Class Updates

 

 

Spring 1 update

What a fantastic half term we have had in Admirals class! The children have proven, once again, that they have embraced our Margaret Wix values and are continuously working hard to live by these powers in school. They have shown resilience when tackling hard maths challenges; self-belief when striving to reach their goals; curiosity in abundance when asking thought-provoking questions across the curriculum; and kindness whilst supporting their friends during new challenges like swimming.

In English, this term, we began by looking at biographies describing the lives of remarkable scientists like Mary Anning. We studied the language choices used in this style of writing, including the use of specific vocabulary, fronted adverbials to help keep events in chronological order and using brackets for parenthesis. We then researched, planned and wrote our own biographies on another inspiration figure. We then enjoyed reading the humorous ‘The Misadventures of Fredrick,’ which followed letter writing from one child to another. We then built on our abilities in persuasive writing, which lead us nicely into writing to Mrs Gibbs to see if we could convince her to make a change to the school. Our ideas included: having a McDonalds on site, banning homework, bring pets into school and introducing mandatory nap time!

In maths, we have worked hard to tackle short division. Although we found this challenging at first, we all persevered and have mastered it. Admirals are now able to express remainders as fractions, decimals and decide which remainder would be most appropriate in different contexts. We have also worked hard on representing fractions pictorially, creating equivalent fractions and adding and subtracting them too!

In science, we delved into our incredible solar system in our space topic. We have learnt how to describe the movement of the Earth and other planets, relative to the sun in the solar system. We are now able to discuss the movement of the moon relative to the Earth and created moving models to showcase this understanding. We also learnt how the Sun, Earth and Moon are approximate spherical bodies.

History, this term, has been centred around the Ancient Greeks. We were studying the key question, The Trojan horse: historical fact, legend or myth? In order to answer this question we first learnt about the story. We practised our story telling skills to retell the key events and then wrote up the story using a comic book strip. Next, we explored different sources and investigated how reliable or unreliable they were. We designed Greek pots and used these to create our own reliable piece of evidence. To end our unit, we had to think deeply about our enquiry question and decided whether the Trojan Horse story was in fact a myth, legend or historical fact.

In computing, we practised numerous skills relating to vector drawing. We learnt how to manipulate shapes, zoom, duplicate, copy and paste, rotate and layer in order to produce a range of fun, complex vector drawings.

In art, we enjoyed creating doodle drawings for the art exhibition. We worked hard to create different patterns to use in our peace signs and enjoyed the calmness the activity brought.  

In PE, the children have enjoyed swimming lessons, improving both their technique and stamina. The swimming teachers have been very impressed with the effort and determination to succeed shown in every lesson. I have been particularly impressed with the determination and perseverance shown by all the children! Well done Admirals.

 

Our PSHE lessons have been focused on our dreams and goals. We started our topic by thinking about our long term goals for the future, including jobs and careers. We discussed that these needed to be realistic and that we would need to work hard to achieve them. As a class, we thought of the logical steps we needed to take in order to reach our potential. We then looked at a range of jobs and salaries and discussed which job profession we felt contributed most to society. We then had to fill out our own job applications for our dream job. As well as our discrete learning in PSHE, we took part in NSPCC number day and Children’s Mental Health week!

I hope you have a restful and well-deserved break over the half term, Admirals.  Well done for all of your hard work and I look forward to seeing you in a week! Thank you parents and carers for your continued support in helping your children to reach their full potential – it really is a team effort!

Mrs Smith

 

Autumn 2 Update 

Year 5 have had a productive second half to the Autumn Term, which has been full of opportunities to grow as young people and learn about the importance of being kind and resilient. As a class, we took part in Anti-Bullying week as well as World Kindness Day. During these weeks, we spent time focusing on our mental well-being and creating strategies for how we can help ourselves and others if we face conflict. We have been lucky enough to take part in some wonderful cross-curricular activities too. We took part in an online STEM challenge and took part in the Christmas concert.

