Bishopsteignton Primary School

It's been a busy few weeks...

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SCIENCE DAY SUCCESS!
We had a brilliant day sharing our science learning with the rest of the school. We showed our learning about forces such as gravity, magnetism, friction and air resistance. We used our expertise to explain to other children how these forces are important in the operation of parachutes, hovercrafts and Maglev trains! 

WORLD BOOK DAY (TAKE 2!) 

 
During World Book Day, we looked in detail at two poems by poet, Tony Mitton after reading a letter from Tony himself! The poems we looked at were St Bridget and the baker and I dreamed of Elephants. We enjoyed performing the poems in a small groups. 

DRAGONS DEN!

The Dragons (Miss Leballeur, Mrs Stevens, Mr Killoran, Mrs Roberts and Mrs Clark) were SO impressed with our pitches. Children spoke confidently and passionately about the designs they had created for robots to help around the home. Pitches were persuasive and used a range of techniques taught in Literacy to encourage the Dragons to invest in the ideas shared. Well done to both classes! 

Learning Update!

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This week's update has been written with the help of the Inventors:

Science:

In science, we have been learning lots about forces. We learnt about the very first parachute attempts and then had a go at making our own parachutes. We then thought about an enquiry question after considering variables such as canopy size, length of string and material used. We have also been learning about air and water resistance. We experimented with blu tac in water, altering the shape to see if we could make the blu tac float or sink to the bottom quickly. 

Music: 

In music, we have been learning "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air", an old-school hip-hop classic by Will Smith. We learnt about the pulse of the music by copying some animals on screen. We also started to  incorporate instruments into our performance - this is something we will  continue with after half term - some children have offered to bring their own instruments in to accompany our rapping! 

Art:

We have started to explore pointillism  - particularly looking at the work of Georges Seurat. We have also been learning about warm and cool colours and how colours contrast and compliment each other. Above is a famous picture by Seurat that we have explored in our classes. 

Maths: 

Mrs Stevens and Miss Leballeur were delighted with our recent arithmetic results - lots of children have been working hard and making good progress! We have also been interpreting line graphs and pie charts as well as starting to be able to find and express simple rules in algebra. 

Literacy: 

We are very proud of our newspaper articles based on the Titanic and look forward to sharing these with our parents int he curriculum celebration. We have now moved on to writing discussion texts based on the moon landing - was it a hoax? We are still largely undecided - what will you decide once you have read our texts? 

The Spring Term begins!

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It's been a busy fortnight in Inventors and Pioneers! We are well underway with our 'Lights, Camera, Action' topic.

In History, we have been developing our chronological awareness as we learn about some of the 'Firsts' through History.We researched and summarised information on John Logie Baird; combining skills from History, Computing and Literacy. We watched clips from early programs - children couldn't believe what TV looked like in the 1920s!

 We have just started some research projects in small teams - learning more about either the first plane, train, car or helicopter. We will be presenting our findings in groups next week. 

In Literacy, we have two projects on the go! We have  been busy researching the Titanic in order to support our writing to inform. Next week, we will be writing up our articles - imagining we are the editors of a newspaper breaking the news of the tragic events. 

We are also working in groups to create our own robots after watching an inspirational advert for a robot called Jibo. Over the term, we will be producing our own persuasive pitches to put to the judges in a Dragons' Den style event. Stay tuned for developments with this!

We have been working 'unplugged' in Computing as we have learnt what the internet is and how it provides access to services like the WWW. Miss Leballeur and Mrs Stevens were really impressed with how well children understood this really tricky subject - we talked about clients, web servers, IP addresses, DNS servers, routers and more! We also found out how search engines rank results (well - as much as we could find out ...the real algorithms are top secret!) The picture below shows some of our own 'web pages' that we ranked according to a set of rules. 

Our maths learning has largely centered around converting measures (e.g 5.6km into m/ 55mm into cm) and revision on place value and rounding. We are just starting a unit on fractions and will be moving on to conversions between fractions, decimals and percentages next week (hence the homework!) 

Look out for an update on our science learning, which we have linked to the first parachute - coming soon!

27th November - 1st December

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Well it was another busy week in 5/6 for week 12. The highlight for this week was most certainly, the curriculum celebration where we were delighted to see so many parents, family and friends visit our classrooms and celebrate our learning related to 'Deadly 60'. This has definitely been a topic that has allowed for many fanastic learning opportunities and we hope that you had a chance to see this within the children's books.

