Class Teacher: Mr Holt
Teaching Assistant: Mrs Cockroft
Welcome to Sycamore Class. This Class currently contains Year 4 and Year 5 children and is part of Upper Key Stage 2.
Please check this page regularly to see updates of what we are learning.
We strongly believe that all children should experience high quality books that enhance literacy skills and inspire them to read. We aim for children to develop a love of reading and this will help motivate them to write.
To help with this we are sharing a fabulous and highly recommended list of ‘100 Books to Read…’
Reading Spine takes place daily in every classroom where the children are read to. Each of the books help to develop the imagination of our children and equips them with language. We want our school to be a place where children are read to, enjoy, discuss and work with high quality books. We use the Pie Corbett Reading Spine so that children have access to high quality texts and develop a love for reading!
We will be learning the skills of reading and writing. Our fiction unit will include looking at a historical narrative classic ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. This will involve the children creating their own character that Alice might meet in Wonderland. Children will look at information texts for our non-fiction unit and then end the term looking at classic narrative poetry linked to winter. We will continue to learn the statutory spellings list for years 4 and 5 as well as ‘Talk for Writing’ to support our writing.
We will be learning the skills of reading and writing. Our non-fiction unit will consist of learning how to write and formulate persuasive reports, which will link to our class topic of saving honeybees. Our core fiction text will be ‘Beetle Boy’ and we will be looking at how to write quality character descriptions. We will continue to use Talk 4 Writing across our English units to rehearse the texts and then innovate them.
Our topic this half term will be electricity. Children will learn about which circuits are the most appropriate to use as well as different conductors and insulators. We will conduct a number of practical investigations on electricity. Once children have learnt all of the skills needed, they will design their own board game that consists of electrical components.
Sycamore and Hawthorn class have been looking at electricity in Science. We have been building different circuits and making predictions about the circuits we have been building. What would happen to the bulbs if we added more bulbs to a circuit? Would they get brighter or dimmer? What would happen to the bulb or bulbs if we added shorter or longer wires?
Ophelia W- ‘It was really exciting to make our own classification system using sweets.’
Harrison BC – ‘At first, we found it difficult but after working together as part of a group it was very satisfying to look at what we had created.’
Our unit will be all about living things and their habitats linked to classification. Children will learn about why animals are suited and have adapted to different environments. We will conduct scientific investigations and analyse our findings in different ways.
1st October 2019 Update:
Sycamore and Hawthorne class have been looking at classification in Science. After classifying animals in our previous lesson the children were challenged with producing their own classification system linked to sweets. All of the children stepped up to the challenge and this is what they produced.
Ophelia W- ‘It was really exciting to make our own classification system using sweets.’
Harrison BC – ‘At first, we found it difficult but after working together as part of a group it was very satisfying to look at what we had created.’
Autumn 2
Our topic in Design Technology will be textiles. We will study the different stitching techniques as well as different fabrics that can be used, evaluate existing products in the textile market and then choose our own product to create that can be sold at our Christmas enterprise.
29th October 2019 Update:
In our DT we have been building up to creating bee houses for our bee hotels. We have had to measure accurately, use wood, glue as well as make different cuttings and holes to join our materials together. This has been the completed outcome and we are now ready to transfer the bee houses into our bee hotels.
Ella H- ‘I liked the challenge of joining all of the materials together’.
Erin- ‘It made me very happy to see what we had created’.
Autumn 1
We will focus on structures that will link to our bee’s topic. We will create bee hotels and bee houses to keep bees safe during the cold winter months. This will challenge the children’s building skills.
1st October 2019 Update:
In Design and Technology, Sycamore and Hawthorne class have been linking our bee topic to making a difference to our school environment. Over the past couple of weeks we have researched and made the structure for the two bee hotels using wooden pallets. This week the children have used different materials such as bamboo sticks, grass, string and plastic bottles to make some bee houses. We have been doing this to save our bee population that is rapidly declining. In the next couple of weeks we will be designing and building wooden bee houses to put around our bee hotels. We are hoping that we will have permanent visitors that will make the bee hotels as well as the school their new home.
Finnley O’N- ‘It was really exciting to take control of your own design and then look at what you had created.’
Scarlett H- ‘It was nice to know that we were making a difference to the bee population.’
We will be looking at multiplication and division calculations making sure that our knowledge is secure in all of the times tables. As well as this, we will be applying our skills learnt through problem solving and reasoning. Year 4 will continue to look at further multiplication problems and year 5 will move onto statistics linked to graphs.
We will be looking at numbers that go up to 100,000 and securing our place value knowledge. As well as this, we will be looking at whole number addition and subtraction while applying this to problem solving and reasoning. We will continue to develop our knowledge of multiplication and division through Times Table Rockstars to improve our speed and accuracy when recalling
1st October 2019 Update:
Sycamore and Hawthorne class have been working incredibly hard this half term with place value. The children have been reading and creating numbers up to 1 million. Their confidence has grown as the half term has progressed and they have been applying some good problem solving and reasoning skills linked to place value.
Archie H- ‘This was a very challenging task but after working as part of a team we managed to create many different numbers.’
Leon A- ‘I really enjoyed the challenge of making my own numbers up to 1 million.’
In RE, we have been looking at how and why Christians read the Bible. Father Paul visited Year 5 in school to talk about the Bible and answer the many questions that we had prepared for him. The children worked in groups to think about the different types of stories that we might read and then Father Paul showed us that the Bible is also made up of different types of stories and shared some of those with us.
Year 5 visited St. James’ Church and we were met by Father Paul. He told us about the history of the church, pointed out some of the features and took us around the outside of the church and talked to us about the war memorial. Inside church, Father Paul gave the children a picture of something within church and the children had to find their object and think about what it could be used for. Father Paul then gave us some information about some of the areas in church and answered the questions that the children had.
We will revise our knowledge on how and why Christians read the Bible. After, our new topic will involve looking at the gospels of Mark and Luke linked to Christmas celebrations. We will reflect our thoughts and prayers into our RE class journals.
We will learn more about how and why Christians read the Bible. This will involve us listening to and reading passages from the Bible, discussing what it teaches, shows and reflects to other Christians and the lives they wish to lead.
