Term 4
Welcome back to a brand-new Term. We hope you had a wonderful half-term break. We are looking forward to another jam-packed term full of exciting learning opportunities.
Our work in Guided Reading will be based on ‘Stormbreaker’, an adventure novel by Anthony Horowitz. We will be using this as a stimulus to help us draft and create narrative suspense stories. Our non-fiction focus this term will be a hybrid text combining explanation and features of non-chronological reports.
Topic
Our units of work this term are centred on two main areas of learning. In Geography, we will be honing our map reading skills, learning about the City of Bristol and the development of the port through history. We will find out about famous Bristolians such as Brunel, Cabot, Banksy and the more controversial figure of Colston. We will also touch on the sensitive topic of slavery and Bristol’s role in this shameful part of our history.
We shall then be directing our learning towards a Science unit where we will investigate Materials and their properties as well as changing Materials. In Design and Technology, we will be designing and creating pop-up books which we will read to Owls Reception class.
In Maths, Y5 will work on calculations with decimals and year 6 will investigate algebra, forming equations and substituting values. We will then investigate Measure and revise Statistics.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/z826n39
Please copy this link to find a guide to Algebra on BBC bitesize
Y6 Sats
We have created a revision section on the website with a range of materials to help Y 6 children to prepare for the Sats tests in May. Any questions, please pop in to see one of the year 5/6 team.
Y6 Secondary Transition
Earlier this month, our Year 6 pupils found out where they will be heading to Secondary School in September 2024. Every year, as part of the transition arrangements, key members of staff from the receiving Secondary Schools come to Paxcroft to meet their new students and to discuss pupils with the y6 teachers. We have arranged an additional visit from the Heads of Year 7 as a response to some of our pupils expressing some anxiety about the move. This year, the secondary schools have collaborated to produce a 'Secondary Ready Video' which you can access via the link below. This is a great initiative and hopefully one that will help relieve some of the anxiety or nerves around transition. We will also be showing the video in a PSHE session.
Secondary Ready Video link below
WB 18.3.24
This has been another busy week in Year 5/6. In Music, this term we have been learning a song and a dance ‘Flash Mob’ routine, which the children thoroughly enjoyed performing in the playground today. In Maths, we have been finding the perimeters and areas of rectangles and rectilinear shapes. Year 6 have also learned how to find the area of triangles. In English, we have boxed up a model explanation text and analysed the features of this genre before practising writing the different sections. We are really enjoying reading Stormbreaker and following Alex’s adventures. In DT, we have practised making different levers and spacers for our project. On Thursday, Year 6 walked to St James’ Church for the Easter Experience, where the children learned about the most significant events of Holy Week. We were very proud of the way the children represented the school.
WB 11.03.24
In English this week in Year 5/6, we have planned, written and edited our suspense narratives. We will now be investigating the features of explanation texts. In Maths, we have been revising metric units of measurement and converting between different units. Year 6 have extended their knowledge of imperial measures and the approximate metric equivalent. In PSHE, we discussed Commonwealth Day (11th March), the Commonwealth Charter and the similarities and differences between it and core British Values. In DT, we investigated the preferences of Y1/2 readers as we will be designing a pop-up book suitable for a KS1 child. We have also learned how to make some simple mechanisms and pop-ups to use in our books.
In English this week in Year 5/6, we have planned, written and edited our suspense narratives. We will now be investigating the features of explanation texts. In Maths, we have been revising metric units of measurement and converting between different units. Year 6 have extended their knowledge of imperial measures and the approximate metric equivalent. In PSHE, we discussed Commonwealth Day (11th March), the Commonwealth Charter and the similarities and differences between it and core British Values. In DT, we investigated the preferences of Y1/2 readers as we will be designing a pop-up book suitable for a KS1 child. We have also learned how to make some simple mechanisms and pop-ups to use in our books.
WB 4.03.24
Another busy week in Year 5/6! In our topic lessons this week, we have extended our knowledge of grid references. We are now able to use Eastings and Northings to find six figure grid references. We have also investigated Bristol, its culture and development. In Maths Year 6 have been honing their algebraic skills; forming equations, developing formulae and solving one and two-step equations. Year 5 have been very busy calculating with decimals. In English, we have been varying our punctuation skills and sentence structures to apply to our mystery narrative writing. For World Book Day 2024, we have been examining the works of Tolkien by writing our own story using a prompt from the Hobbit. We had a lot of fun dressing up as our favourite book characters!
WB 26.02.24
In English this week, Year 5/6 have been practising crafting a range of different sentence structures to improve writing technique. Our class novel this term is ‘Stormbreaker’ by Anthony Horowitz which we are thoroughly enjoying. In Maths, Year 6 have started a unit of work on Algebra and have learned how to write expressions with variables before substituting values in to solve these. Year 5 have been working on decimals, finding complements to one and adding decimals with the same number of decimal places. On Wednesday, we had our RE Day and our focus was Christianity: The Easter Story. After recapping the Easter Story, we learned about Easter traditions from around the world before painting eggs.
WB 19.02.24
We hope everyone had a happy half-term and we are glad to see you all again. This week we began our new topic of Bristol. We investigated where Bristol is in the UK, what counties border it and any famous landmarks known to our local area. We plotted these on a map and learnt about longitude and latitude to identify the coordinates of the city of Bristol. In Maths, we completed our unit of fractions, decimals and percentages and have begun to go through our end of term tests. Next week Year 6 begin their topic of algebra and Year 5 begin adding and subtracting decimals. In English, we have started our unit on mystery narratives. By utilising music, we have created spooky and mysterious word banks to enhance our writing. Our Young Voices Choir went to the Trowbridge Bupa Care home and sang all of their songs. They received a large round of applause and put a smile on the residents’ faces as they joined in and sang along. Well done!