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Class Updates

Summer 2 Update - July 2026

I have loved teaching Monarchs this year and this half term the children have continued to amaze me and make me proud as they have shown our learning powers and values in abundance. The children have demonstrated self-belief, taking to the stage in front of the whole school, as well as parents and carers, in their school production. Climbing walls and canoes were conquered on our residential trip and this required the children to show immense resilience, getting back up and trying again when they felt fearful. Curiosity has been displayed in lessons time and time again; the thoughtful questions asked by the children often prompt further learning and inspire more discussion. Respect for others is so very important and Monarchs have shown maturity in transition lessons this half term in particular - they have acknowledged other people's opinions, thoughts and feelings about growing up and moving onto secondary school and always responded in considered, respectful ways. There are many reasons why I've loved teaching Monarchs this year, but the kindness they show one another daily is one of the most fantastic things to witness. I am sure that the special friendships they have made and maintained during their time at Margaret Wix will continue to blossom even as they move to new schools.

I cannot allow this opportunity to pass by without congratulating Monarchs once again on their wonderful SATs results. We are all so incredibly proud of their success and the progress that they have made this year is outstanding. The children have grown hugely over the past year, academically, socially and emotionally, and they should be delighted with all of their achievements.

In English this half-term, the children put everything they have learned into practice in their final pieces of extended writing. They wrote biographies about inspiring people, wrote persuasively about something they were passionate about, created atmospheric narratives about Oliver Twist, brought the characters of Rock, Paper and Scissors to life in stories, informed and explained in texts about the circulatory system, and even found time to write their suggestions about whom we should name our school houses. This year, we had a visitor who moderated our writing in year six (they came to check the accuracy of my judgements). This is something that every school experiences roughly every four years. Often, schools outcomes decline a little when this happens, but I am so proud that the visitor agreed we have some amazing authors in our class! In fact, nationally 73% of year six pupils achieved the expected writing standard but we managed an incredible 88%! 

In maths, we saw the culmination of our enterprise project this half-term. The children worked incredibly hard, in their small groups, to create viable businesses selling everything from bookmarks and bracelets to cakes and mystery bags. There was also the opportunity to shoot water pistols at teachers which seemed to attract quite a lot of attention! Together, Monarchs raised a huge total which has paid for their leavers’ party - that’s real-life maths in action! We finished the year tackling time, Roman numerals and some statistics. Despite feeling tired towards the end of term, I was impressed with the determination to succeed with these tricky topics in order to ensure they are prepared for year 7 learning. 

Science and PSHE lessons this half-term have linked together as they have centred on the changes that happen as we grow. The children impressed me with the maturity shown when recapping learning from year 5 about puberty and how best to look after ourselves physically and emotionally during this time, as well as when we learned about reproduction and how babies grow and are born. In addition, we have discussed self-image and how what we see of celebrities or of people online is not always a true reflection of the person. Also, we learned about the pressures that may come as we move on to secondary school regarding our relationships with others. The children were able to think about potential difficulties and also come up with possible solutions.

Geography lessons have involved learning about Britain's National Parks. The children enjoyed finding out about these protected landscapes that include some of our country's most scenic and wild places. They learned about the importance of conserving the 15 parks to ensure that wildlife and cultural heritage is protected for years to come and also reflected on the importance of their own cultural heritage in the context of this. This tied in nicely with our work during International Week - it was wonderful to hear the children learning about each other's heritages and seeing them dressed in their beautiful colours and clothes. Geography Fieldwork Week also took place in June - we explored our school grounds and local area in order to compare it with the qualities and purposes of a national park, utilising community surveys, field sketches, comparison charts and more.

RE lessons have continued to focus on Islam and whether belief in Akhirah (life after death) encourages Muslims to lead good lives. We spent time reflecting on our own personal beliefs and identified similarities and differences between us all. Regardless of faith, we noted that we all endeavour to lead good lives and our school learning powers and values help us to do this too. 

In computing, Monarchs have enjoyed learning about 3D modelling using computer aided design software, Tinkedcad. They found out how to add shapes to a project, view them from different perspectives, and move, manipulate and recolour them. During this unit, the children showed great creativity, as well as patience, as they created intricate 3D models of houses, name badges, vehicles and more.

In PE this half-term, the children have loved getting stuck into rounders. Mr Stevenson has reported that he has been impressed with the class' ability to work together and support each other when playing in teams. Of course, sports day was a highlight for many: the children performed brilliantly amassing a huge number of points for their houses. We saw great resilience and self-belief as they tackled the events in the heat, as well as kindness and respect, encouraging each other and helping to make it a fantastic afternoon. A number of children also took part in the District Sports Athletics Competition this half-term. The children represented the school brilliantly in each event and we had lots of finalists. We even came away with a few podium finishes too: Jeremi retained his sprint title and Daryna finished 2nd in the long jump. We are so proud of all the children who gave their all and earned points for our school.

