Bishopsteignton Primary School

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

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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.