A big thank you to everyone who came along to our SATS and Liddington parent briefing this week.  We hope you found it a useful session, and that your children are feeling excited about our residential and, if not excited, not too nervous about our upcoming tests!

As part of our preparation for SATS, we'll be sitting a round of papers next week to see where we've made progress since the autumn.  We're sure the children will approach them with dedication and care - they've done a great job in all the tests we've done so far, and they're now at the point where they can start to see real progress being made.

Beyond this preparation, our regular learning continues.  In English this week, we've brought our biography writing to a close; when you come to our next parents' evening we're expecting to have lots of this work on display, so you'll be able to learn about a wide range of singers, footballers, scientists and actors (among other things).  In history, we've started to dig deeper into the legacy of the Ancient Greeks, and we've also started to explore the science of light.  We'll do more of these things in the next couple of weeks as we head towards half term - during this time, we'll include some clay work in art as well as developing our gymnastic routines further in our PE sessions.  Then a week off, one week back, and we'll be away for the week - preparations for this are now well in-progress behind the scenes!

Year 6 have jumped straight into the new year with a wide range of learning.

In English, we've started our biography unit by writing the life stories of our teachers - next week, we'll have the chance to write about a celebrity of our choice (as long as we come in with notes on Monday - if not, we'll have to choose for them!)  We've kicked off our Ancient Greece unit in history, and we've also started new topics in art, PSHE, PE, RE and music.

In maths and guided reading, we are shifting our focus a little more in the direction of SATS.  Over the next term, Year 6 will see an increase in test materials during lessons so we become more familiar and comfortable with the style of questions we'll need to answer in May.

More excitingly, though, our trip to Liddington is now on the horizon.  This week, we recieved our provisional activity list and our room allocations, so the Year 6 team can begin making more specific plans for how the week will be arranged.  We also placed the order for our Year 6 hoodies this week - they will arrive in time for Liddintgon to give us an additional layer of warmth.

Don't forget our combined SATS / Liddington briefing meeting at 5pm on Tuesday 27th January - we hope to see lots of you there to learn more.

Year 4 continue to work hard this term. We are all enjoying The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo, especially how the author manages to weave real life events into the story and the how the Bertie and Millie find each other again.  We have been writing character descriptions and are now moving onto persuasive writing- hoping to convince people that animals do not belong in the circus.

In maths we are revising the key skills of addition and subtraction using formal, column methods before moving onto our next unit and in science we have been learning about classifying vertebrates and invertebrates depending on their characteristics.

Our R.E. this half term focuses on Hinduism and the festival of Holi. We all agreed that this festival sounds great fun, especially the spraying of powder paints and the bonfires. The festival centres around the Hindu story of Prahlad and Holika and the children made puppets and acted out the story to make it really clear in their minds.

Finally Year 4 have enjoyed another keyboard lesson and are continuing to work hard at gymnastics- hopefully we will be getting out the big equipment in the next couple of weeks which is very exciting!

A big thank you to everyone who came along to our SATS and Liddington parent briefing this week.  We hope you found it a useful session, and that your children are feeling excited about our residential and, if not excited, not too nervous about our upcoming tests!

As part of our preparation for SATS, we'll be sitting a round of papers next week to see where we've made progress since the autumn.  We're sure the children will approach them with dedication and care - they've done a great job in all the tests we've done so far, and they're now at the point where they can start to see real progress being made.

Beyond this preparation, our regular learning continues.  In English this week, we've brought our biography writing to a close; when you come to our next parents' evening we're expecting to have lots of this work on display, so you'll be able to learn about a wide range of singers, footballers, scientists and actors (among other things).  In history, we've started to dig deeper into the legacy of the Ancient Greeks, and we've also started to explore the science of light.  We'll do more of these things in the next couple of weeks as we head towards half term - during this time, we'll include some clay work in art as well as developing our gymnastic routines further in our PE sessions.  Then a week off, one week back, and we'll be away for the week - preparations for this are now well in-progress behind the scenes!