Drama, gymnastics and diversity

Happy Children in Need day! The children looked great in all their spotty clothing and accessories. Let’s hope lots of money has been raised for the incredible cause. Talking of charities, how amazing was Dan with his sponsored swim of 120 lengths this week? He has achieved over an utterly staggering £1400! We’re so proud of him in Gwenver class!

Over the last couple of weeks, the children have been learning all about the story of Beowulf, immersing themselves through comprehension, drama and analysing features of a myth. In last week’s grammar test, the children did well. It has given us a good opportunity to see what we need more practise with. Our Viking raid Big Write this week was inspired by their learning of Viking long ships. The children sketched these last week, so we learned all about the raid of Lindisfarne in 793AD and did some fantastic whole class drama alongside music (It’s a shame that the video won’t upload to the website!) They then wrote some superb ‘slow writing’ where the children were tasked with writing six particular sentences in a certain order (fronted adverbial, expanded noun phrase, simile, using subordinating conjunction, relative clauses and questions). The results were great and so they copied them up on special tea-stained paper to show them off in their topic books.

In Maths, we completed our work on solving multi-step problems using the bar model and have turned our attention on reading and interpreting line graphs. The children took part in an addition and subtraction assessment which allowed us to see any gaps that may be missing in their learning. We will continue to work on these areas and ‘drip feed’ learning in where possible to ensure they are confident! Next week, the children will use data collected in circuits earlier in the term to create and draw line graphs independently.

In PSHE (JIGSAW), the children have been learning all cultural diversity and created beautiful STOP RACISM posters in the shape of bows (the ones you can buy in brooch form for various charities throughout the year). It has linked well with our R.E as Miss Brant has been teaching them all about different cultures in Sikhism and also what is important to us. They designed their own Gurdwara (a place where Sikh’s worship) and made comparisons to the Christian  church.

Our gymnastics sessions have been going SO well. The children are making so much progress and they’re absolutely loving it. Learning how to create different balances, how to do effective forward and backward rolls safely as well as jump over and through a vault has been our main focuses. Having our P.E Apprentice, Mr Trudgen, has been useful as it means we can split the class and the children are getting high-quality teaching. In hockey, the children have been learning how to pass effectively and they’ve also had a go at shooting using the ‘push’ technique. They’ll soon move on to playing whole games using and applying the skills learnt.

A massive well done to our recent Star Players. Last week (Bertie, Oscar S and Sam C) and this week (Isla and Ethan) who all showed great progress and determination to improve their skills in either gymnastics or hockey.

What makes an effective web page is what has been the children’s focus in computing. They learnt how to screenshot, paste, create text boxes and use arrows to annotate a mind map. Using Google sites, the children be will creating their own web pages linked to our topic over time.

Next week is our Viking day where all children have been asked to dress up. On Wednesday 21^st, they will wear their clay brooches, prepare and make food as well as create various crafts such as a Viking shield (thanks to those who have donated cardboard – it’s much appreciated!) It should be great fun!

A massive well done to Emma who became last week’s Star Pupil and this week’s Star Writer. And also to Haiden who has continued to work really hard in all aspects of class life this week achieving the coveted star pupil award.

Have a great weekend.

Mr Larter

Autumn Half Term 2 and beyond…

I trust you all had a fab half term! It seems like a distant memory now but that is because we have been working SO hard on improving our instructional writing. Luckily, we have been immersed in this genre for a couple of weeks so the Big Write was made for us! I am so incredibly excited about reading the children’s writing on how they plan to cook their teachers (I reckon I will have nightmares over the weekend!)

In our English lessons, we have been learning about how to write effective instructions based on How to Catch a Dragon. This is linked to our previous dragon writing in persuasive texts. We’ve had some awesome ideas such as using pepper spray, Imagine Dragon music and all types of protective armour! We will be typing these up using our rough drafts as inspiration.

Maths has seen us learn about how to use the inverse operations to solve problems. The children have found this incredibly difficult, so we will be continuing to deepen their learning next week by using bar models, part-part whole strategy and practising our methods so we’re successful. We will then move on to a short unit about statistics.

This half term the children will be learning how to improve their core strength in gymnastics and this week we focused on different balances learning how to counteract our weight using different parts of our bodies. We will move on to jumping through the vault, forward/backward rolls and learning a short gymnastics routine. Leo and Bertie showed great balance and strength and became our star players last week – well done boys! In hockey, which is our team sport this half term, the children reminded themselves of how to dribble with the ball and will learn how to make accurate passes this week.

A few weeks ago, the children created designs for their Viking brooches that this week, they will make using different coloured clay. We’re hoping the children will wear these (all being well) when we have a dress up/Viking culture day in a couple of weeks’ time. A letter about this will be sent out in due course! We will be reading lots of Viking myths and legends leading up to Christmas starting with Beowulf so that the children can write their own myths.

Mr Davey has set up lots of investigations with the children in Science and they have been drawing graphs to present their results. They’ve also been doing lots of planning of their authentic board games ready to make using wood and tiles. Hopefully they will be finished by the end of term.

We’re learning what makes a good webpage in Computing, in the hope that the children will create their own over the coming weeks – they’re all so used to using tablets and iPads that their laptop skills need improving before we do anything else. Internet safety is a huge issue so I introduced them to ‘viruses’ but I will be reinforcing key knowledge throughout Year 5.

We only went and won spelling class of the week last week with a last minute surge! I was so proud. Toby won speller of the whole school so it was a great way to end the week. A massive well done to Adelaide who became our star writer as her persuasive texts about dragons was excellent. Well done guys!

An awesome job by Alice this week, participating in whole class situations and trying really hard with her learning, meant that she achieved Star Pupil on Friday – a huge well done to her. I wonder who will be next?

I will keep the blog updated as often as I can but if there’s anything you’d like to hear more about, please comment. It’s great to read comments and have people engage in the children’s learning.

A massive thank you to Miss Pascoe and Mrs Ballard for their continued efforts in supporting every child and their hard work!
Until next time,
Mr Larter