Welcome to Year 5/6P/H - St Maximilian Kolbe

Teachers: Mrs Clarke & Miss Hollingsworth         Autumn 1

Welcome back to school after the summer holidays.  We hope you have had a lovely summer and are feeling refreshed and excited about the new term at school.   

Key dates:

Our PE day is on Mondays. Please wear your PE kit to school on a Monday for our indoor and outdoor sessions. 

Please make sure you are wearing the correct school uniform every other school day. 

Please check this page regularly for key dates, homework, useful links to help with your learning, and information about all the subjects we'll be studying.

You can also use the resources below to help with your learning: 

• TT Rockstars for times table practice.
• Reading Eggs for online reading and comprehension practice.
• MyMaths for online mathematical activities

• https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games
• https://nrich.maths.org/

English

During our English lessons this half term, we will be looking at short story writing and biographies. We will study the features of a biography and will conclude by writing our own biography about Anne Frank. 

Some of the writing objectives we will be looking at are:

- using paragraphs to organise ideas

- using simple devices to structure non-narrative writing e.g. headings, subheadings, bullet points

   -  writing for a range of purposes 

In Guided Reading, we will be looking at a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts. 

Some of the skills we will be working on are:

- Using the context of a sentence to work out the meaning of a word

- Reading aloud with intonation that shows understanding

- Make predictions based on details that have been read

Maths

This half-term, in Maths, we will start with Place Value and then move on to look at the four rules of number working on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  Make sure you keep practising those times tables to help with your mental and written calculations within class.

We will continue to work on our arithmetic skills through daily morning maths and through weekly arithmetic tests. We will also be doing some investigations involving  reasoning and problem-solving.

Knowing your times tables up to 12 x 12 will make you a much more efficient mathematician. Make sure you are using TTRockstars at home to practise your times tables. Can you help us climb to the top of the TTRockstars leaderboard? Every 5 minutes helps!

Topic

In Topic this term, we will be looking at World War II.  Art will look at work by Henry Moore. Here are some of the key objectives we will cover in this topic:

A broad overview encompassing:​

• The outbreak of war​

• The geography of war​

• Timeline of the 2nd world war incorporating key events and battles​

Our narrow focus will be life on the home front, both here and abroad:​

• The blitz and evacuation​

• Women and the war​

• How women and children from other countries were affected by the war​

ART

▪ Explore how ideas translate and develop through different medium (i.e. a drawing in pencil or a drawing in charcoal)

▪ Use dry media to make different marks, lines, patterns, and shapes within a drawing.

▪ Experiment with wet media to make different marks, lines, patterns, textures and shapes

▪ Use different techniques for different purposes i.e. shading, hatching within their own work.

Science

This term, our topic is 'Evolution & Inheritance'. We will look at how living things have changed over time and that fossils provide information about living things that inhabited the Earth millions of years ago; how living things produce offspring of the same kind, but normally offspring vary and are not identical to their parents and how animals and plants are adapted to suit their environment in different ways and that adaptation may lead to evolution.

RE

Our Topics in RE are Loving and Vocations & Commitment Baptism.   We will be looking at families and the family of God and how God's love is unconditional.  We will look at commitments in life and link this to the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation.

PSHE and Mindfulness

Included throughout all of our topics is the importance of self-care and reflection. At home we encourage you  to use a  journal to write down our thoughts, feelings and emotions which is key to regulating how we are throughout each day like we do in class. Additionally, we will post some online meditation and yoga you can practice at home.

Homework-

  Here are the Home Learning tasks that pupils should complete each week. Please come and see me if you have lost your log-ins for any of these sites!

1) Reading - Pupils should be reading for 10-15 minutes every night. Pupils can change their books as and when they need to in the Class Library or the KS2 Library. Year 5/6 pupils are welcome to bring in books from home. Please help your child to record their reading in their Reading Record. Listening to your child read can support their fluency, develop their comprehension skills, and help them to progress. Pupils can gain Reading Raffle tickets and class rewards for their reading at home.

https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk/reading-lists-for-ks2-school-pupils/suggested-reading-list-for-year-5-pupils-ks2-age-9-10/ Here are some recommended reads - how many of these books have you read?

2. Reading Eggs and My Maths – Children have a weekly comprehension assignment to complete on Reading Eggs and MyMaths.

Reading eggs makes learning to read interesting and engaging for kids, with great online reading games and activities. Children love the games, songs, golden eggs and other rewards which, along with feeling proud of their reading, really motivate children to keep exploring and learning.

3. Spellings – practice daily

Pupils have 10 spellings to learn per week, on which they will be tested every Friday. A PDF copy of the spellings is available below. 

4. Learning logs –  Project.