Dear Parents and Carers,

Thanks for your time and positive words during the parent consultations this week. We hope you found these conversations useful.

Our week began with a special visit during Monday’s assembly. Mikey Akers is a young man who does a lot of great work to raise awareness of apraxia, which is a neurological speech condition. He led a fantastic assembly on the power of hope, determination and friendship before taking in a tour of the classrooms to answer any questions the children had. You can find out more about his work by following Mikey’s Facebook page, which is ‘Mikey’s Wish – Verbal Dyspraxia Awareness.’

In Literacy, ‘Street Child’ has continued to move at a frantic pace. Just this week Jim has escaped the odious Grimy Nick, slept in a bush, taken in a brief stay at the circus and returned to London, where he has been devastated to find his old friend Shrimps suffering from ill health. The story concludes next week.

In terms of their written work, the children have been using a range of emotional adjectives as they consider the rollercoaster of events that happen to and around Jim. They have also practised using speech marks in conversational writing and have provided reasons for Jim’s motives for wanting to go back to London despite the number of horrible memories it holds for him. There has also been an opportunity for the children to practise their dictionary skills through finding and using synonyms. Next week, we will be responding to the actions and speech of various characters  as we reach the end of ‘Street Child’ whilst also moving on to some SPaG work.

Maths has seen us continue to work through our unit on fractions, with a particular focus on comparing and ordering fractions less than, within and greater than one. This time next week, we aim to have worked on adding and subtracting fractions alongside the children familiarising themselves with using numerators and denominators to their advantage when solving fractions-related problems.

Our afternoons have also been jam packed this week. The children have finished constructing their Victorian cam toys and they are ready to be tested and evaluated next week. In PSHE the children have learnt about marriage as well as respecting yourself, and have spent their Computing lessons putting their paper house designing skills into action using ‘SketchUp.’  There have also been fitness and football circuits in PE, and we have also been readying ourselves for the Christmas concert, which takes place on the evening of Thursday 19th December. We would love to see you there.

Just to remind you, next Friday (13th December) is the first forest camp visit for half of class 5RF/JM, with the second half attending on Friday 10th January. You will receive an email informing you which group your child is in.

Have a good weekend,

The Y5 Team