Week commencing 29 March 2021

The final week of the term, although slightly shorter, was still a busy one.  We started our week with an opportunity to show-off all we had been learning in our maths booster sessions by completing a short assessment – this went well and we felt very proud of all we had achieved over what has been a challenging term of blending home and class-based learning.

In English we finally discovered what happen to Rainbow Crow’s feathers! We worked hard to apply all of the writing techniques that we had learnt into our own narrative to retell the fable.  We enjoyed the opportunity of sharing our ‘best sentences’ to inspire each other’s writing.

We concluded our Super Scientists topic by finding out about the important work of Alexander Fleming and Florence Nightingale.  We investigated why we use soap and how it works in our mini experiment – after all we are all experts in washing our hands now!

We finally managed to hold our day of ‘Superhero School’ which had to be postponed back in January due to lockdown.  The day saw us complete a number of Superhero activities in order to collect stamps in our superhero passports allowing us to graduate from Superhero School.  Activities included, ‘Super Maths’, mask making, working collaboratively to create either a Super HQ or vehicle, superhero fitness training and making our own identity badges with our own secret superhero names. 

Finally, we were all very grateful that we were able to join a special end of term outdoor celebration worship, where we could safely meet (socially distanced in our class bubble) as a whole school.  We were able to reflect, celebrate successes of the term and also bid a fond farewell to members of staff who were retiring / moving on to new adventures.

Looking forward to next term

Next term we are looking forward to starting our Stone Age topic.  This promises to be a fun topic with fantastic opportunities across many areas of the curriculum including, English, science, art and design and history. We are particularly looking forward to showcasing our learning in an immersive Stone Age day….more information to follow!

In maths we will be starting to learn all about fractions and what better way to do that then practically, we are sure that dividing pizza or bars of chocolate will help our understanding of fractions!

Lots more to look forward to but for now we wish you all a safe and restful Easter break (although not too restful as we are feeling quite competitive about adding many minutes of exercise to the Silver Birch Figsbury Challenge class total!)

Week commencing 22 March 2021

Celebrating our week

In what was a very exciting start to the week we welcomed a tank of tadpoles into our class!  We have spent time this week understanding their lifecycle, learning how to care for them correctly and closely monitoring their development.  (I’m sure they appreciate how every child wishes them a ‘good morning’ and checks on their progress!)

This week, in maths, we have been working hard to consolidate our multiplication and division learning, especially applying our knowledge to solving problems.

In English we have learnt a variety of literary devices to help make our writing more detailed and interesting.  We have been incorporating similes, adverbial phrases and amazing adjectives. To help us imagine how our characters may have been feeling when caught in a ferocious storm we created our own sound effects using percussion instruments! 

We have also taken a turn at being cartographers, honing our atlas reading skills to find different countries, continents and oceans.  We even had a go at creating our own 3D globes.

Our science afternoon was great fun, it was a lovely opportunity to explore static electricity through an exciting fishing game.  We were pleased to be able to demonstrate our learning to Mr Sainsbury as part of his (socially distanced) farewell visit to our class.

Looking forward to next week

We are looking forward to finishing our class book, ‘A crow’s tale’ to discover what happened to Rainbow Crow. 

As the current restrictions are preventing the Figsbury Challenge from taking place this year we are, instead, eagerly awaiting the launch of the ‘Virtual Figsbury Exercise Challenge’ which will see us undertake a minimum of ten minutes exercise everyday day on the lead up to and during the Easter holiday.  Not only are we hoping to raise some sponsorship money we ae hoping to be the fittest class in the school!

In RE we are looking forward to continuing our discussions surrounding the Easter story and spotting symbols of hope.

Week commencing 15^th March 2021

Celebrating our week:

Linking with our school focus of service, we considered how we could show kindness to those around us this week. Without prompting, we saw many small acts of kindness being shown in and around the classroom.  Ranging from helping each other to tidy away, making sure everyone had a game to join in with during playtimes, to supporting each other to be brave in our learning. All these acts reminded us of what a special place our school is!

Our ‘Super Scientist’ this week was Thomas Edison and we enjoyed creating our own circuits to power a lightbulb and investigating what happened when extra bulbs or extra batteries were added.

In English, we have started our new book The Crow’s Tale and, although we are only a few pages, in we have been looking very carefully at the different literary devices the author has employed and been recreating our own sentences based on the book in careful preparation for our ‘big write’.

We were grateful for the lovely weather this week to embark on our ‘Healthy Schools’ fitness challenge, which saw us recording our baseline fitness levels ready to build on and improve over the coming weeks through our circuit training.

Looking forward to next week:

We are very excited about receiving a special delivery next week……watch this space!

Our guided reading sessions based on the amazing Sir David Attenborough will be continuing next week, which will be sure to generate great interest and discussion as we explore ‘Our Planet’.

In ICT we are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to learn more about the world of animation and design and make our own animations having already practised with flip books.

Finally, we are looking forward to seeing what our friends in Year 6 have planned for our science afternoon next Friday. All we know so far is that we have to look out for a brightly coloured box and ‘be ready for anything!’ 

Week commencing 8^th March

Celebrating our week:

It has been a privilege and a pleasure to welcome everybody back into our class after such a long time apart. The transition back to face-to-face learning has been a smooth one. The children were keen to share experiences of home-learning and take the time to consider their personal wellbeing and that of others.

One highlight of our week was a virtual visit from the volunteers of the RNLI who kindly provided us with an insight into their amazing work and furnished us with valuable water safety advice.  This was a fitting way to conclude our work about Grace Darling.

We celebrated book week with a variety of activities, including redesigning front covers, ‘drop-everything-and-read’ sessions and of course we enjoyed dressing up as our favourite characters.

Our science session focussed again on Sir Isaac Newton, but this time on his discoveries about light, in particular we explored refraction. We have been spotting rainbows ever since!

Looking forward to next week:

We are all looking forward to learning about the work of our next real-life hero; Sir David Attenborough.  We are a class full of keen conservationists so are sure to be fully engaged.

Our science investigation next week will focus on electrical circuits and we are keen to see if we can light up a bulb and maybe include switches and buzzers!