We have also been busy this week planning and learning new skills related to our last writing piece for the term - narrative. The children are using a short film titled 'Spy Fox' to inspire their writing. Along the journey, they will be introduced to the various SPAG features applicable for 5/6 and encouraged to use these features in their writing.

In maths, we have been exploring 3D shapes, nets and the area and perimeter. This will also continue into next week when we investigate circles.

We have been fine-tuning our Christmas carols this week and encourage the children to continue to practice these words over the next week so that we put on a brilliant performance on the 13th of December.

Finally this week, on Friday, we had a small baby themed afternoon to celebrate Mrs Dunn's upcoming baby boy. The children competed in a quiz that included guessing the names of baby animals (did you know that a baby bat is called a pup or that an Asian Elephant is pregnant for 617 days?), naming famous babies, baby trivia, nursery rhymes and animal gestation periods. The children also had the chance to guess the name and date of when Mrs Dunn's baby will be born. It was a lovely celebration.

13th - 17th November

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This week our focus during our topic and SMSC lessons was about anti-bullying. We looked at a short film called 'For the Birds' as well as a picture titled 'Different' and spoke about how these two different mediums both related to bullying. We also compared the two mediums and what was different and what was the same about them and if they both portrayed the same message. On Wednesday, we also discussed cyber-bullying and the things we could do if we were ever put in this difficult situation. Finally on Thursday, we completed our second whole class guided reading session where the text we focused on was a poem about bullying. We hope that this variety of activities impacted on the pupils' understanding of bullying and what we can all do to spread kindness.

In literacy we have turned our planning into persuasive speeches, with lots of editing taking place today. We are looking forward to reading them to our visitors at the curriculum celebration on the 27th of November.

In maths, we have begun investigating geometry which started with angles this week - have you ever heard of angle dabbing?

It was another fun-filled learning week in both the Pioneers and Inventors this week and we are looking forward to more of the same next week!

6th - 10th November

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What an amazing start to the week the Inventors and the Pioneers had with a visit from the Sea King Helicopter! There was certainly a buzz in the air and the children really appreciated this experience. A big thank you to all the family and friends of Bishop School who supported this great event.

Also this week we had a visit from Biologist Dr Mc Cann. Once again, this was an excellent opportunity in which the children learnt so much and were inspired by Dr McCann's adventures. His visit linked with a lot of work we have been doing on the Deadly 60 in topic and science and so the children had a lot of interesting questions to ask!

We have also started planning our persuasive speeches about whether or not animals should be in zoos. This upcoming week, the children will start transforming this planning into their final piece of writing, ready to share with you at our curriculum celebration.

In science we have also begun investigating electricity where the children were able to make some simple circuits. We will be building on these skills and knowledge over the next few weeks.

30th October - 3rd November

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Firstly, a BIG thank you to all the children (and parents) for support our first every Times Tables Rock Stars Celebration! The children looked fantastic in their costumes and were engaged in a variety of times tables activities throughout the day. These included competing against each other online (using TTRS), making fortune tellers with times tables, writing poems and songs about times tables and playing 'Rock, Scissors, Paper' Times Tables style! The children also completed a survey about TTRS and how they think it has impacted their learning in maths which Mrs Dunn is hoping to share with parents later in the term.

In literacy, we have begun looking at persuasive writing. We started by introducing the question, 'Should trick or treating be banned?' which stimulated lots of discussion and the children completed an elicitation task about this question to inform our planning and lessons over the next couple of weeks. We also shared the picture book 'Zoo' by Anthony Brown which is the text that the children have been exploring and will continue to explore to prepare them to write their final piece based on 'Do animals belong in zoos?'

For topic, we have focused on Bonfire Night and the story of the Gunpowder Plot. This has sparked many interesting questions and discussions, based around history and religion and we hope to do some further study on this next week.

Have a look at our photos below to see all the fun of TTRS Dress up!

9th - 13th October

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Firstly, a BIG thank you to those parents, families and friends who donated generously to this year's Harvest Festival. Our assembly on Friday afternoon was such a wonderful way to give back to the community and we are sure your donations will be thoroughly appreciated by HITS.

This week has seen our information text posters completed and the children should be very proud of their efforts. The amount of hard work, collaboration, editing and creativity that has gone into these texts has been wonderful and we are very much looking forward to sharing them at the Curriculum Celebration in November. Next week, the year five children will be working with Mrs Dunn on play scripts based on the picture book, Zoo. We are really excited to see this genre of writing in action and hope to transform the play scripts into drama pieces which the year six children can watch on their return from Grenville House.

