Term Six, Week Five

This has been a very exciting week for the year 6s as they all had they opportunity to visit their new schools. Some just spent one day there, but those going on to Brockhill enjoyed a two-day induction to their new 'home' from September onwards. All returned to Elham full of excitement at what the future holds and comments on their visits ranged from: 'It's so big and spread out.' to 'The lunch was fantastic!' and 'There are more pupils in my new year group than the whole of Elham School!' 

Meanwhile, back at Elham, rehearsals have been continuing for 'My Fair Lady'. For the first time this week, the class had the opportunity to dress up in their costumes and see what they felt like to move in on stage.  Everyone looks splendid in their Edwardian clothing and Mrs Vincent is busy making adjustments to make sure they all fit perfectly. If you haven't already ordered your tickets for the show, make sure you do so soon.

Oaks were also tasked this week with designing the front cover of the program for our production - we will be creating batches of the program with each child's design on, so look our for your child's artwork when you come along.

Excitement about the World Cup is high in class, so Mrs Godden used the opportunity to teach the children how to describe each country's flag in French. Each child then designed and described their own personal flag. There were some very imaginative designs - one incorporated a flamingo, whilst another showed the sun, moon and a cloud. 

This weekend looks set to be hot and sunny, so don't forget the suncream. And of course, we are all hoping for an England victory in Saturday's match against Sweden. Let's hope football really is coming home!

Term Six, Week Three

We have all been enjoying the sunny weather this week - it is amazing how quickly the summer term is flying by. There have been plenty of play rehearsals this week, including a full run-through with Silver Birch and Beech classes being involved for the first time.  We are really getting to grips with our roles now and there are some real characters developing! Parents, brothers and sisters - you are in for a real treat.

Karen Hickman, our music teacher, organised a music concert for us this week so that we could demonstrate to our parents what we had learnt over the last couple of terms. As Year 6, we sang two songs (Breathe and 2002) and Carwyn also played a fantastic solo on his trumpet -  well done Carwyn!

Once again, we were victorious at the latest stage of the Kwik Cricket tournament, which means that Elham School will now represent the whole of Shepway at the Kent finals. What a fanstastic achievement for a small school such as ours. We hope our run of luck will continue at the finals and that we come home with (yet another) cup.

Following our wonderful trip to Arethusa, we have all been writing a recount of our experiences this week.  There are some great pieces of writing developing - some have even stretched to eight pages so far.

On Friday morning we welcomed Mrs Cooper back to class for our third session on transition to secondary school.  She gave us some really invaluable advice on social media (what to do and not do); bullying and how to cope with it; and school rules.  We looked at rules from several different schools and realised that they are basically the same everywhere. The key message was that if you behave well at school, you will be rewarded. If you choose not to follow the rules, there will be unpleasant consequences!  Mrs Cooper even handed out sheets showing pictures of shoes which could be worn, which caused quite some discussion.

Finally, we must say a really big 'Thank you' to Mrs Vincent for looking after us this week whilst Mrs Short was away moderating writing in other schools and Mrs Godden was having a small operation.

Tomorrow is our annual school fete (Theme - Mythical Creatures), so we're keeping our fingers crossed for good weather. We look forward to seeing all our friends there and having some fun.

Term Six, Week Two

Mrs Seymour joined us for some of our rehearsals this week and she is really helping us to develop our characters and be more confident on stage. We have also started to learn the show songs and we can already see that we are going to have some great performances from the year 6s!  

Mrs Cooper joined us again on Friday for our second transition to secondary school session. This week she worked on busting some of the myths about secondary school such as 'You'll get a detention if you do your homework wrong' and 'If a teacher confiscates something off you, you will never get it back'. We began and ended our session with a game of Chinese Whispers, which proved how easy it is for rumours to develop quickly.

On Friday afternoon, we made some Father's Day cards for our dads. There are a few pictures of us working on them below. Although the design was quite basic, we all found ways of personalising them just for our dads.

Congratulations must go to our Kwik Cricket team who, although very tired following Arethusa, won a convincing victory at the Elham cricket ground and go on to the area finals next week.