In addition, we enjoyed a fantastic few days away ait PGL for our residential trip. This was an awesome experience and the children enjoyed abseiling, climbing, fencing, jacob's ladder, buggy building, canoeing and more!  Year six threw themselves into every activity and ensured that they got the most out of the experience. I loved seeing the smiles on faces as children tried new things, conquered fears, spent time with their friends and just had the most wonderful time. It was a pleasure to accompany your children on this trip, where they hopefully made lasting memories. I must also thank the adults who accompanied us and gave up time at home with their own families: Mrs Gibbs, Miss Benson and Mrs Green all helped to make this a wonderful experience for the children.

We dedicated a large portion of our time this half-term to rehearsing for our end of year production and I am sure that you will agree that the children's hard work paid off - what a show it was! The wonderful thing about performances like this is that it often gives children the chance to shine in new ways. There were a number of pupils who surprised me with the confidence shown in being in the spotlight - something that they had often shied away from previously - which made me almost burst with pride. Some game us goosebumps with their beautiful singing, especially the soloists who showed immense courage in stepping forward to sing alone. Others impressed with their wonderful acting. The children also had a hand in making props and Hin and Eli did an amazing job ensuring that the backdrops and the music were all perfect; the show wouldn't have been complete without this. There was a real buzz in the air and that was created by the children and the brilliant performances they gave - I couldn't have asked for anything more and I hope that the memories of the show remain with the children for a long time to come!

Of course, as the year comes to an end, especially in year 6, it can be a sad time for the children as they leave our lovely school community. The leavers' assembly gave them an opportunity to share some of their memories from their time at Margaret Wix and resulted in a few tears too. It also gave us the chance to celebrate the awesome young people that we have had the pleasure of working with and whom we have seen accomplish a great deal academically, socially and emotionally. The leavers' party was something we are all excited for and it was a fun-filled evening with music, inflatables, pizza and ice cream and a whole lot of laughter! They deserved it after all of their hard work!

I cannot emphasise enough what a pleasure it has been to teach your children this year. They are a credit to you with their positive attitudes, kindness, determination to succeed and more! I hope that their end of year reports conveyed they pride that I feel for each of them. I am sure that each and every one of them will go on to achieve amazing things at secondary school and I cannot wait to hear about it. Please do keep in touch!

Thank you parents and carers for your support this year; helping your children to reach their full potential really is a team effort. Thank you also for the lovely words and generous gifts - this is definitely not why we do the job but please know I am extremely appreciative of your kindness.

Wishing you all a wonderful summer,

Miss Abbott

Summer 1 Update - May 2026

The first half of the summer term seems to have whizzed by! Time and time again, Monarchs have made us incredibly proud as they have shown kindness and respect to others, displayed curiosity in their learning and demonstrated increasing self-belief and resilience when taking on challenges, particularly whilst tackling SATs earlier this month. We are all so proud of how Monarchs faced SATs week with such determination to succeed and used the tests as an opportunity to show off everything that they have learned throughout KS2. The end of SATs week saw the children receiving their leavers hoodies and enjoying a slice of cake as a reward for their efforts. 

English and maths lessons this half-term predominantly involved recapping much of this year's learning in order to prepare the children for their SATs tests. It was important to have a good understanding of grammar and arithmetic, in particular, in order to feel as confident as possible. We focused on areas that we know are frequently tested, including lots of work on fractions, decimals and percentages. Monarchs impressed us with their determination to succeed throughout. Since completing SATs, Monarchs have begun a unit of narrative writing based on the film version of Oliver Twist. The children have worked hard to prove they are great year six writers, using a range of literary devises with confidence and flair as well as securing the essential grammatical techniques and punctuation necessary to ensure their work is cohesive. In maths, we began our unit of financial maths and the children have enjoyed taking on the enterprise challenge - they have formed small business teams and are enjoying researching and planning what they could sell to the rest of the school after half-term.

In science, this half-term, we have been learning about the circulatory system. So far, children have learned that the heart is a muscle that works as a pump forcing blood around the body. We learned about the properties of blood and even 'made our own', using items such as food colouring, Cheerios and mini-marshmallows to represent the different components. The children discovered that our circulatory system ensures that organs around our body are supplied with necessary nutrients and oxygen and found out that our heart works at a faster rate (recorded as beats per minute) when exercising. 

History lessons have been focused on the British Empire. We learned why Britain wanted an empire and used our geography skills to find and label the countries that were part of the empire on a world map. I was especially impressed by Monarchs as we learned about the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the part the British Empire played in this. The children discussed their feelings of upset, anger and disappointment in learning that, as well as invading and colonising almost a quarter of the Earth's population, we were responsible for enslaving millions of African people over a course of approximately 300 years. The children were pleased to learn that countries regained independence and now Britain is part of a much friendlier group of countries - the Commonwealth - that work together towards shared goals.

