Week Beginning 29th September 2008

Hi everyone and welcome to this week's blogspot.

We welcomed our Year 6's back from the Conway Centre on Friday, very tired and suntanned! They had a fantastic time and I'm sure they have been very tired this weekend. Their behaviour was fantastic and the staff at the Conway Centre always comment on how well the children from St. Vincent's behave, this year was no exception and again the staff were really impressed. Well done children you were a credit to yourselves, our school and your parents.

Our 5's had a great time in school learning about space and all that it entails, they were really interested in this topic and directed their own learning around what they wanted to know. Thank you to the children for completed their homework presentations in such a professional way. We really enjoyed them and learned a lot, we were very impressed with the effort that had gone into to them. Thank you.

We would also like to thank you for all the generous donations for our Harvest Festival. We will be holding Harvest Festival Mass in school on Tuesday morning at 9.10am. Feel free to join us but please remember as always space is limited.

This week we all get back together and continue with our curriculum for this half term.

Literacy

We are continuing with our poetry theme this week. The children have read and responded to lots of different poems by Pie Corbett and Valerie Bloom.
This week they will be learning to:-

Understand different ways to take the lead and support others in groups.
Make notes on and use evidence from across a text to explain ideas. Compare different types of poems and identify how they are structured.

Compare different types of poems and identify how they are structured.
Experiment with different poetry forms and styles to write their own poems. Adapt non-narrative forms and styles to write poetry.
Adapt sentence construction to achieve different effects.
Use ICT programs to present texts.
Perform a poem making use of dramatic conventions.

There is a lot to get through this week but basically the children will be using what they have learned in the previous week to write, improve and inform their own poetry.

Numeracy

This week in numeracy Mr Barker and Mrs Morgan's group will be consolidating knowing by heart the division facts up to 10 x 10., using the relationship between multiplication and division to multiply and divide mentally.
Express a number as a fraction or a decimal rounded to one decimal place and consolidate rounding up and down after division.

Miss Wright's and Mr Slavin's group will be concentrating on similar objectives but will be looking at at having a remainder after dividing instead of expressing it as a fraction or decimal.

The children will also have some numeracy word lists stuck into their diaries this week. The lists look similar to the High Frequency Words lists. The words are to be used to help the children understand the language of mathematics. The children will be focusing on 3 words a week and will have to be able to read and understand them.
A good website to help with this is:-
http://www.amathsdictionaryforkids.com/

Science

We will be continuing our topic of reversible and irreversible change. This week we shall be baking some bread to help us understand how a new material is formed after an irreversible change.
Why not try baking some cakes or pancakes at home to help demonstrate this?

Topic

Our Ancient Greek topic this week will focus on looking at understanding how the physical geography of Greece affected how the Ancient Greeks settled.
Find out about the past from a range of sources of info. Ask &d answer questions about the past, selecting relevant info.
We will be looking at the physical geography of Ancient Greece and modern Greece.
Try these websites to help:-
http://www.ancientgreece.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ancientgreece/main_menu.shtml

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/greece/athens.htm

PE

Last week the Warrington Wolves coaches had to cancel the Year 5's first sessions of Tag Rugby training.
We are assured that they will be in school this week to start the children's training on Wednesday afternoon.
On Thursday the children will be continuing with their Ancient Olympics theme.

That's it for another busy week in Year 5/6.

Until next week.

Year 5/6 Team.