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Year 5 Friday blog 14.02.25

Date: 14th Feb 2025 @ 4:17pm

Welcome to your Friday Blog

Reading

Please keep reading over the half term holidays!

English

 We have finally completed our ‘Street Child’ novel and everyone really enjoyed our last piece of writing; an advert encouraging people to visit the Victorian circus.

Maths

The children tried really hard with their bridging addition and subtraction. To be continued after half term!

Science

We have now completed our topic on space and our solar system. This week we learned lots of facts about the moon and why it changes its appearance.

Art

Year 5 ended their art unit on set building. There was so much detail in everyone’s recreated workhouses – it was fantastic to see!

Computing

There’s been some fantastic powerpoints created on the Vikings. This week everyone finished them off and added transitions and animations! Well done Year 5!

RE

Finally, we have spent the week giving a lot of thought as to how we could make the village of Longton a more loving place to live in, as part of our theme of mission. There were some fantastic ideas, including friendship clubs, fund raising ideas and ways to help the environment and protect the world God has given us.

Year 1 Blog - Friday 14th February 2025

Date: 14th Feb 2025 @ 3:50pm

Welcome to your final Friday blog of this half term!

Home Practice

Sumdog challenges

Maths - Counting within 20

Phonics - Sounds learnt this week.

Counting - We have been working hard on counting in ones this week, especially when crossing boundaries (e.g. 19 to 20). Practise counting on from different numbers.

Reading - Please try to read each night, it makes a big difference!

Please remember to bring book bags in each day.

English

We read our last dragon book called 'The Boy Who Dreamed Dragons'. We met a little boy called Albie who had a great imagination. He dreamed dragons!

We described dragons using adjectives, compared different dragons, ordered the story and chose an animal that we would dream about.

Phonics

Some of us have comparing the igh and i spellings, also the oa and o spellings.

Some of us have been focusing on high frequency words and tricky words. We are becoming super tricky word spotters, recognising them more in our reading books.

Maths

We have been recapping how to distinguish between tens and ones in numbers. We have compared numbers using 'more than' and 'less than' but also giving our reason why. For example: 20 is more than 10 because it has two tens and 10 only has one ten.

R.E.

We read about a man called Zacchaeus who was a tax collector. He was not a nice man but he changed when he met Jesus. We wrote some super sentences describing how Zacchaeus changed.

Geography

We compared physical and human geographical features.

Science

We conducted another experiment to see if materials were absorbent. We quickly realised that we were looking for the opposite results to last week as we now wanted the water to soak into the materials. We chose the best absorbent material out of paper, blue paper towel, cling film and a cotton cloth.

Art

We made Valentine's Day cards for someone special at home. Do not worry if you left your card at school, we will keep it safe!

Forest School

We were in our nature area this week. There was a lot of mud inspired learning! Great imagination and teamwork was shown.

Thank you for all of your hard work. We're looking forward to seeing you at Parents' Evening after half term.

Reception Blog - Friday 14th February 2025

Date: 14th Feb 2025 @ 3:44pm

Welcome to Reception's Friday Blog!

 Phonics

This week we have been recapping all of the sounds we have learnt so far.

Drawing Club

This week in Drawing Club we read the story ‘Superworm.’

We designed our own base and a vehicle for him to escape in.

Maths

This week we have been measuring length, height, width, mass and volume.

RE

We continued to learn the Glory Be and recapped the stories from this half term.

Expressive Art and Design

This week we made Valentines cards.

Understanding the World

We finished our learning about China with a Chinese New Year celebration, trying some chinese food!

Have a lovely, safe half term everyone!

The Reception Team

Year 3 Friday Blog 14th February 2025

Date: 14th Feb 2025 @ 12:02pm

Welcome to your Friday Blog

As it is the half term holiday, there is no home practice set. However, please keep reading every day as this really does help to unlock your learning. Sumdog is also still available for maths and spelling training! 

This week in Year 3

We have loved reading Toro Toro. We met Paco the baby bull this week and wrote some fantastic recounts of his birth. Everyone continues to improve their handwriting and presentation. Well done Year 3!

In maths we met a tricky strategy for our division. We looked at repeated addition and grouping and division with remainders. We will meet this again but everyone made a great start! 

In RE we finished our Galilee to Jerusalem where we learned about the Gospel of Matthew and the parables of Jesus. It has been lovely listening to everyone's questions and responses to the learning.

In geography we also wrapped up our topic on North America. We investigated the eruption of Mount St Helens and explored the site on Google maps. 

In History we completed our learning on the Stone Age to the Iron Age. This has been a popular topic and everyone showed great knowledge in all our Kahoot quizzes! Brilliant History Year 3!

Have a lovely half term break

The Year 3 team

Year 4 Blog Friday 14th February 2025

Date: 13th Feb 2025 @ 10:00am

Welcome to your Friday Blog

As it is the half term holiday, there is no home practice set. However, please keep reading every day as this really does help to unlock your learning. You could also practise your tables using TTRockstars, Hit the Button and timestables.co.uk

In English, we learnt how to write and punctuate sentences which included fronted adverbials. You can see some photos of our ‘human sentences’ in our gallery. We also finished our class novel The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips – a book we have thoroughly enjoyed reading – and we wrote a book review of the novel to recommend it to other readers.

In Maths, we built on our understanding of the number system extending it further into hundredths. We learnt how hundredths are represented as a fraction and as a decimal (for example 0.01 = 1/100) and the equivalence of tenths, hundredths, fractions and decimals.

