I can't believe we are finally into the month December. It feels like time has flown over since September and I know all of the children are very excited for all of the Christmas activities happening over the next few weeks. This week we have completed our learning on negative numbers, found out all about the relationship between the Sun and the Earth and we have began to create our own pop up Christmas cards.
This week I would like to share with you all the amazing work the children have completed in English. We have been exploring persuasion texts in our English lessons and have been looking at how to write a persuasive piece of writing about a place. We were introduced last week to a model text called 'Adrenaline Towers' which was all about a theme park and leisure resort. It had lots of persuasive techniques to try and encourage people to visit the attraction. Following on from our learning of the text, we have thought about creating our own attractions that we could persuade people to go to. Some of the attractions included a rollercoaster park, gaming centre and sports arena. Additionally, we have created a plan of what our texts are going to be made up of including persuasive features such as rhetorical questions, a recommendation for an expert, incentives for visiting and the use of the FAB technique to identify key features of our attractions and the advantages and benefits of these. I am looking forward to reading the children's persuasive texts that they are going to write next week.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 28th November
It has been the busiest week for us this week in Oceania class. We have been all about negative numbers with Miss Hughes, began to create our prototype Christmas cards in DT and we have been exploring a new model text in English called Adrenaline Towers which has the purpose to persuade.
This week on Tuesday we had our fantastic educational visit to the city of Durham. We were so excited to get to visit the city as a lot of us had never been before. The first stop on our visit was to Durham Cathedral. The coach dropped us off as close as possible and the children were in awe and wonder on our walk up towards the cathedral. They couldn't believe the size of the cathedral! We were greeted by the lovely Sarah who took us on a guided tour around the cathedral, monk's dormitory and the great kitchen. We got to see the resting place of St Cuthbert, explore what life was like for a monk and then have access to some of St Cuthbert's greatest treasures such as his pectoral cross and his coffin. The children asked some fantastic questions throughout the morning and were eager to learn as much as possible.
Once we had our lunch, we began our fieldwork around the centre of Durham. We were tasked with a map and set of questions which we had to find the answers too. This took us on a walk over Prebends Bridge, along past the river and then up into the marketplace. We loved following the map and finding out all about the history of Durham during our visit. It was lovely to hear so many of the children comment how much they had enjoyed the visit but also that they wanted to go back with their families.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 21st November
Happy Friday everyone! It has been a very cold this week and we have loved having that small amount of snowfall, even if it was short lived. This week we have welcomed the lovely Miss Hughes into our class. Miss Hughes is in her final year of training to be a teacher and will be with us for a little while to complete the last steps of her training before she qualifies. The children have been brilliant at welcoming her into our class and showing her our class routines.
We were very lucky yesterday morning to have the opportunity to go and visit our local library. It is only a short couple of minutes walk from our school grounds and we love being welcomed in by Kyle the librarian every time we visit. On our visit this time we found out all about the dewy decimal system for organising non-fiction books. Kyle explained the way the books were organised in the library and set us a challenge of sorting out some popcorn with books on into the correct categories. I was so impressed by the children's team work during the session to complete the task and organise the books into the correct categories. After completing our task, we were given some quiet reading time to choose books from the library to read. We loved having so much choice and spending time reading with our friends. It is free to have a library card so I would definitely recommend anyone visiting to get one so they can enjoy all the wonderful books that are on offer.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 14th November
Happy Children in Need day everyone! We have had some wonderful celebrations in school today including the most wonderful bake sale where we baked and tucked in to some fantastic cakes. This week we have started our new unit in Maths on money, began to innovate our warning stories and we found out all about the grassland biome in Geography.
This week I wanted to celebrate the whole of Oceania class for their phenomenal progress in swimming. We go swimming at Blaydon leisure centre weekly and for a lot of children, they had never had any experience of going into a swimming pool when they first started in September. It is hard to believe that 9 weeks later, they are becoming such confident swimmers and have no fear going into the swimming pool. The smaller pool group have being learning how to float and roll onto their back when swimming front crawl. In the bigger pool, the children have been practising how to roll and breath when swimming a full length of front crawl. The children's technique and resilience in both pools has been fantastic and they should all be very proud of themselves.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 7th November
Happy first week back everyone! We have worked our socks off this week in Oceania class and I couldn't be prouder of how the children have returned to school. We have been continuing our work on decimal numbers in Maths, created anti-racism ribbons in PSHE and began exploring our new suspense text called Ice Forest in English.
