This term we will be continuing last term's topic 'Our Country, Our World, Our Universe' paying particular focus to space. We will be exploring what lies beyond the Earth's atmosphere and investigating the workings of our solar system. We will be investigating scientific phenomena such as day and night, the phases of the moon and seasons and exploring evidence which proves and refutes theories past and present. Our Art unit will compliment our science, exploring space art; the concept of retrofuturism. We  will be  creating our own collagraph prints as a background for our space drawings  /visions of the future

In our English we will be looking at the book, 'Holes' by Louis Sacher where teenager, Stanley Yelnats is wrongly accused of theft and is sent to Camp Green Lake to pay for his crimes. We will be writing non- chronological reports and letters of complaint.

Week 1

It has been a busy start to the term as we started off our new text, Holes. The children have been making some excellent predictions about the book and have reflected on how the author has structured the story. We have started looking at non-chronological reports in preparation for writing a guide to 'How to survive at Camp Green Lake'. 

In our science learning, we have started looking at our Solar System and exploring how theories have changed over time, using evidence to prove or refute theories such as 'the Earth is flat' or 'the sun is at the centre of the solar system'.

Week 2 

This week, in English, we have been practising a range of sentence types, making them more sophisticated by using varied parenthetic punctuation. We have organised notes and drafted paragraphs to shape information texts. In Maths, Year 5 have been calculating the area of compound shapes and practising the skill of estimating area; Year 6 have been investigating angles around a point and multi-step word problems from different maths topics. The highlight of our week was the online safety initiative workshop; the session was very interactive and informative. The presenter was extremely engaging and knowledgeable. We all learned a lot about how to be a good digital citizen and how to manage our digital lives safely. In P.E. we are learning to play cricket so we are honing our batting and fielding skills.

Week 3

With the Bank Holiday and a TD day at the start of the week, this has been a short week.  In Guided Reading we have continued reading Holes, meeting more of the inmates of Camp Green Lake and learning more about their diverse characters and personalities.  In Art, we have been practising drawing techniques and experimenting with continuous line drawing. In Science, we have been learning about Day and Night and why we have seasons.  Richard Pomfret led a workshop for the Year 6 boys, called Boyz into Men, which focused on positive role models and positive behaviour. Again, the feedback from the boys was extremely positive.