In RE, we watched a film about the life of St Damien of Molokai. Following this, we gave examples of how St Damien showed the virtues of faith, hope and love throughout his lifetime. In our final lesson of this topic, we created a poster to show how Jesus loved and ways that we could show love in our everyday lives. 

In Science, we recapped the meaning of ‘viscosity’. We then carried out our ‘viscosity’ experiment. We made predictions about which liquid we thought would be the most / least viscous and then raced liquids against each other, recording our results in a table. You can see some photos in our gallery.

In History, we finished our PowerPoints detailing some of the legacies left behind by the Romans. We made sure that they included lots of information and some pictures, as well as a hyperlink and some animations.   

In PSHE we discussed ‘keeping safe’. We considered how we can decide if something is risky and what signs to look out for. In addition, we were presented with different situations and discussed whether they were low, medium or high risk, and how we could reduce or remove the risk.

In PE, we added a transition to our ‘action word’ dance routine. Whilst doing this, we were able to demonstrate an unusual movement and keep in time with others, as well as work together to improve and rehearse our dance. Have a look at some pictures in our gallery.

In Art, we created our ‘pocket gallery’. We used the boxes we had made as plinths and placed objects/artwork on them. Then, we placed the figures we had created in our gallery and made it look as though they were inspecting the artwork. Have a look at our gallery to see our finished creations.

The Year 4 team

Year 6 Blog - Friday 14th February 2025

Date: 13th Feb 2025 @ 9:22am

Welcome to the Year 6 weekly blog.

The children have all received a special certificate this week for their hard work at Robin Wood - well done Year 6! 

This week in Year 6

English

In English we have shared the book 'Inside the Villains' together. We have worked hard to make our own page for the book about Macbeth, using all of our learning from our Shakespeare topic. 

Maths 

This week, we have been learning about the four operations. We have learned how to choose an appropriate strategy for a calculation and also how to multiply decimals by whole numbers. 

RE

In RE, we have continued to learn about the seven sacraments. We have thought carefully about why some sacraments are celebrated more frequently than others. We have also discussed how the seven signs in John's gospel have a literal and spiritual meaning. 

Topic 

We learned about the story of Saint Valentine and created our own books to retell the story in our own words. 

In Science, we learned about how to keep our bodies healthy. We created a quiz to test our knowlege of how to keep healthy!

Please complete the following tasks by the first Monday back: 

Reading - Use your home reading to read every night for 30 minutes. You also have a reading diary that must be used for the title of the book and any challenges chosen. 

Books may be changed on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. 

Spelling - 

Spellings this week are from the Y5/Y6 and the Y3/Y4 statutory spellings.

We will have our test on the 28/02/25. 

It is useful to write the words down on the spelling sheet, but you could also ask someone to call the words out and spell them out loud. Other ideas include, breaking the words up and writing them down in different colours (accommodate). You could look for words within words (accompany) or think of your own ways to remember the word, for example, spell it aloud using a mnemonic or tune.

SATS Revision: 

Today, the children have been given a login for SATs bootcamp. This is a fantastic website, which will really help with the children's SATs revision: https://www.yearsix.co.uk/sats-boot-camp/. 

Please complete the following topics: 

Maths - Topic 6 Roman Numerals

English - Topic 8 Verbs

 Year 6 have also been set some revision to complete over the half term holiday, to be handed in for the 24/02/25.

Have a brilliant half term Year 6! 

Year 2 Blog- Friday 14th February

Date: 11th Feb 2025 @ 9:52am

Wow! This half term has flown by!

Well done to everyone in Y2 for working so hard and doing great learning over the last few weeks.

Home Practice

Reading: In Year 2, children should read for at least 15/20 minutes every night and talk about the book. This will help with understanding the text and learning new words.

Spelling: Please practise these spellings for your quiz on Friday (28.02.25):

could should would called about friends other  favourite altogether again         

Sumdog: Complete the 'Multiplication/Division' challenge. 

Counting: Play the monster game below and work on your number and problem solving skills.

https://nrich.maths.org/problems/robot-monsters 

Times Tables: After half term, Y2 will be doing times tables quizzes just like their spelling quiz. 

The first times table quiz will be on a Thursday (27.02.25) and it will be the 10x table in order. For example, 1x10 = 10, 2x10 = 20 etc.

A 10x times table poster was sent home to help with this.

Follow the link below to play 'Hit The Button' and do a bit more practise on your 2, 5, 10 and 3 times tables.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button 

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/counting 

English

We planned and wrote our own story book based on The Magic Finger and tried to use eveything we had learnt from the story so far.

SPaG

We spent time learning about the different ways to spell to, too and two. Then we learnt the differences between their, there and they're.

Maths

During Maths lessons, we have been learning a lot about multiplication and division.

The children have used arrays, repeated addition and times tables to solve problems and looked at sharing and grouping to help them answer division questions.

Forest School

This week we discussed how to be safe around the fire.

We toasted marshmallows.

We also had plenty of time for our own learning and exploring.

R.E.

The children learnt that when we want to say sorry to God, we can go to Church and have the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

The children wrote out the special prayer (Act of Contrition) that is said with the Priest and decorated it beautifully. They also thought about how we can put things right by doing good things (Act of Penance).

Art

The children were architects and moved from drawing buildings to making model structures using art straws, card, paper, lolly sticks and pipe cleaners.

Have a great Half Term Holiday with your family and friends.

Year 2 Team.

Year 5 Friday Blog Friday 7th February 2025

Date: 7th Feb 2025 @ 4:16pm

Welcome to your Friday Blog

Home Practice

Reading

Please read out loud every day for 20 minutes. Use a dictionary to find the meaning of any words you don’t know or ask an adult.

