A warm welcome to Great Links.
We are extremely lucky to have Mrs Oakes, Miss Prynne and Mrs Lane supporting us with our learning this year.
In Great Links, we aim to take full advantage of all our learning opportunities and are challenged to be the best learners we can be. We have high expectations of ourselves as learners and individuals, as we build our platforms to be lifelong learners, ready for the wider world.
As a class, we encourage the children to be independent and resilient learners who see mistakes as a necessary part of their learning journey and are keen to accept the varying challenges that they face.
Please have a look at the Andaras Agreed Consistencies for Year 5 and 6 attached below. These detail the National Curriculum expectations for your children in their Reading, Writing and Maths, as laid out by the Government.
You can also see our long-term overview for the year which maps out our learning for the year.
Staff meetings will continue to be on Tuesday afternoons and my PPA will remain on a Wednesday afternoon.
If you need to speak to me with regards to you child or to arrange a meeting, please contact me via Class Dojo.
As always, I look forward to seeing you at the school gates!
Mr Payton
English
Our second text this half-term will be 'The Promise' by Nicola Davies.
During this sequence of learning, the children will examine the literary techniques of the text and implement these within their own writing. Through this sequence, the children will focus on poetic devices, letter writing and multi-clause sentences, thinking about the punctuation we can use; the end goal being to write our own narrative poem.
Our current Guided Reading text is the same as our class read, The Good Thieves, which allows us to explore the text in detail.
Spellings
As well as our daily Read Write Inc. spelling scheme, we are also thinking about the statutory spellings for Year 5 and 6. The children need to be able to spell these within their writing and spot when they have been spelled incorrectly. We will also be revising the Year 3 and 4 spellings as these are expected to be spelled correctly within your children's writing. Can you please support your children with their spellings at home by encouraging them to practise their spellings and by quizzing them regularly. Thank you.
We often carry out proof-reading activities to spot spelling and grammatical errors within writing which look at spelling words from across Key Stage 2 (Year 3 - 6). This is an important skill to learn so that we can apply it to our own writing and spot our own mistakes.
Maths
In Maths this half term, we will be deepening our understanding of fractions. We will unpick what a fraction is, find equivalent fractions and carry out our four operations with fractions.
As always, a good understanding and quick recall of all of the multiplication facts up to 12x12 is essential in enabling your child to focus on learning the skills involved with maths at this level, so please can you encourage your child to regularly practise their times tables.
Theme Learning
This half term, our theme learning is based around history.
The children will be looking into the Maya society.
During this unit of learning, the children will explore a wide range of sources and maps to support their understanding and develop the skills they will need in order to answer the question.
Science
Our Science focus this half-term is Animals Including Humans.
During this unit, we will recap prior learning of the bodies' systems and introducing the Circulatory System. We will understand the different components of the system and their functions, whilst developing our knowledge of how different things can affect us.
We will ensure that we are working scientifically by planning inquiries, managing variables and using equipment to take measurements.
Religious Education
Our RE this half-term will be focusing on the religion of Christianity.
Within our studies, we will recap what the children have learned in previous year groups about this faith and then trying to answer the question:
‘What does it mean for Christians to believe that God is loving and holy??’
We will explore Bible readings and suggest how these describe God, and how religious buildings and hymns show God as loving and holy. We are very fortunate to have Father Phillip offering his expertise with our Faith Day.
Home Learning
Just a reminder that your children need to access Times Table Rockstars and Spelling Shed each week for their home learning. This should be at least ten minutes each day as learning is more successful when practising little and often rather than once or twice a week in larger time slots.
Your children also need to ensure that they are reading regularly at home. The children then need to complete quizzes in school based on the books that they have read.
KIRFs
Please find the KIRFs for Year 5 and 6 for this half term below. We really appreciate you supporting your children with learning these facts and quizzing them at home to develop their recall.
This half term, the Year 5 children need to be able to recall all multiplication and division facts with increasing speed.
Year 6 children are required to identify common factors for any two given numbers.
We will be setting an assignment on Maths.co.uk on a Monday which is expected to be completed by the following Monday.
Please bring Home Learning books every Monday.
If you have any questions regarding these, please message me via Class Dojo.
Should you require any support around any of the home learning, please feel free to message me on Dojo and I can go through it in greater detail.