In maths, we have been building on our knowledge of division and noticing the very close relationship it has with multiplication. We have also used some of our maths knowledge and skills in computing, where the children have been creating their own spreadsheets and graphs (using Excel) based on the top 15 Deadly animals.

One highlight this week was when some children had the opportunity to have another taste of Forest School by making camouflage capes using netting and natural materials from our Forest School areas. This is an activity that we will hopefully be able to repeat again later in the term.

Finally, best wishes to year six as they embark on their Grenville House experience next week! We hope you have an amazing time and I am sure the year fives can't wait to hear all about it after half term.

2nd - 6th October 2017

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This week in the Pioneers and Inventors we have been continuing our focus on the 'Deadly 60'. We watched some scenes from the TV show as a focus on vulnerable and endangered animals which sparked some great discussions and debate. We identified some animals from the deadly 60 lists which are classified as vulnerable or endangered then discussed the factors leading to this classification. Perhaps most importantly, we also discussed ways in which we could help raise awareness or help stop these animals from becoming extinct. This also led into our science learning about adaptation and habitats.

In literacy we have looked at relative clauses, conjunctions and compound adjectives as a SPAG focus within our writing and continued applying this knowledge into our paragraphs. Next week we will begin to edit in depth and write out our finished products, transforming our information into a poster which we will share at the curriculum celebration next half term.

Maths has had a focus on multiplicative reasoning which has included formal methods, estimating, square and cube numbers and inverse operations. Have a look at our photos of inverse graffiti to see how we expressed our knowledge on Thursday.

In PE we have now introduced positions into our games of High-Five Netball which, although for some has been a challenge, has been a positive challenge and showed the children even more skills associated with this game.

Well done to all of year 5 and 6 on a great week!

25th - 29th September

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We have continued our focus on our whole school topic 'Deadly 60' this week which has resulted in lots of new knowledge for the children in year 5 and 6. In Science, the children have created information posters that explain where a deadly 60 animal fits on a food chain, its life cycle and what its classification is. They also had the opportunity to perform their music compositions, portraying an animal in music this week.

In writing, the children have begun to construct their paragraphs for their information text and we also completed a 'slow write', where the children had the opportunity to use a variety of sentence styles, vocabulary and punctuation to write an effective paragraph, based on a picture.

Maths has allowed the children to engage in learning about BODMAS, missing number problems and we have begun exploring multiplication.

Take a look at some of our photos from this week! We are certainly looking forward to another week in year 5/6.

18th - 22nd September

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We cannot believe we have been back at school for 3 weeks already!

This week, the Pioneers and Inventors were introduced to the 'Carnival of Animals' where they listened to this famous composition and spent time discussing the music and instruments and guessing which animals they thought were being portrayed. It was an interesting task and next week they will be composing and performing their own version, based on an animal of their choice. We can't wait to hear them and guess which animal we think it is!

In maths, we have been looking at multiplying and dividing by 10,100 and 1000 and then applying this in context by converting measures. We also began our ongoing work on addition and subtraction, which we will continue next week.

In literacy, we have been busy researching one of the deadly 60 animals to base our information report on. The children learnt the art of note-taking and how writing can have different purposes.

In PE, we have refined our High-Five netball skills and are starting to play mini games to challenge each other and ourselves. On Wednesday, the year 5 children represented Bishopsteignton Primary School so well at the Netball Festival at TCS.

Well done, year 5 and 6 on some fabulous learning this week!

11th - 15th September

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In maths this week, the children continued with their learning about place value, particularly investigating when and how to round numbers, negative numbers in context and counting in powers of 10 - all skills that form some of the foundations for further maths learning.

In literacy, we used a WAGOLL (what a good one looks like) to introduce our first writing unit of Information Reports. The children are very excited that they will be working on writing a factual text about one of the Deadly 60 animals over the next couple of week and are already looking forward to sharing these with you at the Curriculum Celebration next half term. So far we have looked at a text reconstruction and the language features that should be included in a good information text.

In topic, we explored more of the geography side of 'Deadly 60' and discovered where top 10 deadly animals live! We familarised ourselves with the seven continents of the world and were able to record these on our own maps. In science, the children looked at animal classification and today, they were able to create a bar chart based on animal classification. The children were also able to showcase their artistic skills this week by following a tutorial to draw and design a deadly animal!

Thanks to all the Inventors and Pioneers for such an enjoyable week!