Our RE lessons this term have allowed us to revisit previous learning about the five pillars of Islam as we reflected on the question: what is the best way for a Muslim to show commitment to God? Our enquiry began by exploring what commitment means to us as individuals and reflected on things that we are each committed to. We created a 'recipe for commitment' that included values such as resilience, effort, determination, giving time, and more. After, we began learning about beliefs and practices and started to understand how Muslims show commitment each day, highlighting the importance of Allah.

We have continued to enjoy French lessons in Monarchs, learning the nouns and articles/determiners for ten healthy and ten less healthy foods, along with the 1st person singular conjugation of the high frequency verbs 'to eat' and 'to drink'. We have learned how to say and write what we do and do not eat and drink, in order to stay healthy.We also learned the language for a variety of physical activities and found out how to say which we do or don't do every day and every week.

In computing, we have enjoyed using micro:bits this half-term. We have learned that micro:bits are input, process, output devices that can be programmed. We found out how to write algorithms that caused the micro:bits to perform a range of functions including: lighting up in different patterns, displaying text, acting as a compass and more. We definitely needed our learning powers of self-belief and resilience as we came across errors in our code that meant the micro:bits didn't always work first time!

Relationships has been the focus of PSHE lessons this half-term. The children have engaged in meaningful discussions about mental health and identifying causes of anxiety as well as sources of support. Children learned how to deal with conflict, builds assertiveness skills and identify their own strengths and strategies for building self-esteem and resilience.

Mr Stevenson has enjoyed teaching the children cricket in PE lessons this half term. Monarchs have perfected their bowling technique, learned how to successfully strike the ball, and found out how important it is to work together to field effectively. 

Monarchs have enjoyed the expert music tuition of Mr Mitchell and Mr Dickenson again this half term, using games to help understand rhythmic notation as well as continuing to enjoy the opportunity to play a variety of instruments. I was so proud and impressed of their improvised work during the spring music concert and am excited to see what our talented musicians produce in the summer concert, next half term.

In art, Mrs Cambell-Pugh has been impressed by the children's photography skills. They have enjoyed taking macro photographs, editing images and recreating famous works of art in photographic form. 

In DT, the children enjoyed designing, making and evaluating their own model playgrounds. They used a range of resources and tools, including saws, to carefully construct swings, climbing frames, slides and more!

Finally, Monarchs finished the half-term by auditioning for our end of year production (Oliver) and found out their roles. Mrs Gibbs and I were impressed by children who pushed themselves out of their comfort zones, read lines clearly and who confidently sang in front of their peers. There were even a few people who had already begun to learn the script by heart! Well done to all pupils who auditioned - putting yourself forward for something is not always easy, but the growing self-belief that you showed during the process was excellent and made us look forward to getting stuck into putting the production together next half-term. It's going to be great!

Thank you parents and carers for your continued support this half-term; together we can help your child reach their full potential. We hope that you have a restful and well-deserved break over half-term. Well done for all your hard work, Monarchs; we look forward to seeing you again on Tuesday 2nd June for the start of an exciting final half-term!

Kind regards,

Miss Abbott

Look at what we have been up to in the second half of the spring term!

Spring 2 Update - March 2026

The second half of the spring term has been jam-packed; we have managed to fit so much learning into such a short few weeks! This half-term has required a lot of hard work as we head towards SATs, including a week of mock tests during which the children tried their best to show off everything that they have learned so far. All children have made improvements since the autumn term; I will communicate their latest scores with you in due course and offer some suggestions for further practice. As well as this, I will be sending every child home with a 'five a day' practice booklet which it would be useful for the children to complete over the holidays. Finally, don't forget the numerous resources linked under the KS2 SATs button on the left of this page, which can be used to help keep learning ticking over while we are away from school. In working together, we are sure that we can give the children the best possible chance of reaching their full potential.

Since February half-term, in English lessons, Monarchs have enjoyed exploring a selection of traditional fairy tales, some of which had been innovated, such as 'Jack and the Baked Bean Stalk'. After this, we spent time planning and writing fairy tales of our own. We focused on using a variety of grammatical techniques and literary devices to make our writing entertaining for our readers, including: the past perfect tense, dialogue, a range of adverbials, varied conjunctions, figurative language, and more! Through drama, we were able to role-play conversations between characters in order to ensure that we were selective when writing dialogue, remembering the purpose of it is to reveal detail about characters or move the action on. Book week was a great success too this half-term: we enjoyed dressing up as our favourite characters or wearing our cosy pyjamas, participating in an illustrator workshop, sampling new texts at Brekkie and Books, and more!

We have continued to work hard in maths this half-term, tackling a range of topics. We learned how to reflect and translate shapes, multiply and divide fractions, calculate ratios and proportions, and work out the volume of 3D shapes. Once again, I have been impressed by the resilience shown by the children as they tackled tricky, new content. Some of this learning gave them opportunities to revise previously taught concepts too, increasing the children's confidence in key areas.

