The children all appear to have had a good Christmas and are settling back to work well.

They seem to be enjoying our new topic ‘Stars and Stripes’ and hopefully they should be able to name and locate several American states after Thursday’s afternoon of map work!

I’ve attached our class newsletter below giving you an outline of some of the areas we will be covering this term. Please do not hesitate to speak to myself or another member of staff in Class 5 if you have any questions at all.

class 5 newsletter spring 2015

Many thanks.

Mrs Natalie Johnson

As in previous years, we will be running an after-school booster club in preparation for Year 6 SATs and this will start in the next couple of weeks,as soon as a suitable day of the week has been decided on.   The SATs this year will take place during the week starting Monday 11th May.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to speak to me.

Thanks for your support.

Mrs Natalie Johnson

Numeracy

At the start of the week we used the knowledge that 30cm is (approximately) 12″ to find other equivalencies. Children quickly got the hang of this and could convert any metric lengths I gave them to inches/feet and inches.  They then practised converting from metric to imperial by measuring their heights in centimetres then converting to feet and inches before checking their answers against a conversion graph created by one group.

For most of the week we have focused on time and have used real-life problems to practise finding time intervals and reading 24-hour clock times on train timetables.

Children have been given maths homework linked to finding time intervals which is due in for Monday.  Their task will reinforce what they have already covered in class but , if they need adult help to complete it, please can you make a note of this on their homework for me and I will look through it with them next week.

History

We have focused on Life in the Trenches this week and children were set an independent research task to learn about an aspect of trench life which they are interested in. Their chosen topics included illnesses, first aid, food supplies and how and why the trenches were built.

Literacy/R.E./PSHE

This week children have written in different areas of the curriculum.  After watching a live assembly from The Tower of London on Monday afternoon, they used this experience to help them write about their feelings and emotions on the afternoon of Remembrance Day. Some of their comments were quite breathtaking and showed maturity far beyond their years.  Today I gave them the starting line, “If I could be…(a person of their choice) for a day, I would…” As well as writing in role as the hero they had dressed up as today, several children also chose to take on less-obvious roles and explained how they would strive for world peace, an end to hunger and cures for all diseases.  Again, many of their comments were incredible and showed selflessness and a real desire to help others.

Class 5, I’m so proud of you – keep it up!

Literacy

We’ve continued reading WarHorse, linked to our WWI topic, looking at the different types of sentences used and using dictionaries to define more sophisticated vocabulary. 

Towards the end of the week, we wrote diary entries in role as different characters from the text and almost ended the week in a class debate on should members of our royal family fight on the battle front; this wasn’t planned and developed purely from a Year 6 discussion on how army officers can be sent to the front without ever having seen combat. I was extremely impressed with Year 6s’ maturity and enthusiasm regarding this aspect of the text!

Next week we will continue with diary entries and also write letters home from the trenches.

Numeracy

We have continued with and extended our work on place value, including ordering and comparing decimals and using column additon to add money amounts. Next week we will look at column addition and different methods of subtraction in various contexts including money. 

Keep up the hard work Class 5!