Dear Parents/Carers,

We’re sure that by this time you will have been regaled with stories of how Friday morning’s muffin making went. The children worked together nicely and have produced some tasty (healthy) treats which they very much enjoyed.

With regards to the usual classroom based activities, the children began a new Literacy unit on autobiographies and biographies. We studied short extracts from the biographies of famed children’s authors Jeremy Strong and Anthony Horowitz, taking careful note of the features of a biography – verbs in past tense, time adverbials, and important names and dates from their lifetimes. Over the rest of the week, the classes have practised their question writing and note taking, and have gathered some ideas for putting together their own autobiographies, which they will be writing up next week.

Maths also saw us begin a new unit – decimals and percentages – where we started by studying the relationship between equivalent fractions and decimals, mainly focusing on tenths and hundredths and developing our understanding of terms such as ‘to 1/2/3 decimal places.’ Next week we move on to learning about thousandths as well as ordering and comparing decimal numbers.

The laptops were out in force during this week’s Topic lesson, in which we conducted our own research into the Mayan civilisation and their way of life, finding about aspects such as farming and its importance to the Mayan lifestyle, popular games such as ‘pitz’ and where you can find the remains of the Mayan cities and temples.

There has also been the usual hub of activity in the afternoons. In PE, the children have improved their understanding of the concept of not being allowed to move if they have possession of the ball in netball – demonstrated through some fairly intense attack versus defence games – and we have started getting to grips with some racket skills in tennis. The classes have also discussed challenging workplace stereotypes in PSHE, and have shown a great deal of maturity (along with some giggles) during our talks on puberty this week – thanks for your support with this.

A gentle reminder that swimming continues for class 5RF/JM next Wednesday – please bring the same kit and pyjamas as you did this week.

For those involved, the South Oxfordshire Final of the Sportshall Athletics is next Tuesday. Whether your child is in the squad or a reserve, we would like them to be wearing their PE kit and have a packed lunch on the day please. After this event, the competition is over for the current academic year, so there will be no more Sportshall Athletics club on Wednesday mornings. KS2 Quad Kids will begin after Easter – details will be sent closer to the time.

On another sporting note, the Y5/6 boys’ football team head to Bristol tomorrow for the Regional Finals – reports on this, as well as the athletics, will be on this website over the course of the next week.

Have a fantastic weekend,

The Y5 Team