4th - 8th September 2017

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Welcome back to all the Pioneers and Inventors! We are so happy that everyone has returned back to school well and eager to learn!

Although the first week back, we have had a busy week in Year 5/6.

We started off the week by introducing two exciting, new learning opportunities - Times Tables Rockstars (TTRS) and Book World Cup! Adults should have received a letter home this week explaining the objectives of TTRS and an expression of interest for the TTRS lunch club that will be running every Friday (beginning 15th Sep) until half term. We are so pleased with the feedback we have already received and are looking forward to developing this further as a school.

Book World Cup is a competition we have introduced in both classes in order to a select a class book to read for pleasure throughout the term. We started with a list of 16 books and are down to the last four after much discussion and voting. We can't wait to see which book will be selected and start reading it.

This week we have also started work on our new topic, in conjunction with lots of research and writing. Each class came up with their own list of deadly animals and children created a fact sheet about their animal. We then investigated food chains in Science: food chains in general and food chains with our deadly animal as the predator.

In literacy, we worked on a 'Deadly Riddle' about a deadly animal. The children used their excellent writing skills to create a 'Who Am I?' riddle about a deadly animal of their choice. Other children then guessed what the animal could be from the clues given. It was a wonderful way for the children to showcase their writing and SPAG skills.

In maths, we have started the term investigating place value with a big emphasis on problem solving, reasoning and exposing children to a variety of language.

Our year 5 and 6 children also got to spend some time with their buddies and welcome them once again to our school community.

We have had such a positive start to the new school year and are looking forward to more learning opportunities next week!

Deadly 60

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Welcome back to a brand new school year! 

Our new whole school topic is Deadly 60. We look forward to sharing our What's Happening with you and meeting parents at our Meet the Teacher evening after school on Monday 11th September. 

We will update this page regularly throughout the term to show you what we have been learning about. 

10th - 14th July

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This week the Inventors and Pioneers were missing the year 6s who were attending their enhanced transition at TCS. We hope that they have had a brilliant start to their 2 week transition.

Nevertheless, work has continued in 5/6 with a major highlight being class swaps which were carried out on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We loved having the year 4s for the morning and are looking forward to them starting with us in September!

On Monday, we had some year 6 children from Shaldon visit us to participate in activities alongside our year 6s that are not attending TCS. The year 5s also participated in this, albeit in separate areas. We enjoyed making circle stick art, stick towers and stick mobiles. On Tuesday, our year 6s then visited Shaldon where they visited the Botanical Gardens.

The children have also been busy working on 'The Great Outdoors' projects in groups. The aim of these projects was to find out more about our world, use maths to budget and calculate distances and time, literacy to persuade and art to present ideas. The children were tasked with planning a holiday for Mrs Dunn and Miss Leballeur all within a set criteria- looks like we'll be going to Monte Carlo, France, Cornwall, Budapest or Spain for the summer!

It's been a lovely week of learning and discovery in the Pioneers and Inventors and we are certainly looking forward to another week of this.

Please enjoy some photos of our last week.

26th June - 30th June

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This week was another busy but fantastic week for year 5/6. The highlight of course was the Production of 'Superstan' which was very well-received by staff, children, parents and friends. Again, another big thank you to all the parents, staff and children who made this wonderful production possible.

Also this week, year 6 had their Forest School experience. It was thoroughly enjoyed and we are sure the memory of Forest School will be one that the children will remember for years to come.

The week ended with lots of fun at the Summer Fayre! Thank you to all the children who gave up their time to help with a stall and of course, to the parents who dedicated so much of their time to this wonderful event. It was a lovely atmosphere.

The children wrote some reviews of the Production and Forest school. Here are some below; we hope you enjoy reading them.

Bishop School Production

The Amazing Adventure of Super Stan

A review written and edited by Bea, Ruby and Alica-Sky 

On the 26th, 27th and 28th June there was a production of the Amazing Adventure of Super Stan. It was a comedy act, with singing and dancing about a boy fulfilling his dreams with his gran alongside him and confronting the Candy King. A lot of people were entertained. It was super because everyone enjoyed it, every person in the building was laughing. Most people were singing along with the songs. 90% of the people said that they enjoyed the play and the other 10% said they were blown away by the amazing little stars. The brave soloists got a lot of praise after the great performance. Everyone was exhausted but jolly after the great play.

