Dear Parents/Carers,

And so there we have it – we have reached the end of yet another week at SCPS.

The start of the week saw us begin our poetry unit in Literacy. Our opening lesson saw the children pick a topic for a poem and then add their own figurative language for description – similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia and personification – before using these ideas to create their own acrostic poems later in the week. We were also able to spend some time focusing on a longer poem of six verses – ‘Jumblies’ by Edward Lear –  and answer questions on what, where, when and why to test our comprehension skills. Who knew that characters ‘going to sea in a sieve’ would be so fascinating! Next week, we move on to shape poems and aim to create our own as the week progresses.

We also spent time familiarising ourselves with the written word during our Guided Reading sessions, focusing on a non-fiction text about teeth. Some good comprehension skills were also on show here, and it was particularly pleasing to see the children compare the information in the text to real life experiences with their own teeth. Hopefully this may go some way to explaining why your children are suddenly so fascinated by their gums, or why some of them may be mentioning dentistry as a potential career path.

Our Maths focus has been on the areas of addition and subtraction, with particular emphasis on building their mental strategies when solving such problems, as well as some revision of the column methods for both operations. So far the children have demonstrated a sound knowledge of these methods, and we look forward to them practising further next week – mainly with numbers of 4 digits and higher – as well as using their rounding skills to check their answers and developing their understanding of the usefulness of the inverse operation.

The afternoons have taken on a very artistic feel this week. We have studied – and practised – the performing art of several 1970s style dances with the accompaniment of music from the likes of ABBA and several hit movies of the time, such as Saturday Night Fever. In Topic, we created some great work inspired by the Aboriginal technique of Dot Painting, and used a viewfinder to make decisions about which aspect of a picture we would like to draw in Art.

Looking ahead, the next seven days will see us embrace our first Interhouse challenge – involving pasta, a bowl and some chopsticks – as well as the usual variety of texts, number skills, sport, art and PSHE based discussions.

On the subject of PSHE, today’s lesson was all about contributing to the community. We discussed our own contributions to various communities (those of our friends, school, clubs, families, town/village etc) and then recognised the efforts those around us go to to make sure we are happy, safe and have things to be proud of. Whilst the children couldn’t name the last five different clubs to win the Premier League, the last five UK Prime Ministers nor the last five number one songs in the UK charts, they were very aware of the huge input (and who provides it) that goes into making their world what it is, and were most appreciative of those closest to them, which was really nice to hear.

A few reminders to finish:

1. The children were given information about how to become a Reading Ambassador and/or a member of the school’s Eco-Council this week. If your child is keen on either of these, they need to speak, and submit an application to, their class teacher by next Friday (11th October).
2. This coming Sunday (6th October) is the Sonning Common 10k run. More details can be found in the school newsletter. Thanks to those who have signed up to run or help out thus far.

Have a wonderful weekend,

The Y5 Team