19th September 2019

Class 5 have made an amazing start and everyone has seized the opportunity to fill the gap left by last years leavers. In English and Maths, we have seen children eager to stretch themselves, whether in number operations, writing scene settings or instruction writing. The preparation for Young Voices has shown some amazing vocal talent, which I know will come in really useful for the end of year production.

Our interesting development this year has been to introduce the JASS award (Junior Award Scheme for Schools) which combines elements of foundation subjects such as PSHE, Geography with PE and even other extra-curricular activities. At the end of the scheme the children will receive their Blue JASS award, which they can feel proud about. We were really lucky to have a couple of parent helpers as the children prepared their personalised JASS folders – even having to do some stitching! 

4th October 2019

It certainly feels like we have been back a lot longer than 4 weeks and the members of class 5 have picked up to full speed pretty quickly. In the last couple of weeks, they have amazed us already with some of their brilliant writing, using a wide range of vocabulary and punctuation; last week’s poetry was awesome.

In maths, both Year 5 and Year 6 have made speedy progress to multiplication and we have seen many children really pushing their boundaries when challenged with new ideas.

There has been some lovely time to work scientifically, look at the properties of light – whether making light move with reflection or refraction – tell them to show you how to make a picture disappear from under a glass and explain to you why!

With their JASS project they are still working together to plan an adventurous activity (which promises to be really fun) and they have worn themselves into the ground practising for their 5k run.        

18th October 2019

It’s been a great 2 weeks for Class 5 who have finished writing their persuasive leaflet on the attractions of Essex – yes there really are some nice places to go it seems when you read their work! In Maths, both Year 5 and 6 children have pushed themselves with division, always a learning challenge, but one they have all risen to.

It was a shame the Netball competition was cancelled but they have continued well with their badminton skills and are training well and gearing up for their 5k run in November as part of their JASS award physical section and raising money for the community garden project. Science this week was a real construction challenge, thinking of combating forces to build a bridge from resources like newspaper and spaghetti; a strong enough bridge to hold a bag of sugar and the some impressive results await testing next week. 

8th November 2019

We’ve been wowed this week as the children have started to write about Viking events and the Battle of Benfleet – their knowledge is amazing (Marvel movies must be paying off!) and shaping into some great writing. Maths has moved on to the wonders of fractions in Year 6 and the children have been determined to grasp the principles really well.

On a different note, we managed to get time to finish off our clay masks – in the style of the Mayans. Their masks usually took the form of fierce, animalistic warriors who had colourful, symmetrical patterns. The children designed their mask first, then created a clay version and this week decorated. The results were pretty impressive, as you can see here.

We have managed to round our week off with a brilliant local walk (today hopefully!) as part of our JASS award and helping us to understand more about our local area. Don’t forget next week is the sponsored 5K run to raise money for the Class 5 Community gardens. Thanks for all your continued help and support.

22nd November 2019

This last couple of weeks have made us feel very proud of Class 5. Last Friday’s 5K Run showed not only a group of children who committed to a task – even if they weren’t keen on it – so that others could benefit from a new garden area. There were amazing moments when children would go back to run with, and encourage their peers. Whilst we are still receiving sponsor monies it seems they will exceed their initial hopes and expectations. Well done Class 5!

In our classroom learning we have begun to create speeches about the environment and climate change – you never know one of them might make the UN one day! Already they are showing great command of the formality of speech writing and the use of a wide range of complex punctuation – why not get your child to read their speech to you once they are finished and let us know what you think.

Music lessons have definitely got us up and dancing as this week we compared Disco and Punk, after last week considering new and old classical music. They have a lovely appreciation of different musical genres and we even managed to get Class 4 dancing on the playground! Of course there was the highlight of Attendance Afternoon Tea too!

17th January 2020

Already on to Term 2 and it’s full steam ahead. Year 5 children in Class 5 have finally moved away from fractions and are ploughing headlong into decimals, whilst Year 6 have moved onto measures. In English, we have made a change of formality and are looking at the “chatty” style of blog writing, hopefully writing our own before long.

JASS continues and we are now at the stage of consulting with a local nursery to look at planting options and species of trees. All being well, we will have the opportunity to visit the nursery very soon. This will link nicely into our DT lessons where we are designing and building the planting areas.

PE has changed and we are now enjoying gymnastics with Mrs Sloper and trying our hand at the Paralympic sport of Goalball – our first lesson made us realise how hard it must be for those who are partially and totally blind. Our class tournaments should be quite exciting though.

Just one week now until Young Voices at the O2! Keep practising at home – thanks for all your support last term and we look forward to this new one.

31st January 2020

What a busy couple of weeks it has been and before we talk about any other learning we have to speak about the O2 and Young Voices which we attended on 22^nd Jan, last Wednesday. The children had a long and busy day, arriving at 1.45pm just in time to get our seats and start rehearsing until 5pm. Then we performed along with nearly 8000 other children for 2 hours until. By the time we got back the children were shattered (and most of them were the next day too) but it was an amazing time, and a wonderful experience for the children. We would love to get feedback from those of you who went so that we can make a judgement about whether to join in again next year. However, praise has to go to the children for learning so many words and being on their very best behaviour on the day. They were an absolute credit to you all. Thank you.

In class Year 5s have been moving onto (and I have to say really mastering) decimals and Year 6 have been problem solving, using a new strategy of “bar modelling”. It has been a challenge, but they have really pushed themselves to succeed. Class 5 blog writing is really coming on and last Friday they prepared and cooked a Vegetarian 3 bean chilli so that they could be inspired by the gorgeous (rather garlicky!) smell that washed around the room.

Well done too to all the dozen or so children that have now been trained up as Play Leaders – we are looking forward to seeing the impact of your skills at lunchtimes.

6th March 2020

Where has this half term gone – it seems to have rattled by so quickly and the children of Class 5, I know, are looking forward to a well-earned break in the half term.

Last week it was brilliant to watch them develop their instruction writing skills as they moved on from being food blog writers to recipe writers - made even better as they cooked a delicious version of Mary Berry’s Lemon Drizzle Cake during the lesson – and then ate it at the end of the day as a reward.

Maths has been a challenge for our Year 5s as they approached the subject of percentages with a little fear and trepidation, but rose to that challenge and really demonstrated an amazing learning attitude to grasp the new concepts. Year 6, I know, have felt similarly challenged by Mrs Sloper looking at ratio – another maths topic that is not always easy to grasp immediately.

Science has been fun as we have been working with, and drawing electrical circuits to discover what can affect the performance of a circuit as more components are added. The pictures below show some of the fun that was had with that. ICT has given the class the chance to design some brilliant games on the laptops – perhaps my favourite being the game which had a character run around eating bowls of Cheetos until he exploded – perhaps the girls who designed that could develop it into a PSHE game about healthy eating! Have a great half term break and we look forward to working together in the next session.