Spelling

Here are your spellings this week.

innocent  innocence  obedient  decent  decency  frequent  frequency  confident  confidence  intelligent  independent  independence  obedience  transparent  transparency  client  parent  accomplishment

Counting

Count out loud in:

5s up to 120 and back again                                            0,5,10,15 …

80s from 0 to 480 and back again                                  0,80,160 …

11s from 132 down to 0                                                  132, 121, 110…

Times Tables

Please practise your times tables every day.  There is a new task set up on TTRS for children to access.

Sumdog

Maths practise based on number value – individual challenge.

Spelling Challenge – practise sheets have been sent home and there is a practise test on Sumdog.

 We have had another great learning week in Year 5.

 In English, Year 5 have been learning how to use skills, such as using relative clauses and metaphors in a coherent way. Everyone is enjoying reading about Jim and his adventures in Victorian London.

In Maths we have been busy practising lots of arithmetic and reasoning, as well as starting our new topic on place value.

This week in RE, we have all enjoyed trying to decipher the true meaning of The Lord’s Prayer. We created new scripts for the prayer, to break it down into modern language and we spent time thinking about why we call God a father.   

We practised using Google Earth maps in geography this week. Everyone worked in pairs to locate famous volcanoes around the world and label a world map with all their names. Well done Year 5!

In PSHE we have been talking about respect, as well as identifying our character traits and how we can strengthen them. The children made fabulous respect posters and we also practised our mindful breathing by completing a mini meditation.

 In computing, there has been some really amazing effort put into the Vikings powerpoint presentations with most of the class adding hyperlinks, 3 D shapes , importing pictures with special effects and using various animation and background effects. Super job Year 5!

Year 3 Friday Blog 7th February 2025

Date: 7th Feb 2025 @ 3:58pm

Welcome to your Friday Blog

We have had another brillinat week in Year 3 with clay models, shadow experiments and brass instruments.

Home Practice

Continue with all your brilliant home reading. Everyone has made excellent progress with their reading this year and this is down to reading regularly at home. Keep it up!

Practise counting in 8's from 0 to 96 and back again.

Your Sumdog challenges and competitions are on all your times tables, division and your home spellings. This week we have been remembering to use syllables to spell independently in our writing.

Your home spellings all end in -ous.

poisonous, famous, enormous, glamorous, outrageous, dangerous, various, jealous, vigorous,serious, mountainous, tremendous, humourous, courageous, obvious, curious, hideous, spontaneous

This week in Year 3

We have been enjoying our new class novel, Toro, Toro by Michael Morpurgo. We have written a fantastic description of Anontito's farm and surrounding area and retold the chapter on Paco's birth.

In Maths we have started to learn how to divide using repeated subtraction. Everyone showed great understanding with this and asked some great questions!

In Art this week we made our clay models or our Roald Dahl characters. We will paint these and set the scenes next week! Check out our gallery.

In Science we investigated shadows and how they are formed. Everyone had great explanations, using the learning from last week on how light travels!

On Friday Year 1 came to visit with their fantastic Dragon writing. Year 3 gave some super feedback. Well done Year 3!

Have a lovely weekend

The Year 3 Team

Reception Blog - Friday 7th February 2025

Date: 7th Feb 2025 @ 3:34pm

Welcome to Reception's Friday Blog!

 Phonics

This week we recapped all the sounds we have learnt so far.

Drawing Club

In Drawing Club we read ‘Farmer Duck.’

We designed our own tractor for Farmer Duck to use.

Maths

We have been learning how to subtract two numbers, using the part whole model.

RE

We listened to the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand and recapped our learning from last week. Then we learnt the Glory Be.

Expressive Art and Design

This week we had a go at copying Chinese writing, using mud and water.

Understanding the World

This week a farmer came to visit us, he arrived on his tractor! He told us all about all the jobs that he does on his farm.

We have also continued to learn about China. This week we learnt about Chinese New Year. We listened to the story about the animals crossing the river, deciding who would be the animals for each year. This year is the year of the snake!

PE

This week we practised our throwing, bouncing and catching.

My Happy Mind

We finished our topic of celebrate.

To do this,we all designed a superhero cape for Charlie, using one of the character strengths as a theme.

Forest School

Year 1 Blog - Friday 7th February 2025

Date: 7th Feb 2025 @ 3:29pm

Welcome to your Friday blog!

Home Practice

Sumdog challenges

Maths - Hours, minutes and seconds

Phonics - Sounds learnt this week.

Counting - Count in twos from 0 to 20.

Reading - Please try to read each night, it makes a big difference!

Please remember to bring book bags in each day.

English

We have been exploring different dragon poems this week. We used similes to describe a dragon, wrote our own dragon poems and then read them to years 3 and 5.

Phonics

Some of us have comparing the aw and au sounds.

Some of us have had one final recap week comparing the different 'ee' spellings. We've been spotting them in our books and reading longer passages of text with them in.

Maths

We have been continuing to learn about measuring time. We used the iPads again to count in seconds.

We have also been doing a lot of arithmetic practise!

R.E.

We read about Jesus performing one of his miracles by helping His disciples catch fish. We decorated our own fish for the RE display.

Then we read about Jesus teaching little children. We made our own banners to welcome Jesus, writing the word 'hello' in different languages.

Geography

We found the oceans and seas that surround the UK in the atlases. We sang the oceans song to help us remember their names. 

Science

We conducted an experiment to see whether objects were waterproof or not waterproof. We had lots of fun using pipettes to squirt water onto different materials!

