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 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.
Science
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.’
Design Technology
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.’
Mathematics
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.’
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.