In science, our topic this half-term has been 'electricity'. During this, we recapped learning from previous years regarding how to make and draw simple circuits, using the correct scientific symbols. We have loved the practical elements of this unit of work and persevered when we came across broken bulbs or missing cells, which could have set us back! We have investigated the impact more or fewer cells in a circuit has on the brightness of bulbs and the volume of buzzers. We also loved making a human circuit and seeing how the electrons passed around our circle to light up our energy stick. As if that wasn't enoough, we had science week this half-term, during which we enjoyed fire-lighting in forest school, a BBC live lesson, two fantastic workshops and more! 

Our geography topic this term has seen us learning about Fair Trade. We discovered one of the oldest trading routes in the world: the Silk Road. We compared this to modern trade in which commodities are regularly imported and exported by container ships. It was interesting, and somewhat surprising, to find out some of our our most popular imports included toys and games from China and some of our most popular exports included Scottish salmon! Comparing the lives of two banana farmers in St Lucia enabled us to learn about Fair Trade - we were shocked to find out that many farmers only receive 10% of what their product sells for in the UK. We felt this was unfair and so were pleased to find out about the work of Fair Trade Foundation. We spotted their logo on a number of products and want to keep an eye out for this when we shop in the future.

In computing, this half-term, we have learned about spreadsheets and how they can be used to perform calculations with large amounts of data. We began focusing on using cell references to multiply, divide, add or subtract data, before moving onto more complex functions such as finding the average of a data set. As our skills improved, we looked at larger data sets and eventually managed to plan a party using a spreadsheet, working out the costings per person.

Our RE lessons this half-term focused on Christianity and we have been trying to answer the question: 'Is Christianity still a strong religion 2000 years after Jesus was alive?' During this unit of work, we have found out about Christian celebrations, teachings and places of worship and reflected on how Christians are sometimes treated by others. It is always pleasing to hear the children thoughtfully share their own ideas and respectfully make comparisons to their own beliefs and experiences during these lessons. We also enjoyed an immersive assembly and workshop with Saltmine Theatre Company who brought a variety of Bible stories to life!

This half-term's PSHE topic was 'Healthy Me'. We have learned about the risks and effects of alcohol and drugs on our bodies and considered the pressure to take part in anti-social behaviour, for example by joining a gang. I was extremely impressed with the considered discussion and thoughtfulness surrounding these mature themes. We took our learning off-site too on our trip to Crucial Crew. The children learned how to keep themselves and others safe in a variety of ways, including: near open water, around people who may exhibit anti-social behaviour, when crossing roads and near electrical substations. They were also taught how to look after their mental health, how to put someone in the recovery position and how to identify fire hazards. The experience is important as our year sixes become more and more independent, ahead of going to secondary school in September. As always, we were pleased to hear lovely feedback from the Police Community Support Officers about how polite, respectful and engaged our pupils were!

Music lessons this half-term have seen the children showing great skill on a range of instruments in Mr Mitchell and Mr Dickinson's lessons. They have been working to keep a beat and have had opportunities to improvise too. It was a pleasure to see the children perform, once again, in our spring music concert with such confidence and enthusiasm.

In PE, the children have developed their understanding of tennis and hockey skills and games with Mr Stevenson-Leigh. They have learned the rules of the games as well as practising their forehand, backhand, passing, dribbling and shooting skills before applying these to game scenarios. Mr Stevenson-Leigh has seen great skill, teamwork and sportsmanship that has really impressed him. Some children have also represented the school in various events in recent weeks. We have had determined runners in individual cross-country races and amazing teams working together in netball and football matches. I can't wait to see more children involved in other competitions in the summer term.

What a busy half-term it has been! Your children have been a credit to you as they endeavour to show our learning powers and values each day while working hard to achieve as highly as possible. Whilst SATs are important in showing the progress that they have made during their time in primary school, we know that there is much more to your children than the results of these tests: at Margaret Wix, we are proud to be developing well-rounded individuals. I hope that everyone has a restful and enjoyable break and I look forward to seeing the children again on Tuesday 14th April, if not at boosters on Monday and Tuesday next week. 

Kind regards,

Miss Abbott

Look at what we have been up to in the first half of the spring term!

Spring 1 Update - February 2026

What a busy half-term it has been for Monarchs class once again; despite only being back at school for five weeks, we have managed to enjoy lots of new learning and experienced numerous successes. We even squeezed in a school trip: we visited the Houses of Parliament in January, which was a wonderful experience, enjoyed by all. The children showed great curiosity during the day as we learned about democracy and British values, toured the Houses of Parliament and enjoyed a (rather wet) walk past some of London's iconic historical landmarks. As always, we were so proud to take the children out of school – they showed our learning powers and values in abundance as we navigated trains and the underground as well as the busy streets of the capital. Mrs Gibbs and I agreed that they were perhaps the best class we've ever taken to Parliament!