Art

We made our medals! It was great to see so many different ideas and designs, showing each child's individual personalities.

See our pictures here.

Forest School

We were in our nature area this week. There was a lot of mud inspired learning! Great imagination and teamwork was shown.

Year 4 Blog Friday 7th February 2025

Date: 7th Feb 2025 @ 12:54pm

Welcome to your Friday blog

Home practice

Reading

Please read for 20 minutes each evening to an adult at home.  Can you spot any apostrophes when you are reading? If so, are they used for contractions (a letter or letters are missing) or to show possession?

Spellings

This week we have been learning how to use an apostrophe for singular possession therefore there are no spellings to learn. You will however be tested on the apostrophe spelling rule next Wednesday as we have been practising it in class.

Counting

This week, please practise counting in 100’s  

For example, start at 568 and count to 2068 and back again

568    668    768     etc                      2068    1968   1868  etc

Times tables and Number facts

Please practise your individual tables target for your test next week. 

You can practise your tables on TTRockstars, Hit the Button and timestables.co.uk

Please also practise your number facts. 

You can practise your number facts on Hit the Button

It is crucial that you learn all of your table facts and your number facts as this will help you with many aspects of maths.

TTRockstars challenge

• A ‘Battle of the Bands’ session – boys v girls

Sumdog challenges

• A maths challenge based on negative numbers
• A maths challenge based on 10, 100 and 1000 more and less

In English, we learnt what an adverbial phase is and how to identify one in a sentence. Next week, we will be learning how to write and correctly punctuate sentences which include fronted adverbials.

In Maths, we returned to place value this week, starting by rounding 4 digit numbers to the nearest 1000.  In addition, we correctly placed numbers on a number line with multiples of 1000 marked, but not labelled, and labelled positive and negative numbers on a number line. 

In RE, we familiarised ourselves the religious vocabulary of the Sacrament of Reconciliation and ordered the different parts of the Sacrament. This week, we also learnt when the Sacrament of the Sick is used and explored how the Sacrament brings God’s strength to those who receive it.

In Science, we explored the properties of liquids. We considered how they:-

• change their shape
• flow and pour easily
• keep the same volume
• made a puddle, not a pile
• show a level surface

In addition, we discussed the meaning of the word viscous (how thick and sticky a liquid is) and planned a ‘liquid race’ which we will carry out next week.

In History, we continued creating our PowerPoints detailing some of the legacies left behind by the Romans. We included lots of information and some pictures. We will attempt to finish these next week.

It was Children’s Mental Health week this week, so our PSHE topic was ‘Know Yourself, Grow Yourself’. First, we discussed the things that make us happy, activities we love doing and things that make us laugh. Then, we talked about the things that disgust us or make us feel fear. Following this, we understood that we have a variety of emotions and now know that it is OK to ask for support.

In PE, we added a transition to our ‘action word’ dance routine. Whilst doing this, we were able to demonstrate an unusual movement and keep in time with others, as well as work together to improve and rehearse our dance. Have a look at some pictures in our gallery.

In Art, we finished making our ‘plinths’ and prepared the pictures of ourselves, so that they stood up unaided.

The Year 4 team

Year 2 Blog- Friday 7th February

Date: 6th Feb 2025 @ 11:31am

Home Practice

Reading: In Year 2, children should read for at least 15/20 minutes every night and talk about the book. This will help with understanding the text and learning new words.

Spelling: 

Please practise these spellings for your quiz on Friday (14.02.25):

November    December   Monday   Tuesday   Wednesday  Thursday   Friday   Saturday   Sunday                 

Sumdog: Complete the 'Addition and Subtraction Problems' challenge. 

Counting: Play the two-digit target game below and work on your place value skills.

https://nrich.maths.org/problems/two-digit-targets 

Follow the link below to play 'Hit The Button' and do a bit more practise on your 2, 5, 10 and 3 times tables.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button 

Recently, the children explored some of the interactive games on top mark maths.

If they would like to play at home, follow the link below.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/counting 

English

This week we started learning throught a new book, "The Magic Finger" by Roald Dahl.

We read and watched the first part of the story and wrote a prediction.

We also wrote some instructions about how to build a nest like the one the Gregg family built in the story.

We are trying so hard to make our writing look beautiful on the page.

SPaG

The children learned how to change an adjective into an adverb by adding 'ly'. For example, slow - slowly or helpful - helpfully.

Maths

We have completed the addition and subtraction topic and moved on to multiplication.

The children learnt how to find the difference between numbers.

We have also been learning about repeated addition, arrays and how these relate to multiplication.

PSHE

 We have been learning that there are times when people are trying to be kind to us and may touch us,

but we might not like or want this, e.g. when a friend gives us a hug but they squeeze us so tight that it hurts.

They might think it’s fun, but for us, it’s not - because it hurts. 

Science

We learnt about two inventors,John Dunlop and John McAdam.

Forest School

We planted the bulbs we looked at in our Science lesson last week. We also made a forest eye.

This is good for practising our knots and it also develops our fine motor skills.

P.E

Year 2 performed some excellent sequences on the large apparatus.

In their sequences they included a clear start, travel, balance, jump, roll and finish.

Geography

We discussed the weather and seasons and identified which clothes were appropriate for the different weather types.

The children also wrote about their favourite weather and explained why they liked it.

Year 3 Friday 31st January 2025

Date: 31st Jan 2025 @ 3:48pm

Welcome to your Friday Blog

Hello and welcome to your Friday Blog

Everyone has been amazing this week! We have written some brilliant poems and acted out scenes from the Bible.