Forest School

Year 6 did forest school on the 29th June 2017 and had a blast . Unfortunately the weather was cloudy and dull which made the grass damp - despite that, children did many things.They were very excited jumping around. In the afternoon year 6 got to choose what they wanted to do: zip lines(toys), shelter building (Aaron Millward did one on his own using sticks) and a maze. In the morning the children made potions of plants. Overall, it was a fun, amazing experience. We would rate it 9.9 out of 10.

Forest School

On Thursday I  faced lots of challenges, one of them was an obstacle course, I fell a ton of times, but at the end I did it, it was very hard. We were on skinny logs and we had to walk across them and they kept rolling away, I nearly did the splits! Next was den building, I built an amazing den with my friends, I think our den was the best. We made potions, the one I made was called Fanta-banta, I put in everything I could find including jazmine.

                                                                                                            By Bobby Burns.

12th June - 16th June

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WOW! What an enjoyable two days the children have had at the Village Festival.

We would like to express our thanks to all the people who were involved in organising a fantastic range of activities. The children were involved in activities such as cricket, press team, quilting, twiddle aprons, circus skills, golf, singing, dancing, felt flowers and a trail. They even performed three songs and a dance to the audience, which was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone.

Here are some photos for you to enjoy!

22nd - 26th June

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The Inventors and Pioneers finished the week on a high with kite-making! They showed great skill in their design, planning, making and  flying of kites. It was lovely to see so many smiles on their faces as we had the chance to fly our kites. We hope the children are able to share them with you over the half term and perhaps improve on their design! As they say, a picture tells a thousand words so we will leave you with some photos of our very enjoyable day. We wish you all a very restful half term.

CLICK HERE TO SEE A VIDEO OF OUR KITE FLYING :)

15th - 19th May

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We have enjoyed an out of this world week in the Pioneers and Inventors - learning all about space!

Our maths lesson involved working with positive and negative numbers, finding out interesting maths facts about space and rounding numbers associated with planets.

For literacy, the children worked in groups to brainstorm language and ideas about their own planet. They then worked independently to write their own Trip Advisor review of their planet. As a result, some excellent pieces of writing were produced.

In Science, we focused on the relationship between the earth, sun and moon and created a scratch simulation of this relationship which were fantastic! We also investigated shadows and the water cycle.

Art involved using chalk pastels to practice shading skills with the final product being a 3D planet on black card with white stars. The children should be really proud of their efforts.

Finally, we revealed our 2017 production titled, 'Superstan'. The children were fantastic in their auditions and we can't wait to start rehearsing after half term.

8th - 12th May

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Well what can we say? We are so proud of our year 6 children this week for their fantastic attitude and commitment to their SATs. We enjoyed spending breakfast with them each morning and watching them face this challenge in such a positive way.

A special mention also to our year 5 children who have been so supportive of the year 6s this week and have achieved much success with their work about natural disasters.

Today we ended the week with an introduction to 'Space'. We viewed some clips about the solar system and created some space graffiti posters which showed what the children already know. We then created bar, line or pie charts based on some questions about space. Finally, we researched important events that have happened in relation to travel into space. What a lovely way to end the week!

24th - 28th April

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This week Y5 and 6 had their first PE lessons with Mr Flint, our sports coach. The children practiced and improved their skills of striking and throwing. Next week, the 3rd of May, Y5 will be going to an athletics festival at TCS to further practice their sporting skills.

In literacy, we skeleton planned our magical stories and began writing them on Thursday. We are trialing something a little different which includes 1:1 conferencing sessions throughout the whole lesson. This seemed to worked really well on Thursday and so we will be using this format again on Monday.

In maths, we have been as busy as ever revising fractions, area and perimeter and percentages of amounts. Stay tuned for our new maths game next week which Mrs Dunn has called 'Maths Pick and Mix'.

SPAG and reading have involved treasure hunts around the school - a fun way to revise some of these tricky concepts!

Year 5 have been working on a mini topic unit about natural disasters. They have been focusing on volcanoes and we cant wait for them to share their knowledge with the rest of the Year 6 children.

In Science, the children have been investigating sound using instruments. They have looked at how sounds are made, different pitches and volumes and all about vibrations. Take a look at our photos!

We hope you have an extra enjoyable weekend with an extra day off and we look forward to a short but busy week 3, next week!

18th April - 21st April

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Welcome back to school and the summer term!

We cannot believe that it is our last term with the year 6s - time is flying!

