Blog

Over the year, I will share updates about what we are up to in school. You will find them here!

Summer Term

Year 5 Outdoor Learning Day at Queens College

The year 5 children enjoyed a trip out to Queens College to take part in a variety of outdoor learning activities that the children had to complete to earn parts of a rocket to then launch at the end of the day.

Mrs Noad (who organised the event at Queens) commented on how well behaved the year 5 children were and is looking forward to welcoming them back for their science day in June.

Spring Term

Kilve Trip

Below, you will find photos from our trip to Kilve Court. They are grouped into activity.

Weeks 2 and 3 (12^th-23^rd September 2022)

It has been a joy to teach Kestrel Class over the past 3 weeks and I am looking forward to a great year with them. They have been working hard and demonstrating our school values exquisitely for the younger children. Together everyone has been part of a great team.

During the first two weeks, the children explored character descriptions in English by exploring the detailed character descriptions from our class read: The Star Outside My Window. We read this book straight after lunch and there are often a few, "Don't stop there!"s when we stop and plenty of theories to explore as a class. The other books by the author have been snapped up quickly; however, they will be available again soon.

Whilst writing character descriptions, we explored how to use hyphens to form adjectives and avoid ambiguity. The children took to using them well within their writing and will often point out when they have been used in texts and use them in their own writing. This past week, we have delved into biographies by looking at the life of Archimedes and this is something we will develop further over the next week. 

In maths, we have developed our understanding of place value by exploring rounding and negative numbers - 2 concepts that can be tricky to grasp. However, I have been impressed with their understanding. Next week, we will explore Roman numerals before moving on to decimals which will develop this mathematical understanding further. 

Elsewhere, we have developed our understanding of mountains, spreadsheets and Mrs Morgan has been exploring rhythm with them by using cups! In history, we have been exploring Ancient Greek sources of information through artefacts - physical replicas and photos. Over 2 days, we discussed what sources are and how they can be interpreted. 

Overall, a great few weeks in Kestrel Class!

Notes and reminders:

• Our Kilve Trip has been moved to the 17^th-19^th October. 
• Schools in Somerset now have a new email system (hence the problem we had with sending and receiving emails last week). Due to this, the school email has now changed to office@obnprimary.co.uk
• If you have anything I need to know, like who your child is going home with (if it's someone different), messaging me on ClassDojo is still the best way to contact me. 

Week 1 (5^th-9^th September 2022)

It has been an amazing week in Kestrel Class. The children have settled in very well with great motivation and engagement. They have honestly been brilliant and I am really looking forward to the year ahead.

This week, our focus has been settling in and getting to grips with year 5 and 6 work. In English, we have explored the Ancient Greek creation story and will be using it to form character descriptions for Ancient Greek gods, goddesses and titans. Fortunately, our class story for this half term (The Star Outside My Window) has absolutely fantastic character descriptions we later explored during the week. Next week, we will put both stories together to write our own character descriptions.

In maths, we have been learning about place value by gradually exploring increasingly large numbers up to 10,000,000. The children have worked hard and by the end of the week all of the children were confident with these numbers. Credit also has to go to year 5 - who only went up to 10,000 in maths last year. The children have also been exploring arithmetic questions as they came in in the mornings. This is to build up their confidence in the 4 operations, decimals and percentages because if they can master these areas, they will be more confident at exploring other areas of mathematics.

We have also taken a very literal approach to launching our science topic of space! The children made rockets and launched them. The children took into account things that may launch their rocket further or things that may have hindered it - including weight, aerodynamics and what angle to launch them at.  

In computing, on Friday, we then took the data from our rocket launches to explore Google Sheets (spreadsheets - similar to Microsoft Excel). The children inputted the data, explored how to sort the data and then made a graph. We will develop our understanding of Google Sheets over the next few weeks. 

To build our understanding of chronology in history, we created a timeline of different Ancient Greek eras. The children had to think logically about how to show the scale of each era and they all worked together very well.

Elsewhere: in geography, we have explored what mountains are and what the seven summits are (the highest summit on each continent); in RE, we explored how we have to have the right attitudes and approaches to understand religions different to our own - ready to learn about Hinduism; and in PSHE, at the start of the week, we explored healthy relationships.

Unfortunately, on Thursday evening, we all heard the news about the death of Queen Elizabeth II. On Friday morning, we watched a news video about the late Queen's life pitched at informing children. After the video, we discussed what it meant and what changes we might see. The children showed great maturity and discussed how they found out about the news. They also asked great questions and made great links, such as: 'Will the national anthem change?' - Sophia; 'We started the week with a lady as monarch and a man as prime minister and now it's the other way around.' - Jayden. We also discussed changes that will happen to coins and stamps - the children were reassured that they will still be able to spend their money! We also discussed how new postboxes will have 'C III R' on them instead of 'E II R', but older postboxes will keep their lettering and that is how we can date a postbox!

The children then went on to explore how they could be inspirational when they are older and their pictures (bar the 3 who weren't in - we'll sort out their photos when they come back) are now on the cloakroom wall to show who the future are!

Notes and reminders:

• We are aware that the Queen's funeral will take place on the Monday we are expected to be going to Kilve Court. We will be in touch with SSE Outdoors (who run Kilve Court) this week to see what their plan is and be in touch with you with more information soon. The outcome of the discussion with Kilve Court is that we will postpone the trip. The new dates for the trip are: Monday 17th October to Wednesday 19th October. This is the final week before the half term holiday. The children are in school on Thursday 20th October and then there is and INSET day on the Friday.
• I would like to reiterate how amazing the children have been this week. They have shown maturity, compassion, motivation and engagement at very high standards. They really are incredible and I can tell that we will have a great year ahead.

Kestrel Class Welcome Letter

Welcome back to school! Below, you will find the information letter shared with you via ClassDojo about the term and year ahead.