Week Beginning 12th November 2007

Hi everyone and welcome to this week's blog.




First of all we need to stress how important it is that all the children have an outdoor PE kit in school everyday for this half term. As the rest of the school are getting into the Christmas spirit the hall time table has had to change to meet the needs of Christmas play practice and that means that all of year 5/6's PE sessions will be outdoor.


We can not predict which day the children will be doing PE as we have to check the weather first before we can decide and for this reason they need a kit at all times.


On Monday afternoons the year 5 children will be participating in Rugby training with trainers from Warrington Wolves. This also will be an outdoor activity and they will need an outdoor kit.




On Tuesday afternoons starting from this week, the year 6 children will be doing drama sessions with Helen Robinson who is a drama teacher from St Gregory's High School. She is a fantastic drama teacher and the children always enjoy the sessions.





On Thursday this week it is the junior disco run by the friends of St. Vincent's, this is your chance to show off your dancing skills children, although I'm sure the teachers are much better!!



With all this going on it's a wonder we find time to have any lessons but rest assured we will be learning as much this week as ever, here we go with the curriculum:-


Literacy

Our poetry lessons went really well last week and by Friday the children had written some excellent poems using personification, well done for all your hard work children.

This week we will be concentrating on phase 2 of our poetry unit. By the end of the week the children.....

Must reflect on how working in role helps to explore some of the complex issues within a poem; (teacher observation, self-assessment).

Should reflect on how working in role helps to explore some of the complex issues within a poem; and begin to demonstrate understanding of characters, language and plot to write in the first person (teacher observation, self-assessment).

Could reflect on how working in role helps to explore some of the complex issues within a poem; demonstrate understanding of characters, language and plot to write in the first person (teacher observation, self-assessment).



Maths



Well done to all the children who earned a times table award this week. Just incase any parents don't know, we have introduced a times tables challenge and the children are really rising to it so please support them in their learning of their tables.

The way the challenge works is they have 100 tables questions to answer in a set amount of time (5 minutes for year 6 and 6 minutes for year 5). If they get 100% they acheive a gold award, 90% gets them a silver award and 80% a bronze a award. It is essential to mathematical development that their children know their tables inside out so please practice at every opportunity. See previous blogspots for websites to help.

The awards will be given out in assembly on Monday.



This week Mrs Morgan's and Miss Wright's group will be learning to use, read and write standard metric units of length: mm, cm, m, km and use, read and write standard units of weight: kg and g.

You can support this learning by getting the children to measure things at home and you could also get out the baking products and get them to weigh the ingredients. Try and use different types of scales at home.



This week Mrs Millington's group will be ....... Changing an improper fraction to a mixed number, and vice versa and Converting, reducing, comparing and ordering fractions. By the end of the week they will be able to.....

Consolidate changing an improper fraction to a mixed number, and vice versa



Consolidate recognition of equivalent fractions

Reduce a fraction to its simplest form by cancelling common factors in the numerator and denominator

Order fractions by converting them to fractions with a common denominator

Continue to order fractions and position them on a number line

Recognise relationships between fractions, e.g. 1/16 is half of 1/8

Science



We have started our topic on the planets and this week the children will be working in co-operative learning teams to come up with a holiday brochure for a planet of their choice.

There is endless amounts of infomation on the planets on the internet so just google it and see what you can come up with.



Here I am



We are starting our new topic of visitors, this will be in the run up to Christmas and will lead up to taking about a very special visitor that was born on Christmas day!!

Mantle of the Expert:
Mrs Millington's class have been trialling a different way of working called 'Mantle of the Expert' (explained in last weeks blog). The children hopefully came home buzzing about everything we did, and keen to start work in their new company 'Eye Spy'.
We will keep you posted.



Topic



We had great fun having a look behind the scene of one of the Starwars movies this week and we will be continuing our theme of working benhind the camera this week.

Have a look at all the different job titles when the credits roll of any movies you watch over the weekend.



See you all on Monday.



Year 5/6 Team.