Year 3
What a fabulous week it’s been in Year 3 – and not just for the children! A huge thank you must go to the wonderful Mrs Dobson and Mrs Troughton, who led the class brilliantly while I joined Year 6 in the mornings during SATs week. The children’s excellent behaviour and hard work even earned them a well-deserved bonus playtime each afternoon.
While I haven’t set a handwriting task this week, please do keep up the momentum with reading, maths targets, and times tables practice at home.
Even though I haven’t been in the classroom full-time, the learning has not missed a beat. In Maths, we’ve been exploring the topic of money – counting pounds and pence, converting between them, and through addition and subtraction. We’ve had lots of hands-on experience with coins and even uncovered where our money is actually made. With so many children now used to paying digitally, this was a valuable, tactile experience.
In English, the children have completed their persuasive innovation texts, encouraging their readers to visit destinations of their choice. They've really risen to the challenge, using ambitious adjectives and clever techniques: from short, punchy sentences to alliteration, rhyme, repetition, and even rhetorical questions. Budding travel writers in the making!
Our fascinating Science work on plants has continued. This week, we conducted an investigation into how water travels through a plant using dyed water and white flowers. The children observed capillary action in action – the colourful transformation was magical! (If trying this at home, we used Brusho, as food colouring doesn’t quite do the trick.)
In PSHE, we’ve been thinking about product advertising and packaging – and how these can influence our food choices – with some eye-opening discussions led by Miss Spinks. French lessons have taken us to the world of numbers 1 to 10, with plenty of catchy songs and even a bit of maths en français! In PE, we’ve been developing our bat and ball skills with gusto, and in RE, Mrs Chittock and the children continued exploring what it is to be Salt and Light in the Christian world.
And finally, in DT, we’ve taken on the exciting challenge of appliqué and designed our very own cushions. The Great Year 3 Sewing Bee kicks off next week – needles at the ready and wish us luck!
Have a restful weekend, and we look forward to an action-packed final week before the break.
Claire Murphy
Year 4
MONDAY 19TH MAY 2025 - PLEASE WEAR PE KIT - CRICKET COACH IN.
The children have been so good at showing respect to Year 6 and their SATs this week. They were quiet as they moved around school and quieter as we worked in the classroom. Well done Year 4. Please make sure your child has a hat each day. The children now use the field at playtimes and lunchtime, and if you have been to a sports day, you will have noticed that there is no shade for the children to go into if they do not have a hat. Please also ensure that they have a warm layer with them too. With the sudden change of temperature, the children have found being outside quite chilly.
Our learning this week;-
Maths - we have continued looking at decimals and fractions, looking at pictorial representations, then writing them as a fraction and a decimal. With Mrs Harper, the children looked at lines of symmetry.
English - we have continued with imitating our text about Pompeii, ready to make changes to it. We have also been writing interesting sentences that include prepositions, expanded noun phrases, fronted adverbials, double ~ly and using alternative pronouns to avoid repetition. With Mrs Harper, the children read a text about Pompeii and then answered questions.
Art - The children have started looking at 3D art. They used shading and looked at tone to create a 3D drawing of their hand in preparation for moving on to more difficult 3D and thinking of proportion.
Titanic - the children continued their research into who was to blame for the tragedy and continued to put together a presentation for or against their person.
Science - the children finalised their powerpoint presentation about invertebrates.
Music - the children converted their thoughts about rainforest sounds from last week into sounds and instruments and started to produce a score for a performance.
French - the children were describing celebrities.
RE - Continuing with the discussion on Christians believing they are people on a mission, we looked at Salt and Light and what this means to a Christian and how they can be Salt and Light in the world.
Here's hoping the sun returns for the weekend,
Have a lovely time,
Mrs Chittock and the Year 4 team
Year 5
We've survived our most topsy-turvy week!
A huge 'Well Done' to the Y6s for being so brilliant during their big week, but I must say an even bigger 'Thank you' to Y5 who have been in different places with different people doing different things and not complaining (apart from when I made them do DT and PSHE rather than the rumoured rounders competition with Y6).
While they were in the hall, Y5 created workhouses on TinkerCAD, solved a multitude of tangram puzzles and designed their own 'William Morris' style print, and coloured it in different colourways using different mediums. Their art work was beautiful. They've also watched Oliver! (the 1968 musical version). We watched it as Dickens wrote and published it - in lots of small sections! We will use this as some inspiration for some writing next week.
In History, we learnt about some significant Victorian inventions and cultural developments. We created a 'pyramid' of importance (inverted commas necessary as mathematically, it wasn't a pyramid) and, despite many fervent efforts and entreaties, the first ever FA cup final didn't make it to the top 3. We are beginning to see why life for Britons changed so much during the Victorian Era.
In Science, we studied amphibian life cycles, which introduces the idea of metamorphosis. We described the lifecycle of a frog, trying to use lots of scientific terminology. Y5 are definitely catching my pedantic manner - writing about tadpoles' respiration rather than their breathing! We have started our final DT unit - which is all about structures and bridges. We had a go at investigating some simple (and not so simple) bridge structures to see which was able to hold the most mass. We've definitely got some budding structural engineers in the room. We've never had bridges made from 2 sheets of A4 card hold well over 200 multilink cubes before! In PSHE, we talked about what sorts of behaviours are OK in relationships. We linked this to some of the relationships we had seen in Oliver!
Next Monday, we have a cricket coach coming to school to work with KS2 pupils. Children need to be in their PE kit. Y5s should have a note in their Reading Record book.
Have a wonderful weekend! Back to relative normality next week!
Miss Rutter, Mrs Marsh and Mrs Nichols
Year 6
This week has been all about the SATs – and what a week it has been! We are incredibly proud of the children for their perseverance, determination, and mature attitude throughout. They showed fantastic support for one another and were extremely patient and flexible with the timetable arrangements.
Yesterday, we shared some exciting news with the children: the name of this year’s end-of-year play is Rock Bottom! Each child has now received a script and is invited to audition for a major part next Thursday if they would like to. Casting decisions will be made as a team, and we hope to announce roles to those who audition by next Friday.
To round off the week, we celebrated today in true Wild West style! The children looked amazing in their costumes – thank you for your efforts in helping them come prepared. We had a brilliant time, and it was a perfect way to shift gears from SATS to the fun-filled weeks ahead.
As always, thank you for your continued support – especially in ensuring the children arrived on time this week. We hope they had as much fun today as we did!
Have a super weekend!
The Year 6 Team