Although a short week, we have been busy in the Pioneers and Inventors. We have been revising square, cube and prime numbers as well as multiples and factors and discussing how all these important numbers can help us with calculations. Later in the week we also completed further work on fractions including adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying fractions.

In Literacy, we started by taking a walk around the school grounds and looking at our new forest school areas. We discussed how our new writing unit is going to be narrative writing with a magical element and how our school grounds could be the perfect setting for our stories (if we use our imagination). All the teachers and TAs read 'Enchanted Toadstool' to the classes to model the type of story we are hoping to achieve. We also learnt about how to write a quality character and setting description.

We have immersed ourselves in lots of science this week - all about plants! This ties in perfectly with our whole school topic of 'The Great Outdoors'. We looked at leaves, classification and photosynthesis.

We have been blessed with lovely weather our first week back and so took the opportunity to have PE on the field. Our focus this term is athletics and this week year 5 and 6 practiced sprinting and running.

We are looking forward to another great week of learning next week!

27th March - 31st March

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We cannot believe it's the end of the Spring term and we have only one term left with the current Inventors and Pioneers!

This week we had a group of children developing their cycling skills by participating in Bikeability. They have spent the week on their bikes around the village learning the appropriate skills needed to be a safe cyclist on our roads. Today, they were presented with a certificate from Mrs Rawlins and they should be very proud of their efforts.

In maths, we have been focusing on revising and extending our reasoning skills with year 6 and year 5 have been developing further with decimals. Today, year 6 had the chance to compete in a maths quiz while year 5 had a maths Easter treasure hunt. Both year groups had the opportunity to showcase their fantastic maths skills during both activities.

Literacy has involved planning, writing and editing our persuasive adverts about our brand new Easter Eggs. The children were able to publish their adverts on the chromebooks which made them look rather professional. We can't wait for you to hear about our Bubblegum, Ice cream and Skittles Easter Eggs!

Next term, our topic focus will be 'The Great Outdoors!' We are really looking forward to starting this new learning opportunity and sharing our learning with you.

Here is a sneak peak of our topic working wall, ready for next term!

Have a lovely and safe Easter.

20th March - 24th March

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Firstly, we'd like to thank all the parents and friends of the children in year 5 and 6 who were able to visit us on Monday for the curriculum celebration. It was a wonderful atmosphere and we really enjoyed the opportunity to share our learning over the past term with all of you. We have received lots of positive feedback and so, the children should really be proud of their hard work this term.

So much else has been happening this week  - from Red Nose Day to Open the Book assembly - it has been fantastic!

In maths, the children have been working hard on completing some arithmetic and reasoning assessment to show just how much they've learnt and progressed this term. We have also been learning more about multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000, as well as negative numbers and using them in context. Literacy has involved starting a new style of writing, which involves trying to persuade others. By the end of next week, the children would have written their own advertisement for a brand new flavoured Easter Egg! We can't wait to read about all the new flavours they come up with!

In science, we watched an interesting experiment about bath bombs and how much citric acid and bicarbonate soda would be needed to make the most fizzy bath bomb. The children predicted the ratios and discussed all the different variables.

For Red Nose Day today, year 5/6 competed in a handball tournament. Despite it being a little cold, the children really worked hard as a team and showed brilliant sportspersonship.

Well done Pioneers and Inventors for another great week!

13th March - 17th March

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We can hardly believe that it's the end of week 10 and there are only 2 more weeks until the Easter holidays!

Monday was such a fun start to the week with our Bishop Bake Off! Our year 5 and 6 buddies really enjoyed the opportunity to decorate cakes with their friends in the Explorers. What was even more exciting was that these cakes were then sold to raise money. We hope that you, too, were able to buy some delicious cakes and contribute to our fundraising

.

In literacy, we worked on drafting, editing and publishing our balanced arguments. It's been interesting to read the different viewpoints our children share on this very debatable subject! Make sure you read them when you visit our classes on Monday for the Curriculum Celebration and let us know which side you're on!

In maths, we have looed at shape, nets and area - three very important areas of geometric reasoning.

Our Year 5s have been busy in their brass lessons and are looking forward to performing for you in the next couple of weeks.

The children have been practicing their basketball skills and refining their movies about their inspirational people. We even had a special preview screening this week which was wonderful and a chance for pupils to review each other's work.

Well done Pioneers & Inventors for a week of hard work and we look forward to doing it all again, next week!

6th - 10th March

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It's been a busy week in the Pioneers and Inventors once again.