Our English lessons this half-term have mostly been based upon a fantastic text: Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. This is an enthralling book, with brilliant language, about an amazing collection of magical and mystical creatures. Through reading it, we have been able to develop our understanding of a variety of grammatical techniques including: active and passive voice, subordinating clauses, hyphenated words, pronouns and adverbial phrases used for cohesion, and much more. We also used drama techniques to immerse ourselves in this fantastical world, such as creating freeze frames to show the chaos a mischievous boggart might create in our classroom. This work has then led to us creating our own non-chronological reports about weird and wonderful beasts that we are looking forward to seeing published in our very own class book.

In maths, we have tackled a range of new topics including long division, BIDMAS and algebra, as well as revisiting and extending our knowledge of previously learning about angles and area and perimeter. Whilst some of this learning has proved challenging, I've been impressed by the resilience shown and the desire to improve.

In science, we have learned about light this half-term and have particularly enjoyed the opportunities for practical work: we made our own periscopes, investigated shadows, created our own optical illusions and explored how refraction can be used to create a 'magical' tricks such as making a coin 'disappear'. Monarchs had excellent knowledge about how light travels in straight lines and how opaque objects create shadows, but there were a few surprises for the children too – did you know that our eyes actually see objects upside down? Monarchs learned about the different parts of the eye, including the optic nerve that sends rapid messages to our brain, which then quickly flips the image to ensure we do actually see things in the correct orientation! Amazing!

We delved into the world of the 'Shang Dynasty' during history lessons this half-term. We learned how 'dragon bones' revealed much about this ancient dynasty and found that they were used by Shang people to ask questions of their ancestors. We looked at a variety of secondary sources to find out what life was like for emperors and farmers during this time period and were able to identify similarities and differences between them. We were interested to find out about the rise and fall of the Shang Dynasty and learned about the perfect first emperor, King Cheng Tang, who had many desirable qualities. We compared him to King Di Xin, who was a terrible ruler and whose actions resulted in the downfall of the dynasty. Finally, we found out about Fu Hao, a female army general who was in charge of around 13,000 troops. Considering attitudes towards women during this time period, we were surprised that a woman had managed to reach such an esteemed position. It was interesting to see pictures of her tomb, through which we were able to infer much about her life. There has been great interest and curiosity shown during history lessons this term.

RE lessons have been centred around the question: 'Is anything ever eternal?'. During this unit of work, we have found out about the Christian perspective on eternal life and eternal love, but also reflected on our own beliefs. RE lessons often prompt interesting discussion as the children share their own thoughts and I have been pleased to see how respectfully they have listened and responded to one other.

Our PSHE lessons have been focused on dreams and goals. We started our topic by thinking about our long-term goals, learning that these needed to be realistic and that we would need to work hard to achieve them. This learning was reinforced through our fabulous Aspirations Day during which we met a range of professionals who shared lots of information about their jobs and inspired us to dream big. We have aspiring aerospace engineers, interior designers, vets, authors, dance teachers, make-up artists, footballers, architects and more in Monarchs! Next, we reflected on the world around us and things that may concern us such as war, poverty or natural disasters. We thought about our hopes and wishes for the world and what we might be able to do to support others less fortunate than ourselves. We came up with a number of ideas for charity events that we could run later this year and look forward to sharing them with Mrs Gibbs.

Our computing lessons this term have involved using software called 'Scratch' to programme variables in our own games. We had great fun testing out a variety of games and then seeing how we could create our own versions. We had to programme the games ourselves and, as a result, could make a variety of things happen including creating our own scoring system and changing features after reaching a certain total. Some of us introduced a timed element to our games while others enjoyed creating sounds that they programmed to play when certain events happened. Of course, we all very much enjoyed testing out and playing our games too!

I have been impressed with the enthusiasm shown in French lessons over the past half-term as we have learned how to talk about our school day with the help of Mademoiselle Bowie, a teacher from St Albans' School. Through various speaking, listening, reading and writing tasks, Monarchs have learned: ten different school subjects, how to state their preferences and give reasons for their views, and to explain on which day and at what time they learn each subject.  I have enjoyed hearing the developing French accents and the confidence in speaking another language is growing – c'est super Monarchs!

We have enjoyed music lessons with Mr Mitchell this half term. He has commented often on how the music that he is teaching Monarchs to play on a variety of instruments is much more advanced than what he is able to teach year six pupils at some of his other schools! With the number of children attending choir and band club, it's clear that we have some very talented musicians in Monarchs and I always feel incredibly proud when I go to collect them a few minutes early and get to hear a snippet of what they have been working on – it sounds great and I'm sure you will also be looking forward to hearing the final masterpiece at our Spring music concert next half-term.

