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