In maths, we have consolidated our understanding of place value and we are able to regroup more flexibly to solve calculations. We moved on to tackle mental strategies for multiplication, addition and subtraction. We explored which methods were most efficient for calculations and which methods would not be the best suited. Mental calculations are a great way to estimate answers but also can save us a great deal of time. We then applied our learning to formal written addition and subtraction. With this, we spotted mistakes, solved missing number calculations and investigated word problems; these tested our understanding and provided an opportunity to show case our understanding. Towards the end of the half term, we started looking at formal methods of long multiplication. Although this test our reliance at first, we are feeling much more confident with this method now.  

We have been busy in English, this term, and have written some excellent, extended pieces of writing. At the start of the half term, we wrote some beautiful war poetry just in time for Remembrance Day. We were able to write in the format of a cinquian and developed our use of ambitious and well-chosen vocabulary. We then spent a number of weeks on the fabulous book ‘The Promise’ by Nicola Davies. We all enjoyed the descriptions within this story and the deep message it gave. We practised our descriptive writing, building sentences, which include figurative language and expanded noun phrases. We also developed our skills in writing effective dialogue, which helps to move a story forward and provide more information about a character. Then we were finally able to put all of these skills together to write a continuation of this cyclical story, and the results were phenomenal!

In science, we delved into the world of ‘properties of materials.’ In each lesson, we acquired more knowledge by planning and carrying out investigations. We tested which materials were insoluble and soluble. We investigated which materials were reversible by heating and filtering and we even managed to separate an abundance of materials using magnets, scissors, blue tac and cello tape (that really was a challenge). Later in the unit, we explored reversible and irreversible changes. We made our own pop rockets and watched them explode when a new material was formed: carbon dioxide. The children have loved the hands on side to learning and demonstrated such curiosity whilst investigating the properties of different materials.

In Geography this half term, we have learned about volcanoes. The children have learnt all about the locations of volcanoes in the world, the make-up of volcanoes, how they are formed and much more. Our focus was on Iceland, which is where are inquiry started. We looked deeply at Heimaey: an archipelago towards the south of Iceland. We studied the physical and human features of Heimaey and then compared these to St Albans. We then moved on to learn about the climate of Heimaey and looked closely at how eruptions that have occurred there, have affected the lives of the inhabitants.

Computing lessons have focused on video editing this half term. We began by looking at filming techniques including camera angles and types of shot before using a storyboard to plan a video of our own. We then filmed our videos in groups. The children showed that they were adept at using technology to create their videos.

 For our PSHE lessons, we learnt all about tolerance and the importance of celebrating difference. We looked at children with different cultures from our own. We held mature discussions about sensitive topics such as Hate Crimes and Black History. We learnt that groups of people are discriminated against because of perceived differences and discussed how we could overcome these conflicts. I was so impressed with how mature all the children were in talking about these subjects and expressing their views to others.

As part of our PE next term, we are so looking forward to going swimming! Please remember your swimming kit every Thursday!

As the term draws to a close, I am reminded of just how much we have achieved as a team and as the very special Margaret Wix family! The Christmas spirit has definitely taken over. It has been so lovely to see the school filled with festive cheer! We wore Christmas jumpers, ate Christmas lunch, decorated the tree, took part in the Christmas music concert and watched the panto too!

I hope you have a restful and well-deserved break Admirals. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, if you are celebrating! Well done for all of your hard work and I look forward to seeing you again in January! Parents and carers, thank you for your continuous support in helping your children to reach their full potential!

Mrs Smith

Autumn 1 Update

Admirals have had an excellent, productive first half term back to school. They have settled back into their routines and have shown me just what enthusiastic, reflective learners they are! This half term has been packed full of learning and lots of amazing opportunities.