Home practice

Keep up with your brilliant reading at home. We've seen lots of book changes and children sharing their stories from home. Well done year 3!

Your spellings this week all have the ending -ure

measure, pleasure, treasure, enclosure, furniture, creature, furniture, cure, picture, nature, adventure, sure, capture, leisure, literature, manicure, departure, puncture, mixture, temperature

We have set 2 maths Sumdog challenges, one for your fractions learning and one for practising your times tables.

This week in Year 3

We have loved reading Orion and the Dark. This week we finished retelling our stories and read them to Year 4. 

They were very impressed! Check out our gallery!

We also listened to Michael Rosen's poem After Dark and used it to create some great poetry of our own,

In maths we have been learning to solve fraction problems involving amounts. We showed great understanding and applied our knowledge brilliantly.

In RE we have been learning about the parables Jesus told his followers. We created a comic, acted out some scenes and played a game of Ping Pong where we asked and answered eachother's questions.

In History we have been learning about how the Neolithic people created round houses using the wattle and daub technique. The children showed great interest and asked fantastic questions. You are all super historians!

In Geography we have been investigating the animals who are native to North America and looked at our new atlases and globe.

Have a lovely weekend

The Year 3 Team

Year 5 Friday blog 31.01.25

Date: 31st Jan 2025 @ 3:48pm

Welcome to your Friday Blog

Home Practice

Reading

Please read out loud every day for 20 minutes. Use a dictionary to find the meaning of any words you don’t know or ask an adult.

Spelling

Here are your spellings this week.

observant   hesitant    tolerance    substance   reliant   vacancy   observance   hesitancy  

assistant  reliance  defiant  vacant  expectant  tolerant  assistance  defiance  sustenance  infancy

Counting

Count out loud in:

10s up to 220 and back again                                         0,10,20,30 …

25s from 0 to 350 and back again                                  0,25, 50 …

12s from 144 down to 0                                                  144,132, 120…

Times Tables

Please practise your times tables every day.   All children (who weren’t sure about accessing this app) have been shown how to log on to TTRS so they can use it at home.

Sumdog

Maths practise based on timetables and time – individual challenge.

Spelling Challenge – practise sheets have been sent home and there is a practise test on Sumdog.

 We have had another great learning week in Year 5.

 In English, we have been learning how to blend all types of parentheses (brackets, dashes and commas) into our writing in a natural way. This is quite tricky to do and we have all tried so hard.

In Maths, we have been revising how to tell the time on an analogue clock before moving on to telling the time using the 24 hour clock. Some of us have found this hard, so we have practised this at home too.

This week in RE, we have all been learning about The Transfiguration. We all wrote a super witness statement as Peter, the disciple. We also all enjoyed examining how this event has been depicted in art by many artists from all over the world. We enjoyed comparing three art works from Russian, Italian and African artists.

What a fantastic week we have had in art this week. We have been creating stages made from boxes based on the workhouse from our Victorian novel, Street Child. The creativity has been amazing!

In PSHE, we have been talking about bullying and cyberbullying. We really engaged with this and showed a lot of sound knowledge on the subject. We have also been journalling about how we have used our character strengths this week.   

 In Hiistory, we explored how we know what happened in the Viking era and we learned about some of the Anglo Saxon and Viking kings. Finally, we ended our week by adding some special features to our powerpoint presentations about Vikings, including adding a hyperlink. Well done Year 5!

Reception Blog - Friday 31st January 2025

Date: 31st Jan 2025 @ 1:03pm

Welcome to Reception's Friday Blog!

 Phonics

We learnt the digraphs ng and th.

Drawing Club

In  Drawing Club we read the story ‘Cops and Robbers’

We drew the Police Officers.

Maths

This week we have been adding two numbers together, by using the part, part whole model.

RE

This week we listened to the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

We made our own baskets of food and retold the story to each other.

Understanding the World

A Police Officer came to visit our class in his Police car. He told us all about his job and how he helps us.

We also continued to learn more about China.

We have been looking at aerial views of China and how we can recognise parts like, the sea, rivers, mountains, deserts, grass etc…

We then made our own map of China.

Physical Development

We have been enjoying some of the sunshine and making our own obstace courses.

My Happy Mind

We continued our topic of celebrate.

We have been recapping the character strengths we have learnt so far, including, bravery and honesty, love and kindness.

Year 6 Blog - Friday 31st January 2025

Date: 31st Jan 2025 @ 8:11am

Welcome to the Year 6 weekly blog.

This week in Year 6

English

In English we have continued reading and learning about Macbeth. We shared the scene together where Lady Macbeth begins to sleepwalk and wrote a dialogue of this scene. We had to work hard to choose appropriate vocabulary and punctuation!

Maths 

This week, we have learned all about co-ordinates. We have learned how to find a missing co-ordinate to complete a shape and also how to find the co-ordinates of a shape where the axis are blank. Today, we have learned how to translate shapes across quadrants on a graph. 

RE

In RE, we have continued learning about the miracles that Jesus performed. We have shared the story of how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and performed some drama of this miracle. 

Topic 

In PE, we continued with our dance unit, all about heroes and villains. We thought about heroic traits and showed these as a still frame.   

In Science, we learned about what is in our blood. We made 'blood' to help us understand what the jobs of different parts of our blood are - you can see our work on the galleries! 

For Art, we learned about moodboards and made our own on Seesaw, inspired by Rachel Parker.

Please complete the following tasks by Wednesday: 

Reading - Use your home reading to read every night for 30 minutes. You also have a reading diary that must be used for the title of the book and any challenges chosen. 

Books may be changed on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. 

