Welcome to Year 5/6B - St Maximilian Kolbe

Teacher: Miss Butler         Summer 1

Welcome back 5/6B! I hope you have had a wonderful Easter holiday with your families and friends! We have lots of exciting activities planned for this half-term. We are more than two-thirds of the way through the school year, but there is still lots left to learn and lots of things to experience. 

Key dates:

Our PE day is Thursday until further notice. Please wear your PE kit to school on a Thursday. We will send a message out to parents and carers when PE day returns to Wednesday.

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

King's Coronation celebrations - Friday 5th May from 2.15pm

KS2 SATS week for Year 6s is Tuesday 9th - Friday 12th May.

Art and DT Week - Monday 15th May - Friday 19th May

Wednesday 24th May -  2.45 - 3.10pm - Stay and Read session: We loved welcoming you into our class and reading together. Please do join us for another chance to share your favourite books with us and discover new titles from our Class Library.

.Our last day in school before the Summer half-term is Friday 26th May. School reopens on Monday 12th June.

Please check this page regularly for key dates, homework, useful links to help with you 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 reading 'Mayor Bunny's Chocolate Town'. We will discuss the characters' thoughts and feelings during different parts of the story, the differences in each of the characters and their motives for wanting to be mayor. During this unit, we will study the features of persuasive speeches, and will conclude by writing our own persuasive speeches in character. 

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 

- punctuating direct speech accurately

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

Our Class Read will be The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Rauf.

Maths

This half-term, in Maths, we will be looking at Shape and Position and Direction.

First, we will be identifying different types of angles then moving onto estimating and comparing acute, obtuse and reflex angles. We will also draw given angles and measure them in degrees using a protractor.  

After that we will investigate 3d shapes and distinguish between regular and irregular polygons. We will also convert between different units of metric measures. We will solve problems involving converting between units of time and estimate volume and capacity. 

We will continue to work on our arithmetic skills through daily morning maths and through weekly arithmetic tests. We will also be doing lots of reasoning and problem solving, by applying our knowledge to real-life problems.

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 half-term, we will conduct a local area study focusing on how Manchester changed during the Industrial Revolution. Here are some of the key objectives we will cover in this topic:

• Give a broad overview of life in Britain during The Industrial Revolution.
• Describe significant events from The Industrial Revolution and their impact on life in Britain.
• Compare life in Manchester during The Industrial Revolution and the current day.
• Use historical sources to answer complex questions from the past.
• Use maps to compare 2 different time periods in Britain.

Science

Last half-term, we had a fantastic time at the Silly Science workshop and at MOSI to celebrate Science week. This term, our topic is 'Animals Including Humans'. We will start off this topic by describing the stages of human development.  We will also be looking at how babies grow and develop and identifying the changes that take place during old age. Finally we will conduct an experiment to measure human growth and compare the development of animals to humans. We will be learning how to present data in different formats e.g. bar charts and line graphs, and will gain confidence in presenting our findings to others.

RE

Our Topic in RE for Summer 1 is Pentecost - Transformation. We will begin by exploring and understanding what it means to live a life of service. We will then look in detail at the story of Pentecost and understand and explain the different symbols used for the Holy Spirit. We will also relate the power of the Holy Spirit to other more modern 'people of courage'. Finally we will compare what happened to Saul to a life changing experience of our own.

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 – Children have a weekly comprehension assignment to complete on Reading Eggs.

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. My Maths  - Children have a weekly assignment to complete on MyMaths that will help them to practise the skills we have been learning in school.

Pupils can also access Mathseeds (using their Reading Eggs login) and TT Rockstars for fluency practice.

4. 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. 

5. Learning logs –  The next Learning Log project will be in Summer 2.