Art lessons with Mrs Campbell-Pugh culminated in our art exhibition. The children very excitedly created beautiful drawings of doves that they layered over backgrounds created using pastels. We have spent the final day of term immersed in our DT project: textiles. The children showed all of our learning powers as they designed made and evaluated waistcoats for teddy bears. This included creating a pattern, pinning and cutting fabric, sewing pieces of material together, and embellishing their final designs too.

Mr Stevenson has enjoyed teaching dance and health related fitness during PE lessons this half term. The lessons have definitely pushed a number of the children outside their comfort zones, but I have been proud of how they have persevered and shown self-belief. The teamwork demonstrated in creating and performing their carnival dance routines has been wonderful to see.

As well as all of this, we squeezed in a second practice SATs week. I have been so pleased to see the growing resilience and determination to succeed has resulted in improved scores from so many children. I know that tests can often be daunting but, hopefully, through this regular practice, the children will continue to grow in confidence and approach the real SATs full of self-belief. Thank you for attending our SATs information meeting – the slides were emailed out and can also be found on the SATs tab on our class page. There, you will find other resources to support your child too; it would be brilliant if they could do a little work on the areas identified in the most recents tests, which I shared with you this week.

I am sure that you will agree with me saying that I think Monarchs have worked hard this term! We have covered so much in such a relatively short space of time and I am enjoying seeing the progress the children continue to make. I hope that, as well as well as a little SATs practice, the children enjoy a well-earned break over half-term and I look forward to seeing them all refreshed and ready to tackle more learning when we return to school on Monday 23rd February. As always, thank you parents and carers for your support this half term – together we can help your child reach their full potential.

Kind regards,

Miss Abbott

Look at what we have been up to in the second half of the autumn term!

Autumn 2 Update - December 2025

I am struggling to believe that we have reached the end of the autumn term! The past few months seem to have flown by and the children are now a third of the way through year six! What a wonderful first few months it has been. I have loved continuing to see the children embrace everything that Margaret Wix has to offer, demonstrating our learning powers and values at all times. Monarchs have shown: kindness when supporting younger pupils on the playground at lunchtimes each day; curiosity in lessons and when we have had visitors in school; respect for others during Anti-Bullying Week when identifying what bullying is and how our differences should be celebrated; self-belief and resilience in their learning, particularly while tackling their first set of practice SATs. The results show some great progress already; I can't wait to see what the rest of the year will bring.

In English, this half term, we have written to both entertain and persuade. Our first unit of work was based on a beautiful picture book titled 'Wisp'. It is a powerful and uplifting story about a young refugee born into a world of tents and fences, who discovers hope and the promise of someday. Children developed an understanding of multi-clause sentences, joining with a range of conjunctions, and also practised using dialogue to advance the narrative when writing their own additional chapters for the story. More recently, children have developed their persuasive writing by exploring a selection of famous speeches from throughout history. Together, we read speeches from influential people including: Malala Yousafzai, Abraham Lincoln, Greta Thunberg, Winston Churchill, Helen Keller and more. We identified what made the speeches successful and then enjoyed writing some of our own. Children chose a pet peeve to banish to Room 101 and enjoyed writing to persuade me to eliminate things such as litter, homework, homelessness, bullying and even embarrassing parents.

Maths this half term, has seen Monarchs tackle fractions, decimals and percentages. We've spent a lot of time learning how to calculate each of these separately, but have also had to try to understand how they are all linked and master converting between them. It has required a lot of self-belief and resilience but we have certainly made great strides. As we know that these are three areas of mathematics frequently tested in SATs, in addition to being valuable to understand for real-life contexts such as shopping, we will definitely be revisiting this learning again! In recent weeks, we have also explored properties of 2D shapes and learned how to compare and classify polygons. We ended the term learning the names and properties of 3D shapes as well as tackling nets. We've been very busy!

Monarchs have loved being super scientists this half term while learning all about evolution and inheritance. We began this unit of learning by looking at real fossils and coming to understand how they tell us about living things that existed millions of years ago. The children enjoyed learning about a variety of plants and animals and discussing how they are adapted to suit their environments. Two stories, 'The Molliebird' and 'Moth' helped the children to understand that evolution is a gradual change that takes place over time in order to ensure that creatures are suited to their environments and able to survive. Children have also learned how characteristics are inherited, which explains why offspring look like their parents but less like their cousins. The children found this incredibly interesting and reflected on their own families and how members are similar and different.

Geography has involved learning about climate change and its impact on our planet. The children have been extremely interested and shocked to learn that heatwaves, bushfires, floods, droughts, polar regions melting and sea levels rising are all results of the way we are mistreating our world. They have drawn upon skills from other areas of the curriculum in these lessons, creating graphs, designing flood defences and more. There are many strong opinions regarding what we should now do as a school to help reduce the impact of global warming. 