Spelling - 

Spellings this week are from the Y5/Y6 and the Y3/Y4 statutory spellings.

We will have our test on the 14/02/25, after Robin Wood. 

It is useful to write the words down on the spelling sheet, but you could also ask someone to call the words out and spell them out loud. Other ideas include, breaking the words up and writing them down in different colours (accommodate). You could look for words within words (accompany) or think of your own ways to remember the word, for example, spell it aloud using a mnemonic or tune.

SATS Revision: 

Today, the children have been given a login for SATs bootcamp. This is a fantastic website, which will really help with the children's SATs revision: https://www.yearsix.co.uk/sats-boot-camp/. 

Please complete the following topics for next Thursday: 

Maths - Topic 4 Subtraction 

English - Topic 7 Adjectives

Have a great weekend Year 6!

Year 1 Blog - Friday 31st January 2025

Date: 30th Jan 2025 @ 12:41pm

Welcome to your Friday blog!

Home Practice

Sumdog challenges

Maths - Months of the year

Phonics - Sounds learnt this week.

Counting - Choose a number to start on. Count 10 more and 10 less in ones. For example: 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62. Then 52, 51, 50 etc.

Reading - Please try to read each night, it makes a big difference!

Please remember to bring book bags in each day.

English

We continued to learn about Edgar the dragon this week.

We wrote a feelings timeline for Edgar, a list of reasons for how Edgar could be helpful and we re-wrote the story in our own words.

Phonics

Some of us have finished learning the split digraphs and learnt the 'wh' and 'ph' sounds.

Some of us have finished learning the different ways to spell the 'ee' sound, focusing on e in medium and y in penny. 

Maths

We have been learning how to measure time. We learnt that we measure time in lots of different ways: using seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years. We had lots of fun using the timer on the iPads to measure how quick or slow we can do an action.

See our pictures here.

We have also continued our learning for the months of the year, focusing on the order and special events that happen within them.

R.E.

We learnt about Jesus preaching and teaching in the Temple. We described how we could help others, like He taught us, and painted how the light guides us.

Geography

We labelled the countries that make up the United Kingdom. Then we identified their capital cities, major cities and flags.

Science

We conducted an experiment to see whether objects were transparent or opaque. Some of us even identified translucent objects! We used torches to see if the light passed through and our eyes to see if we could see through them.

See our pictures here.

P.E.

We learnt how to travel in different ways, including bear and crab walk. We also practised egg, tuck and pencil rolls.

Art

We planned our medal, identifying which materials we wanted to use and how we wanted it to look. We will start making them next week!

Forest School

This week we were in our log circle area. We noticed some damage to the trees that last week's storm had caused. We looked for mini beasts, played our own games, made some concoctions in the mud and made dens.

Year 2 Blog- Friday 31st January 2025

Date: 30th Jan 2025 @ 11:31am

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Home Practice

Reading: In Year 2, children should read for at least 15/20 minutes every night and talk about the book. This will help with understanding the text and learning new words.

Spelling: 

Please practise these spellings for your quiz on Friday (07.02.25):

January    February   March   April   May  June   July   August   September   October                

Sumdog: Complete the addition and subtraction challenge. 

Counting: play the 100 square jigsaw game below and practice counting confidently to 100.

https://nrich.maths.org/problems/100-square-jigsaw 

Follow the link below to play 'Hit The Button' and do a bit more practise on your 2, 5, 10 and 3 times tables.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button 

Recently, the children explored some of the interactive games on top mark maths.

If they would like to play at home, follow the link below.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/counting 

English

We finished our learning through the story of 'The Barnabus Project'. We wrote a thought bubble as Baranbus as he imagined what the world outside the lab might be like. We wrote a postcard from Barnabus to Pip thanking him for helping with his escape. We also wrote about the different jobs that the Green Rubber Suits do in the lab.

Maths

This week we have been counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and recognising the patterns in the numbers.

We have been adding and sutracting numbers where we have to cross the tens barrier, for example, 25 - 17 or 32 + 11.

We have used Base 10 equipment and lines and dots to help us with this. Some children have been mentally partitioning the numbers to work out the answers. Great effort from everyone, we are so impressed with the hard work we have seen in class.

Science

We went outside to look at our bulbs which are growing.

We closely examined some bulbs and drew them carefully. We will plant them next week.

PSHE

We continued to learn about being safe. we discussed different scenarios and what we could do,

for instance - tell, say no, say yes or ask.

Geography

We discussed the seasons of the year and the signs to look out for.

For example, Autumn - the leaves turn brown/orange/red/yellow and fall from the trees.

We learnt which months of the year are in each season.

R.E.

The children watched a short video clip of Jesus' Baptism and through their own artwork retold the story.

They included, the River Jordan, John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, a dove which represented the Holy Spirit and light shining through the clouds which represented God. some children included what God said to Jesus.

Year 4 Blog Friday 31st January 2025

Date: 30th Jan 2025 @ 10:01am

Welcome to your Friday blog

Home practice

Reading

Please read for 20 minutes each evening to an adult at home.  If you are unsure about the meaning of a word, look it up in a dictionary and write out the meaning in your reading diary.

Spellings

These are your spellings which will be tested next week – please practise them

their           there           they’re        because       does

doesn’t         too              to                two              its

it’s               off              of                where          were

when            went            with             our              are

Counting

This week, please practise counting in 7’s  

For example, start at 12 and count to 144 and back again

0    7    14  etc                          84    77    70  etc

Times tables and Number facts

Please practise your individual tables target for your test next week. 

You can practise your tables on TTRockstars, Hit the Button and timestables.co.uk

Please also practise your number facts. 