This week we had the fantastic opportunity to work with the Royal Air Force on a STEM project called the Road to RIAT. We took part in a full day online workshop alongside other schools that was focused on developing our skills and knowledge of STEM. We firstly found out what rockets were built up of the science behind a rocket. We were challenged to design our own rockets based on the features we had discussed and then we had to build these rockets. It was a tricky challenge with time constraints but we worked so well in our teams of 3 to complete the challenge. The next part was testing the rockets to see how far they could go. We had so much fun testing them at different angles in the classroom. We created some data following this about the speed of our rockets and the average distance they would travel. This led us into our afternoon activity which was the sustainability project. We discussed what sustainability was and how the RAF are sustainable in their mission to lower their carbon footprint. We were tasked with the competition challenge of creating a sustainable aircraft. We had to think about the design features, purpose and materials that would be used. We had some brilliant ideas in our class such as jets that would help with wild fires, plants seeds to stop deforestation and pick up litter and debris from the Ocean to protect sea life. I was so impressed with the ideas shown throughout the day but also the team work of the children.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Mrs Thompson.
Friday 24th October
Happy Friday everyone! It is our last day of the term today and the children have worked settled so well into Year 5 in this first half-term. I couldn’t be prouder of how they have adapted to new routines and how much they have been engaged in new learning. This week we have been writing some reports all about the Taiga biome, learnt how to search things on the internet effectively and we have been learning all about the temperate deciduous biome in Geography.
On Wednesday, we had the lovely prayer space team in to complete a workshop with us. We love it when they come into school because it gives us time to reflect and have a time to be calm. Some of the activities they had set up included creating raindrops of hope to go on a Rainbow of Hope, creating with dough people and things that we are grateful for and a hook a duck activity where the number on the duck correlated to something we may be thankful for. We all got involved in all of the activities and it was so lovely to hear what the children found special to them and what their hopes and dreams were for the future. This is something that has been reflected in their recent work in Religion and Worldviews where the children have been exploring different views that people may have on Religion and also the idea of religious freedom. They have had such a fantastic attitude in these lessons and have shown such mature responses to big ideas and questions. It truly shows what wonderful young people they all are.
I hope you all have a lovely restful half-term break and enjoy any Halloween celebrations.
Mrs Thompson
Friday 17th October
We have had a brilliant week in Oceania class this week. It has been filled with learning but also lots of fun as some of us took part in an indoor GSSP Athletics tournament yesterday. For those of us who didn’t go, we had a fantastic morning taking part in a Taskmaster game filled with 8 different challenges. We have been learning all about how to add and subtract decimal numbers in Maths, played some competitive basketball games in PE and began learning all about the evidence that has been found to help us understand the Shang Dynasty.
This week I wanted to share with you all the fantastic work the children have complete within our Art lessons. Our focus for this half-term was to explore the master skill of drawing. We have taken time to learn all about observational drawing and how to create light and shadow within the lessons. We have applied these skills to a focus of creating a WWI propaganda poster. After some careful study and explore of some of the posters from WWI, we then made our own plan for what we needed to have included within our posters. We came up with some brilliant designs and ideas and we have been working hard over the last 2 weeks to draw and finalise these posters. I have been so impressed by the creativity shown by everyone and furthermore the level of detail and accuracy. Keep up the fantastic work Oceania class!
Have a lovely weekend!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 10th October
It has been a fantastic week in Oceania class and we have been working so hard within lessons this week. We have researched about the taiga biome, learned how to say our birthdays in French and planned our own dissolving investigations in Science.
On Wednesday we had such a fantastic half day with Adam Bushnell. We love it when Adam comes to visit our school as we love getting creative and writing along with Adam. He always comes with different ideas and our session with Adam was all about WWI. We have been learning in History all about the life in the trenches for soldiers. Adam shared with us that his great grandfather was a soldier in WWI. He brought a number of his personal items for us to see such as his dog tag, hat from his uniform and the small books he was given when he signed up to be part of the army in 1915. We looked at all of the artefacts and imagined what it must have been like to be a soldier in the trenches. We spent some time outside making little shelters for ‘Jet’ the tortoise and tried to picture what it must have been like for the soldiers in WWI who had to dig out the trenches when they arrived in Europe. We looked at some photos of what they looked like and explored some different smells that would have been in the trenches. We then thought about bringing all of these ideas together and began to write some powerful poetry. The children had some fantastic ideas and used some powerful adjectives and verbs to describe the different elements of war. We were all so impressed by their ideas and creativity.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 3rd October
It has been another great week in Oceania class. We have been continuing to improve on our swimming ability and confidence in the water, explored how to say the date in French and took part in a really fun skittles experiment in Science to explore how different materials will dissolve and link this to the particle model.
