Week Beginning 12th January 2009

Hi everyone and welcome to the second week of the Spring Term.

The children came back after Christmas ready and eager to learn.

We had a great time at the Panto on Friday and as usual when we take the children out of school their behaviour was fantastic, thank you.

Last week we had at least 10 people from each class without PE kits, please ensure that PE kits are in school this week, our PE lessons will be indoor although it is a good a idea to have an outdoor PE kit in school as well just for any unexpected times that we cannot use the hall.

Year 6 started their drama unit with Ms Chapel this week, the children really enjoyed it and Ms Chapel informed me that they were fantastic at it, we always knew we had a lot of drama queens in our midst!!

On Tuesday this week after school football will continue, Mr Slavin is running the club with help from some college students. Mr Slavin is also trying to arrange games with other local schools for the children. Thank you to Mr Slavin for giving up his time for this.

On Monday at 7pm we will be holding a meeting about the mini laptops. As explained on the letter you will be able to take your child's laptop home after the meeting providing that you have signed the relevant paper work and paid the insurance. Unfortunately we cannot let the laptops go home without the insurance payment as they will not be covered by the insurance.
If you cannot attend the meeting please arrange another time to come into school to sign the paper work and pay the insurance otherwise your child will not be able to take the laptop home.

This week's curriculum...

Literacy

This week will be splitting into 4 groups for literacy, 2 groups of Year 5 and 2 groups of Year 6.
The Year 5 children will be starting a unit of work on persuasive writing.
Their objectives this week will be:-

To evaluate advertisements for their impact, appeal and honesty, focusing
in particular on how information about the product is presented: exaggerated claims, tactics
for grabbing attention, linguistic devices, e.g. puns, jingles, alliteration, invented words.

To use alternative words and expressions which are more
accurate or interesting than the common choice.
To identify adverbs and understand their functions in
sentences.
To revise and extend work on adjectives.

Here are some websites to get you started:-
http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/english/contents06writingnonfiction.htm
http://www.teachit.co.uk/index.asp?CurrMenu=searchresults&tag=580


Our Year 6 children will be starting to prepare themselves for the SAT's this week by working on how to tackle the reading test.
We will be working on our speed reading, skimming and scanning and reading for information.
We will also be looking at how to tackle the questions and understanding what the question actually wants us to find out.
You can help your child with this by ensuring that they are reading at home every night and they are doing quality reading and actually understanding what they are reading.
You could do this by reading a few chapters ahead of them and then questioning them on what they have read.

Here are some SAT's websites:-
http://www.brightminds.co.uk/sats-englishks2.htm
http://www.parentsintouch.co.uk/waystohelpyourchild/howicanhelpmy7-11yearold.htm
http://www.sats-past-papers.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=83

Numeracy

Mrs Morgan and Mr Barker's groups will also be preparing for their SAT's in their numeracy lessons. After completing a past paper before Christmas we know have a clearer idea of which children need to review which subjects and therefore there will be lots of different activities going on in the classroom to work on different subjects.
This week we will be reviewing decimals, fractions and percentages. We will be using the mini laptops as well as other games and workbooks to complete activities based on these subjects.
We will also be compiling a list of useful websites that will help with revision at home as well as in school.
Look out for the children's list of websites which will make it's way to you as soon as it is compiled.

Miss Wright's and Mr Slavin's group will be continuing their work on fractions this week but will be moving onto looking at equivalent fractions.
Take a look at these fraction worksheets.

http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/book7/bk7i10/bk7_10i2.htm
http://www.mathsisfun.com/equivalent_fractions.html
http://www.learningplanet.com/sam/ff/index.asp
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/maths/revision_bites/fractions2.shtml

Science

Our Science lessons this week will consist of continuing with our topic on more about dissolving. We will also have a practical science lesson on the effects of exercise on heart rate.
Each week our science lessons will consist of completing our topic for that half term and also having a practical lesson where the children will have a question that they will need to design an experiment to test it out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/revision_bites/reversible_irreversible3.shtml
http://www.thegrid.org.uk/learning/science/ks1-2/resources/index.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/9_10/keeping_healthy_fs.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/9_10/keeping_healthy_fs.shtml

Topic

This week we will starting our new topic on the environment. We will be basing our topic on a book called 'The Tin Forest' by Helen Ward and Wayne Anderson.
This week we will be using the mini laptops to do some research endangered species, we will then be completing a report on our chosen animal and thinking of solutions to try and stop these species being extinct.

Our topic will be the basis for a lot of our foundation subjects this half term. We will be incorperating drama, music, geogrpahy, history, PHSE and ICT into the our environment topic.

That's all for this week.

Year 5/6 Team