Hi everyone and happy half term.  It has been so nice to see a bit of sunshine this week and see the children enjoying our amazing grounds for both play and learning.  We used the orchard for some great drama activities this week linked to our English text The Story of Antigone.  We will be carrying on with this text after half term. After half term, I will be taking the class to Parklands Leisure Centre for swimming lessons with their trained swimming coaches.  There will be more information about this the first week back and this won't start until the second week after half term.  They will need a one-piece swimming costume or swimming shorts(preferably not board shorts), a swimming hat and they may use goggles if they want to.

Miss Ruby has shared some of the work that she has been doing with the class in this message:
This week the children completed their RE unit: 'For Christians, what kind of King was Jesus?' Through this unit, the children have explored Noble Prize Winners, their hopes for the future, leadership styles, the 'Kingdom of God' and ideas about a better world. They have explored what Christians believe around this and the difference this makes to how they live. After half term, the children will explore the unit 'How does faith help people when life gets hard?'.

This week in Art, the children completed the Unit 'Photography'. Throughout this unit, the children have created photomontages, truisms and self portraits based on specific artist styles. After half term, we move onto a DT project called playgrounds which will see the children busy with glue guns, tools and wood! Watch this space!

It was lovely to see all the children sharing their learning in our whole school assembly today.  I hope some of you were able to join us virtually and enjoyed hearing about the great learning that's happening across the school.
I hope you have a happy and restful half term - I haven't set any homework or spellings to learn so that children can have a proper break.  I hope that they will be reading for pleasure as much as possible and if they do get bored they could use their revision guides or Times Table Rockstars or Nessy to brush up on their knowledge and skills.
Enjoy the sunshine 🌞🌞🌞

Good afternoon everyone and happy Friday - the weekend is here! 
Sycamore Class have been working hard to complete Science and English projects this week about the circulatory system.  Some children bravely took the role of a doctor to explain orally and then they produced some really interesting information pages in English. Their Science knowledge has been consolidated with this cross curricular approach.  We have now finished learning about line graphs, pie charts and the mean in our statistics unit in maths and will have an end of unit quiz on Monday before beginning our new unit about the properties of shape.
In history, the children raised lots of historical enquiry questions ready to research the ancient civilisation they have been given.  We will be debating which civilisation was the best!!
In art this week, the children turned their selfies into self portraits using continuous line drawings and today we used formulas in spreadsheets after talking about being SMART on the internet.  Perhaps they can talk to you about what the acronym SMART stands for.  As you know, we have one more week before half term - I hope we will have some better weather next week so we can get out and enjoy using the field for PE and playtimes.  We will have PE on Monday and Friday next week.  Some children still need to complete wider curriculum homework before the end of next week.  There is no revision homework set this week but, as usual, they have ten spellings which they have chosen themselves from their personal spelling list to learn - Please could you check that they have copied them down correctly as I ran out of time to check them today.
​Hope you all have a great weekend despite the weather.

It was very funny seeing all the staff and children today arriving in their pyjamas for Pyjamarama Day.  We have had lots of fun sharing stories throughout the day (we're definitely not too old for them) and carrying out story related activities this afternoon.  Even Miss C made a surprise appearance reading a story. We did PE in our pyjamas too!  I believe we raised around £100 for the Book Trust whose aim is to ensure every child has the good start in life that reading brings.

We have had another busy week.  We have finished our 'practise writing stage' or 'innovate stage' in English and have produced some very informative and eye-catching information pages about the heart.  We are now going on to research and write independently on the circulatory system which we have also been learning about in Science.  We have begun a new unit of work in history in which we will be finding out about and comparing different ancient civilisations - we want to know which one was the best - or perhaps which one contributed the most to modern society.  (I can feel another dressing up day coming on at the end of that work!!)  I have now received some high quality homework which I shared with the class today - thank you for supporting them with this.  For revision homework this week, they have chosen an area of maths and English which they feel they need extra work on rather than me setting them all the same thing.  They also have 10 new spellings.   
I hope you all have a great weekend - enjoy the photos in the galary.
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We have crammed a lot into this shorter than normal week.  We have been making many links across the curriculum in science, English, maths and computing. In English, we are writing information texts about the heart and circulatory system, drawing on what we have learnt in science lessons.  In maths, we have been interpreting and constructing line graphs and, next week, we will use line graphs in our science lesson to record the results of an investigation about heart rate and recovery rate which we will do as part of our PE lesson on Monday.  In science, we learnt how nutrients and water are transported around the body in the bloodstream.  This involved a messy demonstration of how food is digested and broken down and then how the nutrients are absorbed into the blood.  We finished the week with a mile and a half cross country race.  Bill was our first boy home and Flo was our first girl.  Well done to everybody who completed the 6 laps of the field - nobody gave up.  Our final activity today, also linked to healthy life-styles, was a discussion about the pros and cons of social media and how it can impact our wellbeing.  In this oracy session the children took on a role in groups of 3 and then volunteers summarised the discussion at the end.  The class's oracy skills are really improving.  I have started to receive some topic homework - I am expecting 3 completed pieces from the homework web by the end of this half term.  I have not set any revision homework this week but please can you help children to find the four books that the school bought for them ready for next Friday.  They do all have 10 spellings to learn this week and they should be reading regularly.  I am concerned that children who don't complete homework will find the transition to secondary school and the homework expectations there a bit of a shock if they don't get into good habits now.  It was great meeting with some of you on Wednesday and chatting about your children's progress.  Please contact me if you would like an appointment to meet online or if you prefer I can ring you.  Have a very good weekend - shame it's going to be so wet!  Enjoy the pictures of our messy science, homework and cross country.