Maths saw the pupils work on geometric reasoning which included investigations about translation, coordinates and similar shapes. We also completed an arithmetic assessment to discover what impact our morning arithmetic sessions are having on the children and which also has allowed us to identify who needs more support in this area.

Our literacy and SPAG sessions included learning about conjunctive adverbs and punctuation for parenthesis and how these tools who improve our writing. We also further discussed the positives and negatives of primary schools having detentions, which is in preparation for our balanced argument writing.

In science we further investigated human evolution. To gain a small sense of what hands would have been like millions of years ago, we taped the pupils' thumbs to the rest of their hands. This proved to be difficult when trying to tie up shoelaces and write our names neatly!

In our topic lessons, we have been busy being creative. The children have been learning a song about the Viking invasion at Lindisfarne and are looking forward to performing it to parents and friends at our curriculum celebration. We have also been working on some art where we are writing our names in Viking or Anglo-Saxon runes. They look great!

27th February - 3rd March

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WOW! Such another busy week in year 5 and 6. Many children would say that the highlight of this week was coming to school in their PJs to celebrate World Book Day. During the morning, we all attended an assembly where all the teachers and support staff read a page from a book called 'The Day the Crayons Quit'. The children thought it was really lovely to hear lots of teachers read a picture book, as this is not something they are used to. In class, we then pretended we were Duncan from the story and replied to either the black, blue, beige or red crayon with our apologies (or in some cases - no apologies!). If you are visiting our school soon, make sure you have a look at the display in the corridor.

In maths, we have been using our multiplication and division skills to solve problems. We even did this to solve problems about pancakes on Tuesday!

In literacy, we have started to prepare for our discussion writing. We did this by debating the question, 'Should detentions be given in primary schools?' We had some great discussions and are looking forward to using these arguments in our writing.

This week, some children represented our school at the 5/6 Football tournament at TCS. They played really well with a lot of pride and skill and should be congratulated on their efforts.

21st February - 24th February

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Welcome back to the second half of the Spring Term! We kicked off this half term by sharing our learning about the Bronze and Stone Age with the children from the Voyagers and the Discoverers. This was a fantastic opportunity as it allowed all the children to discover new things about each period of British history. The Year 3 and 4 children were a wealth of knowledge and taught the 5/6 children many new things about the Iron Age and the Romans.

To begin our new topic focus this half term, the children created their own 'Spot the Difference' game where they compared the two pictures that each class are focusing on. This was a wonderful learning opportunity and it was really interesting to see what changes the children noticed just one from picture.

In science, we have been consolidating all our learning about rocks and designed our own information poster which included information about how rocks are made, the different types of rocks, how rocks are used and how rocks make soil. The children should be really proud of their efforts in science.

In maths, we have been learning more about division and some children have been extending their thinking by using long division.

It has been a great week back and we are certainly looking forward to the new week ahead.

6th February - 10th February

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WOW! What a busy last week before half term break it has been! We are sure the children are ready for a well deserved break. We started off Monday by continuing our new arithmetic game - Speed Calculating! For this activity, all year 5 and 6 meet in the hall. One class sits in an outer circle, the other class the inner circle. The teachers show an arithmetic question on the board and the children have 1 minute to work in silence to try and work out the correct answer. Once the 1 minute is up, the children then have 1 minute to 'teach' each other and help the other person understand how to work out the solution. So far, this has proved to be a great success and we are looking forward to continuing this next half term.

We have been busy drafting our fiction stories, based on a Harris Burdick picture. Most children have finished their drafts and will work on editing, publishing and sharing after the break. Has your child told you about their SPaG bank?

In maths, we have been working on some assessments so the teachers can see how much progress the children have made and plan lessons that meet the needs of all children next half term. We have also had a lesson on the rules and application of BODMAS as well as scaling.

In science, we had fun learning about different types of change. We have found out about physical changes (changing states / often reversible) and we also learnt about irreversible chemical changes. To do this, we conducted various experiments. Have a look at our photos to find out more.

Safer Internet Day was also a focus this week and we discussed the issue of posting photos online. This started quite a mature and thoughtful discussion where the children came up with ideas about what was appropriate and inappropriate to post online. We also discussed the importance of 'First Impressions' and the implications of various photos.

Mrs Dunn and Miss Leballeur are looking forward to another exciting and busy half term and we wish you a lovely break with your families.

30th Jan - 3rd February

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This week saw the children engaged in a variety of literacy lessons developed to improve and refine their creative writing skills. This included lessons on suspense, story openers and creating mood. We are sure the children will be able to apply these skills in their own independent writing this upcoming week.

