Week Beginning 25th January 2009

Hi everyone and welcome to the last week of January, we just don't know where the time goes!!

First of all we would like to say thank you to the 6 children who attended the athletics competition at St. Gregory's on Friday. The children really did us proud with their behaviour and they mixed really well with both the other primary school children and the Year 10 sports leaders from St. Greg's. We did really well in the competition coming 2nd out of all the other feeder school. Great work children, you were fantastic.
Thank you also to the parents and grandparents that helped with transporting the children to the high school, we couldn't take part in these events without you.

Friends of St Vincent’s

The friends held a meeting in school this Friday at 3pm, in response to a dwindling turnout at their evening meetings. There were a few new faces, but they would love to have many more! They have helped to provide many of the new equipment and resources that we have in school, and the greater their numbers, the easier the workload! They have offered to make some drawstring bags for us, in order to store some of the new playground equipment. To help with this, they have asked that if anyone has any material which they wish to donate, then please send it into school. Maybe you have some old duvet covers that you no longer need, or some material that you promised you make something from! Many thanks in anticipation of your generosity.

On Friday this week our Year 6 children will be visiting the Peace Centre to attend Young Citizen 2009. They will be attending lots of different workshops including road safety, bicycle safety, fire safety etc. This is a valuable experience for the children and also an enjoyable one. We still have a few permission slips outstanding. This is becoming a real problem now, please encourage your child to give you any letters that have come home from school straight away and get them to put them straight back in their bags ready for school the next day. Previously we have rang parents on the morning of the trip and asked for their permission. We will no longer do this, so if your child does not have a slip then they cannot go out of school.

On the last week of term we will be holding our Spring Term parent's evenings. You should have a received a letter about this last week. We still have lots of slips outstanding, please ensure that you have sent beck your letter so we can avoid sending you out an appointment time that you cannot make. Thank you.

This week's curriculum...

Literacy

Our Year 5's will be continuing with their unit of work on persuasion. This week they will read and spell words through: identifying phonemes in speech and writing; blending phonemes
for reading; segmenting words into phonemes for spelling. Use independent spelling strategies, including: sounding out and spelling using phonemes. Identify how and why paragraphs are used to organise and sequence information. From examples of persuasive writing, investigate how style and vocabulary are used to convince the intended reader. To assemble and sequence points in order to plan the presentation of a point of view.

They will do this by reading different arguments and identifying the features and then moving on to planning their won persuasive argument.

Our Year 6's will be concentrating on writing this week as we will alternate between reading and writing each week.
We will be looking at examples of writing and which levels the writing had been given and we will also be looking at mark schemes to see where we can pick up marks in our writing.
We will be working on our VCOP (vocabulary, connectives, openers and punctuation) and trying to see how we can improve some of these areas. We will also be levelling some writing ourselves to see where extra marks can be picked up.

If you would like to have a go at some writing at home this week try some of these ideas (both for Year 5 and 6).

Writing an argument

You read a quote in the newspaper which says: ‘All children are mindless hooligans who watch too much television and have no idea of the way they should behave. If I had my way, they would all be put in the army, as it didn’t do me any harm.’ (Mr D. Green) Write a reply to the editor, arguing against the views in the letter.

Recounting events

Something happened on your way home from school last night. Recount the event to your friend.

Newletters

Your school is organising a sponsored 12 hour dance-athon for charity. Write a newsletter to encourage people to take part in the event.

Science fiction stories

The year is 2134 and the Intergalactic Space Police are on the trail of a master criminal, who has stolen the Life Diamond (the diamond at the centre of the earth, that controls the planet’s temperature.) Write a science fiction story based on this idea.

Stories with a dilemma

Jenny and her friends face a problem. The Lard Street Gang have called them soft because they won’t smoke cigarettes. Jenny doesn’t want to lose face with her friends but she doesn’t want to start smoking either. Write a story about what Jenny decides to do.

Stories with a twist

Ben could hear a noise. It was coming from his cellar. He decides to investigate. What does Ben find in the cellar? Tell the story to the end of his investigation, but try to include a twist at the end.

Fantasy adventures

Blakely has been captured by the evil high lords and put to work as a slave in the salt mine. He escapes and starts a journey back home to Little Hamlet. On his way home, Blakely meets a friendly creature and is nearly captured. Write a fantasy adventure based on this idea.

Numeracy

Miss Wright's and Mr Slavin's groups will be concentrating this week on area and perimeter.
They will be calculating the area and perimeter of regular/irregular polygons and using a formula to calculate the area of a rectangle.

Try these websites to get a head start:-

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/measures.htm#Area
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/maths/perimeter_and_area/index.html
http://www.mathplayground.com/area_perimeter.html

Mrs Morgan's and Mr Barker's group will be continuing their work with percentages and decimals as we spent more time than we thought last week on ordering fractions.

Topic

Last week in our environment topic we did some art work based on the Tin Forest. We did the colourful aspect of the forest. This week we will be doing contrasting art work using tin foil to create out pictures.
If you have any spare tin foil at home please send it into school for your child to use. Thank you.

Drama

Ms Chapel could not make it school for the Year 6's drama session last week, we are expecting her this week so hopefully the drama will continue.

Finally, you should have received a letter informing you of the website Mr Worrall has set up to help combat the problems some people are having connecting their mini laptops to the internet. The website address is www.stvincentstech.co.uk there is lots of useful information on the site and if you are still having problems you can ask questions. Once again we would like to thank Mr Worrall for giving up his time and expertise to help us, we really appreciate it.

Have a great week.

Year 5/6 Team.