You can practise your number facts on Hit the Button

It is crucial that you learn all of your table facts and your number facts as this will help you with many aspects of maths.

TTRockstars challenge

• A ‘Garage’ session

Sumdog challenges

• A spelling challenge based on the words above
• A maths challenge based on 3D shapes

In English, we learnt more about adverbs and how they can be used in different places in a sentence. We now know that adverbs can go at the beginning of a sentence, but need a comma after them. For example – Quickly, the boy finished his dinner. We put into practise what we had learnt by retelling some of the class novel.

In Maths, we continued with our 3D shape topic by identifying and naming different pyramids according to their properties. In addition, we consolidated our ability to identify and describe the properties of lots of different 3D shapes (eg a cone, a sphere, a cylinder and a prism).

In RE, we familiarised ourselves with Matthew 11 1-15 (Jesus’ speech to John the Baptist) when John’s disciples asked Jesus if he was the Messiah.  In addition, we listened to the story of Jesus walking on water and considered why Jesus might have worked miracles.

In Science, we recapped the properties of solids, liquids and gases. Following this, we discussed some common household materials, sorting them into solids and liquids according to their properties. Some we found quite tricky to classify.

In History, we learnt about some of the things that the Roman’s brought to Britain, for example, cats, cement and bricks, coins, and new ways of reading and counting. Following this, we started to make a PowerPoint which gave more information about some of the legacies the Romans left behind.

In our ‘Our Happy Mind’ lesson, we learnt how we can grow our strengths and how neuroplasticity can help us.  

In Art, we continued with our topic ‘the art of display’. We continued making our ‘plinths’ and took pictures of ourselves in different poses.

The Year 4 team

Year 5 blog - 24th January 2025

Date: 24th Jan 2025 @ 4:09pm

Welcome to your Friday Blog

Home Practice

Reading

Please read out loud every day for 20 minutes. Use a dictionary to find the meaning of any words you don’t know or ask an adult.

Spelling

Here are your spellings this week.

controversy  convenience   correspond   criticise  curiosity   definite   desperate  determined  develop  dictionary  disastrous  embarrass  environment  equipment  especially  exaggerate  equipped  special

Counting

Count out loud in:

5s up to 125 and back again                                            0,5,10,15 …

70s from 0 to 490 and back again                                  0,70,140 …

9s from 99 to 142 and back again                                  99,108,117…

Times Tables

Please practise your times tables every day.   All children have been encouraged to practise on this week’s ‘gig’ that has been set on ‘Times Tables Rock Stars’ app.

Sumdog

Maths practise based on multiplication – individual challenge.

Spelling Challenge – practise sheets have been sent home and there is a practise test on Sumdog

 We have had another great learning week in Year 5.

 In English, we wrote a letter as the character Jim, from our novel. We also practised where to put commas in sentences in order to clarify meaning.

In Maths, we explored various different ways of multiplying using different numbers, but still arriving at the same answer. Secure knowledge of all times tables is critical to this, so well done to everyone who has completed extra practise this week to help achieve this. 

This week in RE, we retold the story of The Good Samaritan and discussed how the parable shows virtues of love, hope and charity.   

In computing, we continued with our powerpoint presentations about The Vikings. We learnt new skills such as creating text boxes over images and altering the artistic effects of a picture.

We developed our charcoal art skills this week and produced two pieces of work for display in the classroom. Fantastic work Year 5!

In PE, we developed dance sequences - there were some extremely creative interpretations of various scenarios! We ended the session by practising our happy breathing.

This linked to our Happy Mind session, when we also self-reviewed our character traits and journalled about how we could strengthen some of them.

Finally, we ended our week by learning more about volcanoes and where the tectonic plate boundaries are in the world.

Reception Blog - Friday 24th January 2025

Date: 24th Jan 2025 @ 12:49pm

Welcome to Reception's Friday Blog!

 Phonics

This week we have been learning the digraphs qu, ch and sh.

Drawing Club

This week in Drawing Club we have been read the story ‘You can’t call and elephant to an emergency’

We have been discussing our own animals to go to an emergency and designing a special place for them to go on holiday!

Maths

This week we have been partitioning numbers between 2.

RE

This week we have been listening to the scripture about Jesus blessing the children.

Expressive Art and Design

This week, we have been doing still life drawings of fruit.

Understanding the World

This week we have had a Fireman come to visit our class. He told us all about his job and all the amazing things they do aswell as fighting fires.

We have also continued to look at our topic of China. This week we have been looking at their buildings and how different they are.

We spotted that they are very colourful and have very different shapes to us.

PSHE

 We have been learning about healthy eating and making our own fruit kebabs. They were delicious!

PE

This week we have been moving like a caterpillar and practising balancing on different body parts.

My Happy Mind

This week we have continued our topic of celebrate.

We have looked at a new character strength, bravery.

We have discussed times when we have been brave and haven’t given up, even when it has got tricky.

Year 1 Blog - Friday 24th January 2025

Date: 24th Jan 2025 @ 10:21am

Welcome to your Friday blog!

Home Practice

Sumdog challenges

Maths - Money and Time

Phonics - Sounds learnt this week.

Counting - Count in fives up to the biggest number that you can. See if you can use 5p coins to help you!

Reading - Please try to read each night, it makes a big difference!

Please remember to bring book bags in each day.

English

We watched the Edgar the dragon advert and read the story that comes with it. We learnt that Edgar was just a dragon who wanted to join in with everyone but he kept melting all of the snow!

We described Edgar, wrote a speech bubble for him, wrote a diary entry and a response. 

