Year 5/6 - Sycamore, Birch and Oak

Spring Term 2020

 

Welcome back everyone! We hope you all have had a wonderful and exciting Christmas and got to spend some quality time with your families ans friends. Did Santa bring you everything you wanted?We are very excited to return to our normal classroom arrangements after our wonderful adventure to Maghull High School. We have a very interesting term coming up. We will be getting the Year 6 pupils ready for their SATs in May and going on our residential to the brilliant city of York. Our Year 5 children will be given the chance to take part in Bikeability. This is a useful workshop which shows the children the fundamentals of riding a bike and ensuring they are aware of how to stay safe when riding on the road.  We cannot wait to continue working through our very exciting curriculum this term.

 

English

In English, we will reading our new novel, Holes by Louis Sachar. This is a very exciting novel and we our confident the children will thoroughly enjoy it. We plan to use this novel as a stimulus for our reading, writing, grammar, punctuation and spelling objectives. The school will be providing each child with a copy of the story to follow along with. We are excited to see the high standard of work the children will produce around this novel. We are even going to be lucky enough to go on a trip to see a live production of Holes in March. This will give the children the chance to see the story told in a different way. Ask your child what the story is about. We are sure they will give you a brilliant summary.

 

Maths

Children are continuing to enter school and settle down to some basic arithmetic/fluency mathematics questions. We will be encouraging the children to give reasons for their thinking and explain any mathematical concepts they have used. Through this, we hope the children will grasp the mastery elements of what we have been learning about. This term we will be doing a lot of recapping and cementing the knowledge that the children developed over the Autumn Term. We cannot wait for you to see their amazing Maths books at parent's evening.

 

Science

Throughout this term we will be exploring the units Changes of Materials and Evolution and Inheritance. They are two brilliant units as they allow the children the chances to promote their scientific curiosity and understanding. We plan to conduct many investigations and work practically. Towards the end of last term, we started to conduct some investigations that explored what happens when you mix two materials. We discovered that certain materials react together. Ask your children what happened when we mixed them together.

 

History

Throughout this unit, we will be learning about the Anglo-Saxons. This is a very exciting period of History. We have started the unit by exploring the job of an Archaeologist. We will be using some artefacts from this period to help us learn about the people that lived during it. 

 

Music

In Music, we will be working our way through our Charanga units. We have heard some beautiful voices and cannot wait to see the children compose their own pieces of music using the instruments. Children are applying their musical skills to some M.C. Grammar raps in their English lessons.

 

 

Art / D.T.

We plan to use the topic of Japan to inspire our art and D.T. work this term. We are especially looking forward to starting our Origami unit in Art. We will be learning about all the folds and discovering what each of the symbols mean when reading instructions. We may even have the chance to create and design our own piece of Origami. In D.T. we will be looking at elements of food technology. We could not learn about Japan without making some of our own sushi! 

 

P.E.

The children in Sycamore will be swimming this term. Children must bring in their appropriate costumes, swimming cap and a towel. Goggles are optional. We plan to work through the objectives for Year 5 in swimming. Oak and Birch will be doing Dance and Hockey throughout this term. They will be performing in groups, using their bodies to create unique and imaginative movements. In Hockey, we will be practising how to dribble, pass and shoot effectively.

 

Computing

We are very busy exploring the concepts of Scratch and Microsoft Excel. There are many challenging components in both pieces of software. But the children are enjoying creating the own algorithms and spreadsheets.

 

SMSC

We love exploring the units on 1Decision. They are giving the children a good insight into the world and offering advice on how to conduct themselves as good and honest citizens, whilst keeping themselves safe at all times. Our social media unit was particularly effective. We are excited to continue learning about citizenship.

 

Children are welcome on to the playground from 8.40am. The schools takes no responsibility for children arriving before this time. Classes end each day at 3.30p.m. In the Upper School, parents who wish to have their children escorted home should make their own arrangements to have them met at the school gate and the person to escort them should be at the school no later than 3.30pm as the school cannot accept responsibility for looking after the children after that time, unless written permission is given for a club. Also, if you wish for your child to walk themselves home, written permission must be sent to the class teacher before the child can be dismissed.

 

Thank you for your continued support,

 

Mr Zaim, Mr Hannaford, Mrs Faragher, Miss Burton, Mrs Bowen and Mrs Jones.