This week has been National Poetry Week and we have taken part in some fantastic sessions to explore poetry. We have been working with the National Literacy Trust and their theme of ‘Remembrance’. We have explored some different poems written on the theme of Remembrance including a poem by Tomfoolery. We completed a live workshop with Tom on Wednesday who helped us to understand this thinking process behind writing poetry. He gave us some fantastic ideas to use in our poems linked to the theme and we all felt very inspired. Over the past 2 days we have begun writing our own poems linked to Remembrance. We chose to think about how we remember and what it means to us. I have been so impressed the creativeness, imagination and empathy shown by the children in their poems. Please see below some examples.
Have a lovely ‘wet’ weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 26th September
Happy Friday everyone! We have had an incredible week in Oceania class and I couldn’t be prouder of how well the children are doing with their new routines in Year 5. This week we have been learning all about life in the trenches for soldier in WWI, exploring short division of 2 digit numbers in Maths and researching all about propaganda posters in Art.
This week I wanted to share with you our PSHE lesson which focused on owning our learning charter. We began the lesson of by playing a game to connect us all where we had to work together to get lined up in order of our birthdays but without talking! We then had our calming time where we relaxed our minds before we went into exploring the objectives of the lesson. Our first challenge was to work together as a group to create the tallest paper tower using only paper and cellotape in 5 minutes. The task wasn’t focused on who had the tallest tower though, it was about which team worked together best as a group. We soon realised that a lot of us struggled with working together as a group and we discussed that this can also be tricky for adults. We came up with some key rules that we thought you should have when working with a group and decided on the top 6 as a whole class. These are going to be a set of rules that we are going to follow all year.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 19th September
We have had another amazing week in Oceania class! The children have been working their socks off at innovating their new warning stories, learning the method for short multiplication and finding out all about filtration in Science.
This week I wanted to share the wonderful experience we had in Music on Wednesday morning. We had the fantastic Gateshead Music Workshop team in who completed a movie workshop with us. We got involved trying to guess the film and then had a go at being part of the band playing the soundtracks. We played a number of different instruments and loved clapping along the beat. The children love being part of the band and taking part in the music workshop.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Mrs Thompson
Friday 12th September
Happy Friday everyone! It has been such a fantastic second week of school for the children in Oceania class. They have been working hard to get into our new routine and following the Year 5 timetable and already they are experts in this routine. We have explored a local artist to Oceania called John Pule this week, began to learn how to complete short multiplication using a formal method and have started reading and exploring our new book 'Varmints' in Guided Reading.
This week I wanted to share with you all the wonderful work the children have complete in History. We began our first lesson on WWI on Tuesday and wow I was impressed. The children were so engaged and eager to learn as much information as possible and it showed in the work they complete. We explored the key factors that led to the start of the war including empires, alliances, the arms race and the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The children were fantastic historians, asking key questions about the event and wanted to understand the consequences of certain events. We had a debate where we explored which of the factors we thought was the most important factor in WWI starting. Additionally, we wrote a newspaper article imagining we were present the day after the Archduke and his wife were assassinated. The children reported on the key events, showing their fantastic understanding of the topic. I can't wait to see how engaged they are in our next lessons when we begin to explore what life was like for soldiers on the battlefront and in the trenches.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 5th September
WOW! What a fantastic first week back we have had in Oceania class. It is hard to believe the children are new to Year 5 as they have picked up routines, new tasks and a new classroom with ease. I have been very impressed with their attitude towards learning and how hard they have all tried in all of the tasks we have complete. We have explored our dreams and goals for Year 5, created some personality spirals in Art and have made predictions and responses to a book called 'Farther'.
This week I wanted to share with you the brilliant work we have complete based on our class name 'Oceania'. We started the week off by asking and answering some brilliant questions about Oceania. We used the internet to research key facts all about Oceania and recorded these so we could use them later in the week. On Wednesday, we created our own pop up books all about Oceania. These included the information we had researched as well sliders and pop ups which we learnt how to create. I was so impressed by the children's creativity and designs.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Thompson