 This half term, in English, we have been enjoying a couple of fantastic, high quality texts, including The Book of Mythical Beasts and Magical Creatures and Cloud Tea Monkeys. Our first unit on non-chronological reports saw us learning about how to inform our reader about a mythical creature of our own design. We used new and ambitious vocabulary to describe its appearance, diet, habitat and evidence of sightings. We then read the beatifically descriptive Cloud Tea Monkeys and worked on a number of grammar areas including fronted adverbials, figurative language, expanded noun-phrases and how to link through paragraphs. This led us to our final extended write where we took a section of the story and retold it in our own words.

In maths, we have tackled the hugely important unit on place value. The children have ordered numbers, placed them on number lines, predicted mystery numbers and rounded them too! The children have persevered when faced with new learning and challenges and have demonstrated our new learning skills brilliantly! We moved onto exploring negative numbers. We learnt about where we would find them in a real life context, how to add and subtract negative numbers and how to read different intervals in scales. More recently, we have been learning how to divide and multiply by 10, 100 and 1,000. The children used speaking frames to support their understanding of the number growing larger or smaller and exactly how the digits move through the place value columns.

 

History, this term, has been centred on the Maya Civilisation. We explored how the Maya lived and how this is different from how they may live today. We learnt all about the occupations they had and the different types of food and drink they ate. We travelled back in time to look at famous sketches of the different pyramids and temples and wrote diary entries, writing as if we had been exploring the famous ‘Lost Jungle Cities.’ Following this we learnt exactly what each of the impressive structures was used for. These included sacrifice sites, bathing pools and columns to observe the stars and phases of the moon. We finished our unit by playing the infamous Pok-A-Tok game and drank chilli hot chocolate! What fun!

In computing, we have been learning about electronic systems and sharing information. We studied how these complex systems work and where we would find them in the outside world. We created teddy bears with different complex systems inside of them and studied important systems like pelican and puffin crossings. We then looked at sharing information effectively and created a shared PowerPoint on some under recognised, influential black people practising viral skills in communication. 

 

In PE, the children have been practising their skills in hockey and now have great control over the ball. They have also been developing their sportsmanship in netball, which is lovely to see.

In science, we have studied living things and their habitats. We found out how living things are sorted by observable characteristics and that scientists all over the world observe them, and ask questions to find out about these species. We looked particularly and Jane Goodall and David Attenborough. We also learnt all about pollination and how pollinators are vital for our environment to flourish and produce fruit and vegetables for us to eat. We learned about the difference between sexual and asexual reproduction in plants, and researched the gestation periods of different animals. We also thoroughly enjoyed our trip to the Tring Natural History Museum

 

In art, Mrs Campbell-Pugh has taught the children how to cut lino to create positive and negative prints in the image of different movements. We then experimented with mixed colours on our rollers and what it would look like if we overlapped the prints. 

In DT, we developed our sewing skills further by creating a small stuffed toy. After designing our toy, we revised our use of running stitch to attach appliqué and blanket stitch to sew the sides our toys. The results were impressive!

 

In RE, we learnt all about commitment. We looked at the key question, ‘How far would a Sikh go for their religion.’ We looked at some of their core beliefs and then learnt about examples of how modern Sikhs might demonstrate these today. We also held our own Langar in our classroom to get a sense of the equality and selfless duty that may Sikhs show in a Gurdwara. We practised our oracy skills in our discussions and had to express our opinions clearly and confidently.

In PSHE, we began our first topic ‘Being Me in My World.’ We explored our hopes and dreams for the upcoming term and moved on to learn all about children’s rights. We explored everybody’s rights to be safe, have access to clean water, a safe place to live and the right to learn. We thought about our rights at school and how we can all show responsibility by upholding these rights. Additionally, we celebrated Hello Yellow Day, Be Bright and Be Seen and Black History Month. We also took part in the NSPCC Speak Out. Stay Safe. programme where were learnt about abuse and how we can reach out for help. 

Your children have worked so hard this half term and have lived by our Margaret Wix values. I hope you enjoy a restful break Admirals, and I look forward to seeing you soon!

 

Mrs Smith