In RE, we have been learning about how Christians celebrate Christmas and have been asking if their traditions help them to understand who Jesus was and why he was born. We were interested to find out how a number of Christmas traditions may have originated as religious ways of celebrating at this time of year, but now are enjoyed by many people in a secular way. We created questionnaires to find out if everyone in our class celebrates Christmas and if so how - we heard about lots of lovely family traditions that some children enjoy and are very much looking forward to over the coming weeks. It was also wonderful for children from different faiths to share knowledge of celebrations they partake in and explain how they are similar and different to Christmas celebrations. Just this week, we also visited Christ Church where we brought the nativity story to life, dressing up as the key figures.

Monarchs have continued getting to grips with learning French this half term. Our focus has been on habitats, linking with our work in science. Children have learned how to say, in French: the essential things that plants and animals need to survive; five key habitats around the world; which plants grow in each habitat and which animals live there too. Tackling a new language is always challenging, but I've been impressed with how willing the children have been to have a go! 

We have some future computing experts in Monarchs class, I am sure! I have been so impressed with the children's work this half term: they have designed and created their very own websites! Each child chose a subject to create a site about and then they have worked hard to add everything from images and text to hyperlinks in order to make their websites fully functional. It's been brilliant to see how excited they have been each week to get the laptops out and enjoy developing these skills.

Our latest PSHE unit of work was titled, 'Celebrating Differences' and we have certainly done that in Monarchs class! We have discussed what makes each of us special and unique, and thought about how these things are positives and shouldn't be used to judge or discriminate against people. The mature discussion that takes place in our classroom during every PSHE lesson is wonderful and I feel privileged to be involved. I can really see the children taking the time to think carefully before they share ideas and they are all showing great respect when faced with differing opinions.

Mr Stevenson has been extremely impressed with Monarchs during PE lesson this half term. They have enjoyed developing their gymnastics skills and he has noticed a real improvement in their abilities and teamwork as the half term has progressed. In the second PE session of each week, Monarchs have been honing their swimming skills. This culminated with the sponsored swimming session. The children tried extremely hard to swim as much as possible in order to raise money for our class - thank you to those of you who have already sent the sponsorship money in. If you are yet to, please do so as soon as possible. Some of our class also participated in a netball match against Redbourn Primary School, which they won 6-4. This was an exciting way to end the term and we are very proud of all who were involved.

We finished the term with a DT unit based on cooking and nutrition. It involved researching, designing, making and evaluating stuffed peppers - delicious! The children were responsible for every aspect of the process including, dicing onions, crushing garlic, frying meat, adding seasonings, and grating cheese. The enthusiasm for learning during this process was exceptional, with children supporting each other to ensure careful work whilst having a lot of fun!

Music with Mr Mitchell is always exciting - especially with our winter music concert which is the culmination of a great half term's work. The children chose their song to perform and then worked incredibly hard over a number of weeks to play a variety of instruments and sing. This year was particularly impressive as the children sung 'Feliz Navidad' in Spanish while playing their instruments! We hope that you enjoyed watching them all perform.

We have crammed a lot into a busy half term - as well as all the learning taking place in class, we've enjoyed: watching the pantomime and nativity; welcoming visitors into our classroom from the travel planning team; participating in Anti-Bullying Week; developing our pupil leadership through giving assemblies, supporting with house activities, carrying out pupil voices and organising charity events; and much more! I wish those of you who celebrate, a very merry Christmas, and look forward to seeing all of your children again in the new year, feeling refreshed and ready to learn again!

Thank you for your continued support,

Miss Abbott

Look at what we have been up to in the first half of the autumn term!

Autumn 1 Update - October 2025

What a brilliant first half term we have had in Monarchs! The children have quickly settled into school routines and have shown me what enthusiastic learners they can be. They have risen to the challenge of being top of the school and are striving to always demonstrate our learning powers and values. It was fantastic to see the number of children who wanted to take on leadership roles: our house captains, pupil parliament, maths and reading ambassadors, and digital leaders are already proving to be responsible. They are supporting key stage one at lunchtimes, leading school tours, adding maths puzzles to the weekly newsletter and more. I can't wait to see their impact throughout the year.

In the classroom, the children have been working extremely hard. In English, we first wrote narratives to entertain based on a picture book, 'Night of the Gargoyles'. The children thought carefully about how to build tension and create atmosphere through their word choice. It was lovely to see them sharing their work with year five after putting so much effort into their stories. During our second unit of work, we wrote about the planets in our solar system after reading a range of brilliant non-fiction texts that inspired us. Inventing our own planets was great fun; we had to consider the weather and atmosphere, habitats and life forms, position in the solar system and more. We tried to ensure that we kept the audience and purpose in mind when writing, using varied sentence structures and a formal tone. Throughout our writing this term, we have been concentrating on ensuring that every sentence makes sense and is correctly punctuated as well as trying to widen our vocabularies and make use of ambitious words and phrases. 