We also continued our work on fractions and number sequences in maths. 

Our topic lessons involved the children annotating a picture of either the Bronze or Stone Age with a minimum of 100 words. It was impressive to see how much the children have learnt about these important eras of British history.

We are still working hard on our handball skills! 

23rd - 27th January

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The Year 5 children were excited to attend a handball festival at TCS earlier this week. Mrs Rawlins led the trip which included a variety of games to support the children in developing their handball skills. Upon returning back to school, some of the year 5 children shared their experience with the rest of the class and are looking forward to leading some activities in PE for their classmates in the upcoming week. Well done to all the year 5 children for representing our school so wonderfully and to all parents, teachers and carers for supporting this event.

Handball wasn't the only highlight this week. In maths, we started our learning about fractions.  We have been learning how to simplify, compare, order and find equivalent fractions. Some children have been challenging their thinking by solving some complex problems involving fractions. We will be continuing this week in week 5.

In literacy we completed our final versions of our newspaper articles and the children had an opportunity to share their articles with their friends in both classes. This was a great way of celebrating the children's hard work on this piece of writing. We have now started learning about our new focus text, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick and the children are certainly looking forward to writing some of their own fiction stories. 

Our topic lessons saw the Inventors and Pioneers use caves (desks covered in tablecloths) as their shelters while other children in their group had to 'hunt' for information about either the Stone or Bronze Age. This was another fun and practical way of learning more about these important periods of British history.

In Computing both classes finished their French comic strips which have now been printed into class books so that we can share them with visitors. The pupils are certainly looking forward to their next project - movie making!

16th - 20th January

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Week 3 was full of lots of learning and fun in 5/6. We began by exploring pie charts and how they represent data. The pupils had a chance to draw their own pie charts based on given data. While this proved to be a challenge for some, it was a great learning experience that got us all talking and investigating. Today the pupils had the opportunity to revise what they already know about converting measures and others had the opportunity to further their learning. 

In literacy we started by writing our drafts for our newspaper articles. The children then involved themselves in an editing carousel where they were required to stop at the sentence station, the punctuation station, the vocabulary station and the spelling station.This was a great way for the children to properly read and edit their work. The children have now started to write their final copy of their article, ready for them to share with their peers next week.

During our topic lesson early in the week, the Pioneers and Inventors learnt lots of new and interesting facts about the Stone and Bronze ages through a 'fact trail'. They all went outside on our new path outside our classroom and visited each 'stop' (child) along the way, who told them a new fact. This was a really fun way for the children to absorb facts in an outdoor environment. Have a look at some of our photos above. The pupils also got to research a question for someone else in their class and share this knowledge with them.

Art saw the opportunity for us to explore music album covers throughout the years. We showed the children lots of iconic album covers from the Beatles to the Bee Gees to Michael Jackson and Beyonce. We spoke about the techniques the artist used to portray the music or band/singer. The children then designed their own album cover for their favourite singer or band or created their own one. We are looking forward to completing these next week.

Our comic strips, brass lessons, SPaG  and PE are also coming along really well and we can't wait to continue working on these on Monday! 

9th - 13th January

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This week was another busy one for the Inventors and Pioneers. Our week started off with negative numbers and using number lines and other methods to order and answer questions that involved negative numbers. We then moved onto answering multi-step problems about measurement which made the pupils think about how to break down questions and ensure they are answering the question in full.

Literacy saw both classes using their newspaper article homework to discuss the features of newspaper articles and what good articles should include. The pupils also got to choose a world record that they could write about when they write their own article. Make sure you ask the children what their record is about!

We have begun creating our own comic strips as part of our computing lessons which will also involve some French as we continue to develop them. The children's comics are already looking great - we can see some very creative work!

For science we had the opportunity to investigate rocks by conducting an experiment and recording the results. You'll be able to see some photos above.

Our buddies have continued to read with their buddy in the Explorers and also accompany them to singing assembly on Thursdays. The children really enjoy this opportunity and it's great to see the relationship they're building with their buddy.

We are looking forward to another great week in the Pioneers & Inventors!  

3rd - 6th January

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It's hard to believe we've only been back in school for three days - we've already done so much learning! The first week back saw the introduction to our new topic - 'A Picture is Worth 1000 Words." Inventors and Pioneers have shown fantastic curiosity as we explored images for our work in RE, History, Science, Literacy and Guided Reading.