As you start to prepare for leaving Primary School and starting Secondary School, I'd like you to think about your new school. Find the school's website and have a good look then look at the questions on the sheets that I have attached. If you download the WORD document, you could type your answers and cut and paste a picture of the school. You could even add questions if you have any more.

You might not find all of the answers on the website but when you visit your new school you can ask. Some secondary schools will come and visit you here at ABC and everyone will have one or two days at their new school before the end of July.

Please hand in this homework by 12th July.

PGL Day 4

We're back, safe and sound, taller, stronger, more independent, braver, more confident, tanned, dirty and ready to flop - adults and children alike! It's been such a lovely long weekend, though tiredness got the better of some of us and we had a few tears. Today we enjoyed playing games whilst crawling on our bellies through tunnels in the ground, more giant swing activities and climbing then standing at the top of a very tall pole. Mrs Cleall told Mrs Evans that if Mrs Evans stood at the top of the pole, then she would go on the giant swing - see the photos below for the outcome. Suffice to say, even the adults have been competitive and also found inner strength and bravery to face face their fears.

We really hope your child had a wonderful time. If they brought home clothes that do not belong to them, please do bring them into school so that we can find the right owner.

We're going to hold a PGL prize-giving ceremony after school at the beginning of next term where parents and children will have the opportunity to look at even more pictures and receive awards for their achievements at PGL. We'll let you know the date as soon as possible.

Thank you for giving us your children for the long weekend.

Day 3 PGL

Despite a forecast of rain this morning, the sun has shone and we have enjoyed another lovely day here in Sussex. We've abseiled, played team games, scaled the climbing wall, experienced the terror and thrill of the giant swing, shot rifles and enjoyed a late-night game of football. The children are now tucked up in bed (at 10pm) but goodness knows when they'll get to sleep on our final night here! The PGL staff are amazing and we're looking forward to our final activities before coming home tomorrow.

PGL Day 2

The weather is fantastic. The food is great and the laughs are plentiful. So many heroes facing their fears and turning "I'm not doing that!" into "Can I have another go?". Here are a few pictures of some of the activities we have done today: 

A Quick Word About Fractions

We have been spending a lot of time calculating with fractions this time (and last term). Everyone has made really good progress. I have added checklists for applying the 4 operations to fractions ( + - x ÷ ) which we use in class to support learning. I have also added some resources by Third Space Learning which are free to download from their website: please don't sit and complete all of the questions in one go! Some of these have Y5 in the title - remember that the KS2 SATs include material from Y3, Y4, Y5 and Y6! 

Have a look and see what you can do without the checklist - you'll be amazed! Then come back another time, use the checklist and try something that's a bit more of a challenge for you.

Remember you can ask Mrs Evans or Mrs Cleall for help if you need it.

Use the checklists to help you to solve these calculations:

Think you've cracked it? Now teach your parents how to calculate using long multiplication and long division. If you can teach someone, you've really got it!

You might have been taught to use different methods to calculate, for example, using a grid for long multiplication. As we prepare for SATs, we encourage you to use the formal methods that the National Curriculum sets out for Year 6. If you use the way I have shown you, you might get a mark for your working out even if the answer is wrong but if you use the grid method for multiplication, you'll only get a mark if the answer is correct (you won't get any marks for an incorrect answer with working out shown).

Salaam alaikum!

We've been learning about the Golden Age of Islamic Civilisation, the 5 Pillars of Islam and, mostly recently, about a famous Muslim: Malala Yasoufzai. Read our biographies (below) - Malala is an inspirational young woman and we have really enjoyed learning about her.

Merry Christmas!

We've reached the end of a long and busy term.  We spent our last day of term celebrating homework success and enjoying traditional party games in the afternoon. This term, 27 out of our 34 children completed all of their topic homework and enjoyed a chocolate fountain treat. I am so impressed and looking forward to celebrating with everyone next term. Take a look at the pictures of some of the work that was produced this term.

Enjoy the break and I look forward to seeing everyone back again on 3rd December.

Two weeks into Term 2 and everyone has been working really hard. The assessments that everyone in KS2 took this week will form our planning and help us all to understand what our children know and if we need to address any misconceptions or gaps in knowledge. I am tremendously proud of our children's tenacity in getting these done this week. Well done.