Maths this half term has predominantly focused on number and place value. This has involved ensuring that we understand the value of every digit in numbers up to ten million. We have been ordering and comparing numbers, rounding them, multiplying and dividing them by 10, 100 and 1000, and much more! We also learned how to calculate the areas of rectilinear shapes, triangles and parallelograms. We revised properties of number recently, in particular revisiting factors and multiples from learning in previous years. Understanding of this is particularly important as we move onto learning about fractions next half term. I've been pleased to see many children progressing through each Maths Magicians stage - this also helps to ensure that they can access our learning in class and feel confident to tackle other areas of maths. Keep it up!

We have been immersed in our World War II history topic this half term. Our young historians have amazed me with the knowledge that many of them already have as well as their determination to find out new information about this interesting period in history. We learned how the war began and which countries were involved, made WWII rations, created comic strips depicting the Battle of Dunkirk, made model Anderson shelters, compared sources of evidence when predicting who won the Battle of Britain, and much, much more! The highlight, of course, was our exciting trip to RAF Hendon where we got to see and handle WWII artefacts, learn about key figures who helped us win the Battle of Britain and found out more about the aircraft that were used in the war. Year six were praised by the museum staff for their effort and behaviour - it was great to see our learning powers being used throughout the day.

In science, Monarchs have been investigating living things and their habitats. We have learned about classification of living things using keys developed by an important scientist, Carl Linneaus. Using classification keys proved to be challenging but, with resilience and curiosity, we were able to answer questions that helped us to sort and group various living creatures based on observable characteristics. We learned that living things are sometimes much smaller too - we have carried out two investigations into micro-organisms and found that some types of bacteria can be harmful, whilst others are much more useful. Over time, we watched the effect of bacteria on food items and saw how mould grew. As well as this, we found out that yeast played a positive role in cooking as it helped us to bake bread that rose.

In RE, this half term, we have been learning about Humanism. Through our enquiry, we have looked at famous people (Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Alice Roberts) who may be role-models to Humanists and how their words or actions correlate to Humanist beliefs. We learned that Humanists try to live by the 'golden rule', which is to treat other people as you would like them to treat you, and noted that this concept is found in most religions. We found that Humanists believe in reason, questioning and science. They focus on human achievement and scientific discovery rather than learning from a sacred scripture. We learned that Humanists do not believe in life after death and think that the impact we have in this life is what lives on. I enjoyed hearing the children respectfully share their personal beliefs about inspirational people and note similarities and differences between their own faiths and Humanism.

In computing, we have been learning about systems and networks, with a focus on communication and collaboration. We learned how data is sent from one computer to another using IP addresses and data packets. We discussed methods of online communication, such as email, social media, video sharing sites, instant messaging, video calls, and more. We thought about the benefits and drawbacks of each method including how private they were and whether they had age restrictions. Next, we used one method of communication, Google Docs, to work on a collaborative project with people who were sitting on opposite sides of the room to us. Linking this learning to WWII, we created fact files about Adolf Hitler or Winston Churchill.

I've been impressed with the developing French knowledge and understanding in Monarchs. This half term, we have learned how to understand longer and more complicated texts based on WWII. The children have learned to pick out key words from previous units of learning, as well as using cognates and near cognates, in order to decipher extended pieces of writing. Children have gained a deeper understanding of the role of nouns, verbs, articles/determiners and adjectives in sentences. The medium of WWII helped to provide context for lots of new French vocabulary.

This half term's PSHE unit was titled 'Being Me in My World' and involved us thinking about our goals for this year as well as universal rights of children and how our behaviour and choices can impact others. We compared things we want with things we need and thought about how there are many people, less fortunate than ourselves, whose needs are not met at all. Monarchs have also taken part in 'Hello Yellow' - a day to raise awareness of young people's mental health - and showed racism the red card recently. During October, we learned about influential black people and ensured their stories were told as part of Black History Month. We also took part in the NSPCC 'Speak Out. Stay Safe.' programme through which we learnt about types of abuse and how we can reach out for help if we ever need it.

Our PE lessons have included tag rugby and swimming this half term. I have heard lots of excellent things about the successes in swimming, with children showing great self-belief, swimming further and developing stronger strokes. Tag rugby lessons have included lots of skills development. The children have learned passing techniques, how to defend, the key rules of the game and more. Mr Stevenson has been really impressed with their effort in lessons so far and the developing sportsmanship.

In art, Monarchs had undertaken a drawing unit of work involving looking at different styles of street art, understanding and applying chiaroscuro and created symbolic and expressive drawings. this topic encouraged the children to form their own opinions about art, understand the impact of techniques and convey messages through their artwork.

It was a pleasure to meet many of you at parent consultations this week. Many of the documents referred to, such as reading lists and practice maths quizzes, can be found by clicking on the relevant star at the top of this page. Thank you for your support this half term - through working together we can help your children to reach their full potential. 

Finally, what a jam-packed half term it has been; I hope the children enjoy a well-earned break next week and I look forward to seeing them all again on Monday 3rd November.

Kind regards,

Miss Abbott

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