Welcome back everyone I hope you all had a great half-term!

The children have really thrown themselves into the week working ever so hard, picking up where they left off before the holidays so well done.

A massive well done to everyone regarding the school trip to Chester Zoo as well, your behaviour was exemplary setting a good example for the younger children and drawing some nice comments from zoo staff. I hope you all enjoyed the trip and learnt some cool new facts about the animals we saw.

This week in English we have turned our attention back towards diary entries and the children have been looking at fronted adverbials and relative clauses. They have produced some fantastic work using great creativity to generate some really interesting pieces of writing which has resulted in some very effective diary entries.

In Maths we have been focusing on two-way tables and using them to pick out key information as well as coming up with our own questions to put to others, reasoning by using the information to decide whether they agree or disagree with statements and why they have reached that conclusion as well as completing tables that have missing pieces of information by using the data that they have been provided with. It has required some really deep mathematical thinking with lots of trial and error, the children have shown great perseverance and have done some brilliant work throughout the week.

The homework this week revisits letter writing. This is something we focused on just before half-term, with the pupils producing some amazing work. This time they need to apply it to their Chester Zoo trip as opposed to our class book.

Have a fantastic weekend and I’ll see you all on Monday,

Mr Sudlow.

Well done to all the children in class 5 for a fantastic half-term you’ve been amazing! Everybody has worked so hard and achieved so much, you should be really proud of yourselves.

Last week was our assessment week and the children did really well, the week highlighted just how much progress everyone has made over the first half-term. Our focus in English was a formal written report and to aid them with this the children gathered their own notes from our class book so that they could refer to them during their independent writing. We looked at examples of formal written reports and the children used highlighters to pick out the key features and points showing an exceptional depth of knowledge and understanding.

In Maths we looked at multi-step problems and how we could use the RUCSAC method to work through questions in a logical and accurate fashion. With so much to concentrate on and so many decisions to make for each problem the children worked efficiently and effectively to show deep understanding of the four operations. We finished the week with a consolidation task that was set out as an investigation in a sweet factory which the pupils loved and really applied themselves to. From this task it was clear to see that everyone’s confidence has improved since the start of term as there was some great mathematical thinking and reasoning going on.

This week in English we have focused on letter writing. We identified the features and their purpose at the start of the week before moving onto persuasive devices and writing persuasively to try and capture a reader’s attention. On Wednesday our focus was modal verbs which indicate certainty or possibility. The children were really enthused and produced some extremely persuasive sentences that they have then utilised today when writing their letter.

We have made a brief start to our third block of Maths this week as we looked at timetables. It was only an introduction session but all the children took a great deal of time to work efficiently and effectively, producing some great discussion and attention to detail. We will be carrying on with this block after half-term. The children participated in their fourth arithmetic test of the term at the start of this week. Everybody is doing so well in these tests, me and Mrs Allen are extremely proud of the way the children approach each test and the determination they show to succeed. This is certainly reflected in the scores they have attained so far.

There is no homework for half-term because the children may want to have a go at the writing competition.

Thank you to all the children and parents in class 5 for welcoming me into the school this term, enjoy your break and I’ll see you after the holidays ready to get back into it.

Thanks, Mr Sudlow.

Well done to everyone in class 5 this week, it has been a bit topsy-turvy with the bikeability course as pupils have been in and out of class depending on their group. But everyone has worked really hard and we have achieved plenty, both in the classroom and on the bikeability programme.

In English this week we have looked at the features of formal reports with an aspiration that we will write our own next week using notes we have made on the investigation that two characters are carrying out in our class book. The children have worked really hard to identify the chronological order of the investigation and to recount all of the key details so that they can take their knowledge into their extended piece of writing .

Our main focus in Maths this week has been using the inverse operation. This is a tricky concept as sometimes problems have to be looked at from a completely different angle. However the children have really put a lot of effort into understanding the topic in depth and have used it to flip problems round in order to solve them, to make choices about what operation and method they need to use through detailed mathematical thinking and they have grown in confidence enormously over the past week. The children completed their third arithmetic test of this term earlier this week and we are so pleased with how everybody is showing progress, this is down to their hard work and the way they apply themselves in Maths so well done class 5!

Have a brilliant weekend, see you Monday.

Mr Sudlow.

Well done to everyone in class 5 for a brilliant week last week!

