Week Beginning 5th January 2009

Happy New Year everyone an d welcome to 2009!

We hope you all had a happy and relaxing Christmas break and are reading to get down to some serious learning this half term.

We would like to start off by thanking you for all the fantastic Christmas cards and present the staff received at Christmas, it is very thoughtful of you and we really do appreciate it. Thank you.

Now let's see what's happening this week.

Monday
Monday this week is an INSET, the children do not return until Tuesday at 8.45am.

Wednesday
On Wednesday afternoon our Year 6 children we will starting drama sessions with Ms Chapel, who is a drama teacher at St Gregory's High School. The children really enjoy these sessions and also get a lot out of them.

We had also arranged a meeting for Wednesday evening about the new mini laptops. You will not have received a letter about this yet as we have been waiting for the insurance company to get back to us. As that has not happened yet we will have to delay the meeting until next week. Keep an eye out for the letter this week.
Even though the laptops are not going to go home this week we will get them out in school to get the children used to using them.

Friday
On Friday the whole school will be attending the Pantomime at the Parr Hall. We will be leaving school after the register and will return back around lunch time.
If you have not returned the permission slip yet please do so as soon as possible as we will not be able to take your child out of school without the slip.

Curriculum

Literacy

This week in Literacy we will be starting a revision unit on narrative writing.
We will be identifying narrative writing including past tense.
Understanding underlying themes & points of view. Expressing distinctions of meaning through the use of verb tense, Identifying story structure then creating a plan.
Using the techniques of dialog talk to explore ideas and issues.
Understanding how writers use different structures to create coherence/impact. Using different structures to shape & organise text. Write story following a plan.
Setting challenges to extend experience in writing.
Using a range of strategies to spell unfamiliar words.
Using paragraphs for pace, using punctuation to clarify meaning. Evaluating narrative. Appraising texts quickly, deciding on its value & quality. Reading extensively & discussing personal reading with others.
Understanding & using a variety of ways to criticise constructively. Participating in small group debate. Writing diary entries.
Using different narrative techniques to engage and entertain the reader.

This may seem like a lot to get through but it is a revision unit and therefore it is a review of objectives we have already visited in this academic year.

Numeracy

Miss Wright's and Mr Slavin's groups will be reviewing mixed numbers and improper fractions.
Try these websites:-
http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/book7/bk7i10/bk7_10i4.htm
http://www.visualfractions.com/MixtoFrCircle.html
http://www.themathpage.com/Arith/fractions.htm
http://www.mathplayground.com/fractions_mixed.html
http://www.aaamath.com/fra57c1-mixed2fractld.html

Mrs Morgan's and Mr Barker's groups will be using the exam papers we did before Christmas to decide which topics we need to review this week. We will go through them on Tuesday picking out what each individual child needs and set up work shops in the maths lessons for the rest of the week on the topics we need to do review.
This is a great time to start some revision yourself at home to get an idea of what you need to revise.
Try these websites:-
http://www.atschool.co.uk/subject/subject.asp?AreaSel=16
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/
http://www.coxhoe.durham.sch.uk/Curriculum/Numeracy.htm
www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/


Science

As this week is a short week we will be completing a short topic called more about dissolving.
This week we will be setting the children a challenge, to obtain some clear water from some dirty water eg 'collected' from a puddle which has clearly visible particles eg gravel in it and solids dissolved in it. Then asking them to give a step-by-step description of what they did so that another class or group could follow it.

Here I Am

This week in Here I Am we will start the new topic of Journeys. We will start by looking at the journey of the three wise men as they went to visit baby Jesus.
We will also link this to Spanish this week as Epiphany is a big celebration in Spain and we will use the laptops to research we traditions the Spanish culture follow at this time of year.
Have a look at these websites:-
http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0310500/epiphany.html
http://www.annieshomepage.com/epiphany.html
http://gospain.about.com/od/christmasinspain/f/three_kings_day.htm

Finally we would like to congratulate Mr and Mrs Narraway and Faith on the birth of their new baby girl, Ellen Rose over the Christmas holidays. We are extremely pleased for them and hope to see Mrs Narraway and Ellen Rose soon.

That's all for this week.

Year 5/6 Team.