Class 3 Newsletter

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to a new school year after such a long break, I hope you are as excited as I am to be back together. We are quickly settling into routines old and new ready for lots of hard work this coming term. The children are excited to begin the new year in our Year 5/6 class. Below is a breakdown of everything that we will be covering and what you need to know for the coming term.

In Convince Me Maths we are recapping place value. We will be exploring Roman Numerals, writing numbers from decimals up to a billion, understanding the value of each digit, and rounding numbers to help with estimation. Next, the children will learn about factors, multiples, and prime numbers before exploring the four calculations, ensuring that children are confident with both mental and formal written methods. Children will learn a column method of multiplication and the long, written method of division as well as the short bus stop method. Finally, before Christmas, we will begin exploring fractions including finding a fraction of an amount, converting between fractions, decimals and percentages, and adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions.

In English, we are continuing with Comprehension Bug, we will have a daily half an hour reading session. We will no longer be using Readiwriter as it is no longer available, I am hoping to introduce a new spelling scheme soon. In the meantime, we will focus on the year 5 and 6 spelling list. We will have a written test each Friday. In writing, we will continue to practise planning, drafting, and editing our writing. We will be basing most of our writing on our topic, The Mayan Civilisation, and our class book Middleworld: 1 (Jaguar Stones) by J & P Voelkel. We will also use Literacy Shed video clips and a range of texts to inspire our writing. The children will write for a range of different purposes – to entertain, to inform, to persuade and to discuss. 

In Science, we are looking at electricity where the children will learn all about different types of electric circuits. They will learn about the voltage of cells and the use of switches in a circuit, they will learn to use symbols to draw circuits and later in the half term we will be designing an electronic board game. Next half term we will be exploring light – how light travels, how we see light and how shadows are formed. The children will be using all five types of investigation – pattern seeking, classification and grouping, observing over time, fair testing and scientific research.

In History we are learning about the Mayan Civilisation. We will begin with some research on the history of Mexico – closely linked with our Geography locational knowledge. We will learn about Mayan life including life for children, games and jobs, the importance of farming, ancient artefacts, and Mayan masks.

Geography will be taught discretely. This term we will be focusing on locational knowledge, where the children will learn to locate continents, countries, and key cities on a map. We will then focus on North and South America, concentrating on their environmental regions and the key physical and human characteristics.

All Art and DT work will be based around our Science and History topics of Electricity and the Mayans – designing an electronic board game, designing and making a Mayan mask.

In Computing, we will be learning about E-Safety ensuring that all the children understand how to remain safe online. We will continue to use the IT programme ‘Purple Mash’.

We have already had our training day from Dave from Skip2bfit. All class three children will be given the opportunity to lead Wake up shake up for the rest of the school. The children will also be asked to run sports activities on a lunch time as play leaders, which will be planned on a rota. Mr Swankie will be leading a lunch time sporting club each Tuesday and all children are welcome to join in. He will also be teaching Class 3 on a Tuesday afternoon, firstly focusing on invasion games and later in the term focusing on dance.

We are continuing with our reading reward scheme in Class 3, where the children are rewarded each time they read and write a reflective comment in their reading journal. When the children have read 80 times in total, they will receive a book mark and 100 times in total they will receive a new book.

Please remember to write any notes for me in the children’s blue planners rather than reading journals. These planners are designed to promote independence and organisation.

Thank you for your ongoing support. We are looking forward to our new year together!

Miss Rowling and Miss Wright