We completed a lot of reading in our English lessons whilst debating and predicting what will happen next explaining reasoning and using the events in the book to make assumptions as to where the story might go. The children also worked really hard on a critic’s review of the play that the main character goes to watch in the book focusing on description that uses positive words to create a persuasive piece of writing. They also concentrated on the key aspects of the play that they needed to review during their writing to make sure they really sold the play to the reader.

We had a fantastic week in Maths moving onto our new unit of work that focuses on addition and subtraction which is something we’ve looked at a little bit during our arithmetic sessions. The children worked really hard to use the methods we were looking at in a variety of situations and problems, utilising their work and their answers to reason efficiently and accurately.

We had a great start to the week today completing our third arithmetic test of the term and starting this week’s focus in English which is formal report writing. Well done on a brilliant start to the week class 5.

Mr Sudlow.

Well done to everyone in class 5 for an amazing week.

The pupils have worked hard on diary entries in English identifying the key features of this particular genre of writing, whilst also identifying the emotions the main character has experienced during chapter three. We have discussed the key events of the chapter as we have read through, highlighting how those events would make the character feel. We have also focused on using alternative words as a synonym, helping the pupils to make their writing more exciting by replacing less interesting adjectives with engaging description words.

In Maths we have worked on place value moving onto using six digit numbers and the pupils have progressed immensely throughout the week. The homework this week is an extension of the problem solving and reasoning activities we have been exploring in class. Some pupils may have already looked at the first part of the homework in class as we have made great strides in our topic today, if this is the case please don’t feel like they have to complete those questions again, just carry on from wherever they got to during today’s lesson. The homework is due in on Wednesday so if the pupils have any questions regarding the task, I can answer those at the beginning of next week before the hand in date.

Have a good weekend everyone, see you all on Monday.

Mr Sudlow.

Year 5/6 English

This week the children have been writing a ship’s journal based on Maia’s journey to the Amazon in ‘Journey to the River Sea.’  We focused on making our writing quite formal as a record of the journey.

Maths

We have worked on negative numbers this week and then focused on addition and subtraction using the column method.  Some children were working with numbers up to 6 digits to solve some tricky problems.

Year 5/6 Geography

We revised the water cycle this week and made sure we understood the terms ‘evaporation’, ‘condensation’ and ‘precipitation.’  The children watched video animations of the water cycle and looked at one we made in class using a bowl of hot water.  They then drew their own water cycles labelling the features they had learnt about.

Year 5/6 Science

The children enjoyed sharing their homework on plastic and we discussed how plastic pollution is affecting ocean wildlife. We shared our views on plans to use a giant floating barrier to collect plastic and how it could actually be detrimental to animals that are surface feeders.   Children then used their existing knowledge of properties of different materials to plan how they are going to test these known properties in the next lesson.

Have a good weekend.

Class 5 and 6 have settled back into school quickly and have worked really hard this week, both during their separate lessons for Maths and English in the mornings as well as joint lessons in the afternoons for other subjects.

Year 6 English

This week we have started our new class novel, Journey to the River Sea, which children seem to be enjoying.  We have focused on the main character Maia and used evidence from Chapter 1 to help write character descriptions/fact files to show what we know about her so far.  Next week we will be creating journals, in role as Maia, describing her voyage to Manaus in Brazil.

Year 6 Maths

Our work on place value this week has focused on numbers up to ten million. We have looked at comparing and ordering numbers and next week we will look at rounding and negative numbers before starting a new unit on the four operations.

Science

In science we worked in groups to share what we already know about the characteristics, properties and uses of different materials. At the end of the lesson each group was given just ten minutes to plan how to persuade the rest of class in only 60 seconds why their material was better than all the other materials. We were really pleased that every single child in the class was able to take part verbally in the presentation which was quite a daunting task for some children with such little warning!  Well done everyone.

Homework

The homework task this week is following on from our science lesson on Tuesday. We would like children to research plastic as there were quite a few misconceptions about how plastic is made and what resources are needed.  This piece of homework needs to be given in by Tuesday please and all children have been given instructions in their homework books. They will be sharing their work with other children in their group.

Geography

We were absolutely amazed at children’s summer holiday homework on rivers and mountains and they seemed to enjoy sharing their research this week. Their work looks wonderful on the displays outside Class 6 (the old Class 5) so please feel free to come in and have a look.

Spellings

07.09.18

We hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Johnson, Mrs Foster and Mr Sudlow