As much as I love a holiday, looking back at the achievements of last term I realise that I miss the enthusiasm and energy of Chestnut Class. The seemingly mis-named 'summer term', will soon be here and luckily is chock-a-block with fun activities. Our first week back has the Bikeability sessions; the next stage of the rugby tournament on Thursday morning and a drama group visit on Friday afternoon.
Homework this term will be different, we will be focused on revision for the first four weeks and therefore have worksheets for maths, reading, grammar and spelling. As this is an increased work load, I will not be setting formal homework for the rest of the summer term. In class we will be building on our successes from last term, revisiting key areas in maths, reading and grammar while developing our writing skills. Our first topic is focused on natural disasters - volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. Our writing focus connected to this topic is explanation. In science we will continue our study of staying healthy with some practical science investigations. Our PE will include dance, tennis and a start on athletics - Mrs Hempsal will continue to take them on Mondays and I will continue outdoor games on Thursdays. The time will fly by, luckily due to the kind generosity of Mr Durham and Thorpe Woodlands we also have a celebratory trip to look forward to on Friday 18th of May - details and a permission slip will be sent home when it is all confirmed.
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It's very quite in class today; I wonder what happened to all the children! As promised (to the children), I have embedded the answers to the 10-4-10 homework The first maths slideshow has the answers to the expected standard and the second - the one with the thumbnails- has above the expected standard. If you chose to use the CPG ten minute tests instead, that is absolutely fine. Just keep things ticking over: little and often is the best way. Enjoy the rest of your holidays. I am looking forward to next term, as we have so many lovely things to look forward to: Bikeability, more rugby, a visit from a theater troupe, our play, the Big Sing and a wonderful enquiry topic. NB What do you think of my use of ; and :? Are they correct? Does the semi-colon separate two independent clauses? Is there a complete sentence before the colon and the list? Is the other colon part of DE:DE sentence (Description:Detail)?
The success criteria for year six writing changed this year: the focus is much more about how the text is suited to its purpose. Does it have the language features best suited to the intended audience and text style? in our literacy lessons we always read good examples of writing before staring our own. I call these mentor texts or WAGOLLs. WAGOLL means 'what a good one looks like' -they help us to identify which language features are most suited to our purpose. Now we are approaching the last term, some pupils are consistently writing at a year six level. They all need to independently write and edit their work - this is challenging. Usually, teachers can guide pupils to the parts which should be edited, however at this point in year six teachers must not tell children which parts need improvement - just point out that improvements need to be made! Pupils can help each other by reading and discussing their work together - we do this in our writers' circles. We can also look at good examples of writing found in class, some of this I have published here and will continue to add good examples of writing. Luckily, we have until the end of May to reach a year six level and most are poised to do so. Some incredible characters turned up at school today and really got stuck into some fab activities. The juniors have 'found poetry' in the old library books; acted out the fate of poor Albert; written stories at the throw of the dice and created poems online using storybird.com. Some of the activities are more challenging than they looks, finding a poem on a page of text takes real concentration and a good understanding of language, but all are proud of what they have achieved so far today.
The presentations to year four were amazing. Chestnut Class made some excellent links about how our brains work and how we can master activities. The key point made was that we all start as beginners but as we practice our neurons form connections and we improve more and more each time.
World War Two Diary I am very excited by the diaries, I've heard lots of great stories about what is being included. Remember, you can cover your book to look like it is from the 1940s. Bring your finished diary to school on Friday 23rd April to share with the class. Over the last two weeks, Chestnut Class have each completed 9 pieces of writing. Our aim was to improve our creation of specific moods, focus on details and use different sentence structures. As well as all this, we were embedding our use of fluent, joined handwriting.
We were greatly inspired by the images from Pobble365 , Edgar Allan Poe's poem 'The Raven' and the film 'Treasure'. Each of us selected our favourite piece to add to the class blog; if you click on our name to the right, it will take you straight to our work. Please leave a comment, to show how our writing is reaching a wider audience. In a hurry, the ancient grandma rushed towards her grim and mouldy house. With her squeaky, rusty trolley. The darkness shone around; then a flicker of light grew around her trolley. Her delicate features surrounded her with happiness and magic. Never had she imagined doing this in a dump. Quickly, she headed straight home exhausted from all of the searching she had done.
Excitingly, she trembled through her soggy cardboard door. As quick as a flash, she discovered what she had found and collected. She popped up her holey umbrella. However it may seem useless but she had something very creative in mind. Carefully, she hooked her tatty yellow umbrella on a dirty wooden pole. Beautiful light bursted through the hole that was torn and broken. The items that she had collected looked damaged and useless. Furthermore, the elderly grandmother carried on with her creative ideas. Secretly, she grabbed her lovely doves and hung them up on the pointy sharp edges of the umbrella. A spot of light shimmered on top of the candle. She covered the light with a bit of scrap which made the sight wonderful. A gorgeous smell entered the room. The moment she had being waiting for. The grandma hung her glistening diamond ring in front of the glowing candle. glory shimmered everywhere, it was magnificent. Sparkles dotted around her scrappy house. But now it looked superb with the graceful air fresheners, glowing umbrellas and her beaming diamond ring. She sat down and glanced around the room. It felt magical for the frail creative grandma. The boy stood upright on his noble stallion grasping his weapon in hand tightly with a crucifix in his pocket ready. His battle scared armour barely covered his back, or any part of my body, really.
The unidentified timber creature locked his focus onto the boy. It changed course from the village to the knight. It dragged its legs through the ground over to him “Surrender or die, puny man!” He bellowed deceitfully. “I’d rather die one thousand deaths then surrender.” He replied. “So be it...” The boy leapt off the barely-standing cliff-edge. Bravely, he swung his weapon at the mighty beast. A spark flew onto the timber- creature’s leg. The boy laughed. With a frantic flutter of her frail blood-red wings with two ebony-black spots on she hovered a centimeter away from the ground. She gazed at the velvet back round surrounding her. As she landed with a gentle wobble. She shuffled tentatively across the snow white feather from a turtle dove’s wing. Carefully, she walked along the delicate feather. As she walked the path narrowed into several different pathways.
As she gracefully scuttled across the beautiful, frosted feather, the lady-bug tentatively spread her scarlet, spotted wings: ready to take flight. The cold air skimmed her delicate antenna. She shivered. Was this a bad idea? The tip of the feather gently tickled the cold surface of the water making soft ripples in the water that shone in the moon-shine.
The icy colours contrasted against the vermilion tone of the lady-bug’s soft shell. Each half had a single identical ebony spot which stood out from the bright coloured background. What a beautiful sight to see! The water shimmered in the dim moon light. As the sun broke out of its cage of clouds the lady-bug went back into hiding and pondered what adventures she would have tomorrow. |
AuthorChestnut Class is a year 6 class in East Harling Primary School. Although our teacher - Mrs Wills - will be posting our posts; our writing is all our own and will not be corrected by her. Please comment on our posts as we love feedback. Archives
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