Year 5/6 

Welcome back to 2024! We have been really busy setting ourselves up for a successful and productive year through our Start Right program. We have revisited expectations of LPS and our classrooms to ensure a smooth transition back to school. To celebrate all classes successfully completing Start Right, the Year 6’s organised a fun afternoon of rotational games last Friday.

This term, we are studying the book War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. The story recounts the experiences of Joey, a horse bought by the Army for service in World War I in France and the attempts of 15-year-old Albert, his previous owner, to bring him safely home. We will be closely analysing the text and working on responding to queries and discussing the authorial choices made. To build our knowledge of the text, we will be centering our writing around the book and will be exploring both grammar techniques, expanding sentences, narrative and persuasive writing.

In maths, we have been building on our place value knowledge which has linked with our unit on fractions and decimals. We have been comparing, multiplying and dividing large numbers as well as displaying our understanding of the value of each number within a large number, then renaming them. Later in the term we will be adding and subtracting fractions, selecting appropriate units to use when measuring as well as investigating 3D objects. We have also been engaging in a range of online games to build our mental fluency, focussing on improving our times tables recall. 

It has been lovely to get to know each other better as a class, including looking closely at how our brains work in wellbeing and what the different sides of our brains are useful for. It was excellent to see our similarities and differences and celebrate these! The Year 6 team have been working with Kirsty on Tuesdays to build their leadership and collaborative skills. It has been wonderful to see different people taking on a variety of new and challenging roles. Year 5’s have been working with Jaclyn on Tuesdays focussing on Joy, Affection and Gratitude, with students showing excitement about bringing in items for their ‘JAG’ bags. Both classes joined Kids Helpline for a Webex session last week that focused on building and maintaining healthy friendships. They gave us some great strategies that can be applied when things get a bit tricky between friends!