Homework

Mrs Cleall and I have been really impressed with the quality of homework that has come back this term. For our first piece of homework, we gave two options: either  complete a piece of work based on Remembrance or to produce a poster to promote What Would Jesus Do? Thank you for supporting our homework policy - I believe that our children need to be able to complete short research tasks by themselves and have the opportunity  to present their work in their own style. It's lovely to see personalities showing through the work.

Homework set on 12th November is:

Design and make an Egyptian Mummy Sarcophagus

OR

Research the importance of the River Nile and how it was used by the Ancient Egyptians. 

This piece of work is due in on Thursday 22nd November (one day early as there is no school on 23rd November).

We've been learning that every fail is one step closer to success.

Producing excellent writing takes time and lots of effort. As you cans see from Elliot's work, we write a first draft and then check the work against a checklist, adding and changing as we go along (pink pen). We learn that reading our writing aloud can help us to spot errors. Later, when the work has been marked in green pen by the teacher, we respond to comments in a purple pen. We can then see what we changed by ourselves (pink pen) and what we changed when prompted by an adult (purple pen).

Edited work will always look a little messy because it isn't the final draft. But just wait until you see the final versions: beautifully presented work like this takes time and effort!

We can finally let the cat of the bag!

This week, pieces of Moon rock were delivered to the school for Years 5 and 6 to investigate. The rocks, which included specimens from the Moon, Martian meteorites and other pieces of Space rock, were stored in a secure unit in Miss Robinson's office because they are priceless! Collected by NASA and currently held by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, we were not allowed promote the fact that we had them until they had been collected!

Learning Science through hands-on experience has been amazing this week and we have all had tremendous fun, as you can see from the slide show. More Science next week but sadly no Moon rock ... if we could just get our hands on a real-life astronaut!

In Maths, we've also been consolidating knowledge of numbers and calculation through word problems, reasoning and practical experience. 

As we reach the end of our first week of the school year we should all look back and feel really proud. We're all learning new routines and working out how each day should go, learning new songs and exploring new subjects. I'm not so sure about the children but I am exhausted!

Today, Friday, everyone wrote a story based on the Moon and this will be our first writing to go on our writing wall. Once or twice every term we will put new pieces of writing up to showcase our talent. It's going to look fantastic and the progress everyone makes will be evident for all to see.

This afternoon we enjoyed some cross country running across the school field, then up the zig-zag path and back down the steps, along the KS1 adventure trail finishing with 10 press-ups before starting another lap. Everyone ran with their school house - the teamwork was good to see and is certainly a strength in this class.

The cake sale was a tremendous success, raising around £160 to go towards the cost of our planetarium experience next week. Thank you so much for your support, both in baking cakes and then in buying them back again!

We've started to investigate the Planets (as you can see from Harry G & Elliot's and Leo & Isa's work below) and had fun making up mnemonics to remember their names and order from the Sun.

What would you come up with?

M (Mercury)

V (Venus)

E (Earth)

M (Mars)

J (Jupiter)

S (Saturn)

U (Uranus)

N (Neptune)

Welcome to Goldfinches!

What a fantastic 3-day week we've had! The children have settled in really quickly and every adult who has popped in to see has has commented on what a lovely class we are. I couldn't agree more!

If you would like to speak with me  please see me on the playground after school or make an appointment via the school office. I am keen to meet all parents and carers and to have an open door to you.

A few important details:

• Register closes at 0900 every day. Gates open at 0845.
• PE on Fridays. See main website for details of kit - pupils will not be allowed to take part without their PE kit.
• Spelling and Mathletics homework is set every Friday. All pupils have been given their Mathletics log in details. 
• Topic homework is set every other Friday and pupils have 2 weeks to complete it in. Each fortnight they will be given a choice of 2 tasks - they should choose one task.
• If there are any difficulties or problems with homework children must speak to Mrs Evans or Mrs Cleall before it is due in. We are here to help!

Next Thursday (13th September) Upper Key Stage 2 will be holding a cake sale after school in the Dove room to raise money for a indoor planetarium experience. We would welcome contributions of home made cakes to sell. Please do come and say hello and show your support.

Spellings

Here are this term's spellings. Spelling tests are every Friday. I have attached some strategies to support with the learning of spellings which I have taken from the No Nonsense Spellings program.