Years: 5 and 6                                             Teacher: Miss Smalls                                   Teaching Assistant: Mrs Pountney

Welcome to Class 4

Hello and welcome back!

I hope you all had a wonderful, relaxing summer break. It has been lovely to welcome the children back to school for the start of a new school year. The children have settled in incredibly well and have already impressed me with their hard work and enthusiasm. I am really looking forward to the year ahead and everything we have planned.                     

Miss Smalls

Homework.

All homework will be set via Google classroom. It will be set on a Friday and will need to be completed by the following Thursday evening or before. Completed homework should be submitted/turned in on Google classroom. The work can either be completed using a Google doc or the children can write it by hand and then submit a photo of the completed activity. The Google classroom app on a mobile phone makes it a lot easier to upload pictures. This can be downloaded for free. There is no expectation for any of the worksheets to be printed off at home.

The weekly homework will consist of the following:

• Spelling activities
• Handwriting practise
• Mathletics
• Times tables practise
• Reading

However, they may also receive other pieces to support with their leaning in class.

The logins for Google Classroom, Mathletics and Reading Eggspress are all the same as the previous year. If the children should forget any of their login details, then they can access them on a clip board in the classroom. The mathletics work will relate to the work we have been covering in class each week. As well as completing sessions on Reading Eggspress, the children should also be reading on a regular basis at home. It is excellent practise for the children to read out loud, as this helps to improve fluency, expression and pace.

A change in spelling

To develop active engagement and enthusiasm for vocabulary and spelling, key stage two children will now be asked to carry out activities, which will support their spelling in different ways. The weekly activities will help the children to understand words and use them in the correct context. This work will be set via Google Classroom and will replace weekly spelling tests.

Topics and units for the autumn term*

Maths

In maths, we will be looking at the following areas:

• Number and place value
• Addition
• Subtraction
• Multiplication
• Division  

Geography

For our geography unit this term, we will be learning all about rivers. As part of our unit, I have organised a class trip to Carding Mill Valley and the long Mynd. During our day trip, we will be able to develop and extend our knowledge even further, through a range of hands-on activities and investigations. 

Religious Education

In RE, we will be exploring why the Five Pillars are important to Muslims.

 French

Our unit in French this half term is ‘Getting to know you’. We will learn to express our emotions and talk about our future and what we would like to do when we grow up.

Science

For our first science unit this term, we will be exploring Properties and changes in materials. We will be exploring everyday materials and the properties they possess. We will investigate how we can separate mixtures and how materials can change state.

Literacy

The book we will be using for our literacy unit this half term is called ‘Queen of The Falls.’ This is a wonderful book, which tells the true story of one woman’s heroic, yet crazy adventure over Niagara Falls.

Music 

The children will be having their music lessons on a Friday afternoon, where they will be learning how to play their chosen musical instrument. These are brilliant lessons, which I know the children will thoroughly enjoyed.

PE

During PE, we will be focusing on tag rugby. We will be taking part in a tag rugby tournament at Bishop Heber later on in the term, so this will be brilliant practise.  

*These are subject to change