Phonics

Some of us have been learning the different split digraph sounds: a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e and u_e.

Some of us have been recapping ways to make the 'ee' sound. We have focused on ea in team, e_e in Pete, ie in chief and ey in key.

Maths

This week we have been using the prepositions before and after. For example, I get dressed before I go to school. Then we started to learn the days of the week and the months of the year.

R.E.

We read Luke (2:41-52) which describes Jesus' time in the Temple when He was a 12 year old boy. We talked about the word 'obedience' and how Jesus promised to be obedient. We also recognised how Mary and Joseph might have felt when Jesus was lost.

Science

We described the properties of different materials using adjectives such as bendy, stiff, soft, hard, rough and smooth.

P.E.

We learnt how to travel around the room using the caterpillar walk, frog jump and bunny hop.

We also learnt how to do a star, pencil and tuck jump.

Art

We were able to be creative and make different sculptures in our Art lesson. We used the materials available to make houses, people, rockets and practise medals.

See our pictures here.

Year 6 Blog - Friday 24th January 2025

Date: 24th Jan 2025 @ 8:46am

Welcome to the Year 6 weekly blog.

If you have any large plastic bottles at home, that you would be recycling, please could the children bring them into class for Wednesday next week? This is to help with a Science investigation in class! 

The slides from the SATs meeting can be found at the bottom of the blog. 

This week in Year 6

English

In English we have continued reading and learning about Macbeth. We have explored the scene in the play where Macbeth returns to the witches and they tell him more prophecies. We wrote some amazing diary entries in role as Macbeth recounting this scene. 

Maths 

This week, we have learned all about negative numbers. We have practised how to add and subtract negative numbers and learned how to find the difference between negative and positive numbers. 

RE

In RE, we have continued learning about the miracles that Jesus performed. We have shared the story of how Jesus walked on water and how he healed a blind man. We created some wonderful artwork of Jesus walking on water! 

Topic 

In French, we continued working on our physical description. We completed a listening exercise to figure out a character's physical description and used sentence stems to explain a character's physical description to a partner.  

In Science, we learned all about how exercise can affect our heart rate. You can see our investigation on the galleries!

For History, we explored what crime and punishment was like in Roman times and learned about their rules, which were called the twelve tables. 

Please complete the following tasks by Wednesday: 

Reading - Use your home reading to read every night for 30 minutes. You also have a reading diary that must be used for the title of the book and any challenges chosen. 

Books may be changed on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. 

Spelling - 

Spellings this week are from the Y5/Y6 and the Y3/Y4 statutory spellings. 

It is useful to write the words down on the spelling sheet, but you could also ask someone to call the words out and spell them out loud. Other ideas include, breaking the words up and writing them down in different colours (accommodate). You could look for words within words (accompany) or think of your own ways to remember the word, for example, spell it aloud using a mnemonic or tune.

SATS Revision: 

Today, the children have been given a login for SATs bootcamp. This is a fantastic website, which will really help with the children's SATs revision: https://www.yearsix.co.uk/sats-boot-camp/. 

Please complete the following topics for next Thursday: 

Maths - Topic 3: Multiplication  

English - Topic 6: Nouns and Pronouns  

Have a great weekend Year 6!

Year 4 Blog Friday 24th January 2025

Date: 23rd Jan 2025 @ 3:45pm

Welcome to your Friday blog

Home practice

Reading

Please read for 20 minutes each evening to an adult at home.  Remember to include lots of expression when you are reading.

Spellings

These are your spellings which will be tested next week – please practise them

measure       enclosure     picture        capture        departure

future         treasure      creature      nature         leisure

puncture      cure             pleasure       furniture     adventure

literature    mixture       sure

Counting

This week, please practise counting in 7’s  

For example, start at 12 and count to 144 and back again

0    7    14  etc                          84    77    70  etc

Times tables and Number facts

Please practise your individual tables target for your test next week. 

You can practise your tables on TTRockstars, Hit the Button and timestables.co.uk

Please also practise your number facts. 

You can practise your number facts on Hit the Button

It is crucial that you learn all of your table facts and your number facts as this will help you with many aspects of maths.

TTRockstars challenge

• A ‘Garage’ session

Sumdog challenges

• A spelling challenge based on the words above
• A maths challenge based on perpendicular and parallel lines

In English, we wrote a postcard from an evacuee, called Barry, to his mother. We had to think carefully about every word we wrote and tried to include vocabulary from the novel. In addition, we investigated and used verbs and adverbs in sentences. We needed to ensure our adverb was appropriate for the verb we were using.

In Maths, we started our shape topic by investigating 2D shapes – their names and properties. In addition, we defined parallel and perpendicular lines. We then learnt how to identify and name different prisms according to their properties.

In RE, we continued we read through and discussed the Nicene Creed. Following this, we chose our favourite phrase and explained what it means to us. 

In Science, we started our new topic – States of Matter. We began by creating a mind-map about what we already know. Following this, we discussed some key vocabulary and learnt the difference between each state (solid, liquids and gases). Finally, we shared some examples of each state and sorted them into each category.

In our ‘Our Happy Mind’ lesson, we recapped the 5 main character strengths, learnt why it is important to recognise and use our character strengths, and learnt how we can use our character strengths in lots of different ways.

In Art, we started our topic ‘the art of display’. We began by questioning the role of a ‘plinth’ in sculpture. We then discussed how to make a ‘pocket gallery’ and took some pictures of ourselves in various poses.

We continued our new topic ‘photo editing’ in Computing. We practised editing pictures and then learnt how to recolour pictures.

The Year 4 team