Term Six, Week One

After our half-term week, we welcomed Oak Class back to school for their very last term at Elham Primary.  This term is all about preparing the children for their move onto secondary school in September.  The highlight of our summer term is always the KS2 production and this year we will be performing 'The Flower Girl', a musical based on the film of 'My Fair Lady'.  Following last term's auditions, every one of the class has worked really hard over the break to learn their lines and we are now able to rehearse without scripts - great job year six!  We have also begun learning the songs and we are lucky enough to have Mrs Seymour joining us on a regular basis helping Mrs Short with the direction of the show.

Transition to secondary school can be very daunting for some of the children, whilst others are ready and keen to move on to new challenges. In order that every child feels confident with the changes to come, we have organised a session a week for six weeks with Mrs Sarah Cooper, a transition specialist.  Friday saw our first session and she asked the children what would be different about secondary school, what they were looking forward to (more independence, the school canteen, having their own lockers and studying more subjects, to name a few) and what they might be concerned about (getting lost, being late for lessons, travelling on the bus to school, bullying and homework all featured).  It was a very positive session and future topics will include uniform, time management, travelling to school, bullying and homework, so name a few.

Also on Friday, the children started a new project called 'Theme Park Maths' whereby they will work in pairs to design and run a theme park, following certain criteria. They will also design a logo and an advert for their parks, as well as using a spreadsheet to keep track of costs and revenue.  There will be prizes for the best designed park and the pair who make the most money at the end of the first year's operation. Good luck everyone!

Finally, on Sunday, years 5 and 6 will be returning to Arethusa for three days of challenging, but fun activities.  There is no snow forecast this time, so fingers crossed that all goes to plan with this visit!  We hope you all have a great time and come back full of stories to tell next week.

Term Five, Week One

We would like to welcome everyone back after the Easter break and hope that everyone had a great time doing lots of exciting things. Unbelievably we are into term 5 already, although it felt more like term 6 this week with the fantastic hot and sunny weather we enjoyed.  Term 5 is especially important for Year 6 as they will sit the dreaded SATs tests during the week of 14th May. We have begun revising maths and GPS and practising some of the tests so that everyone is well-prepared and able to do their very best.  If there are areas you are unsure about, BBC Bitesize and Mathletics are both great for maths and there are some very helpful grammar games on Purple Mash. Links to both of these may be found below. Ask Mrs Godden for your logins to Mathletics and Purple Mash if you have forgotten them.

As well as revision, we are still learning new things such as how to program a Micro:bit mini-computer.  These are tiny computers that can be programmed to do lots of different things such as showing messages and pictures, checking temperatures and sending radio messages via Bluetooth.  Micro:bits can be bought for around £12 and are great fun to use.  There is plenty of information about them and lots of coding projects on the Micro:bit website (see link below).  On the subject of computing, there are still some places available for Years 5 and 6 at Mrs Godden's  after-school Code Club on Thursday afternoons, so if you are a budding computer programmer, contact the office for details.

Homework - Please continue to learn your weekly spellings, making sure you are secure with all the words on the Year 3/4 and 5/6 word lists. Make sure you keep reading every day and remember to complete a quiz whenever you finish a book.

Term Four, Week Five

At the beginning of this week, we watched a spooky animation called 'Alma'. The story centres on a young girl who gets lured into an enchanted toy store. drawn in by its beautiful collection of dolls, including one that looks just like her. She discovers only too later that the shop is intent on adding her to its permanent collection.  We then wrote our own versions of the story, building suspense and excitement into our writing. Click on the link below to watch the story for yourself.  We also continued writing our newspaper reports based on the story 'Tuesday' and are looking forward to typing them up to look like real newspaper articles next week. As we are fast approaching Easter, we started a new unit in RE on Salvation.  Our question on Friday was 'Why do Christians believe that Jesus was resurrected?', so we looked at the evidence in the New Testament for this. In groups, we wrote short plays based on our findings and will perform them next week.  We learning in Computing how to create super-secure passwords. Did you know that putting together three or four completely random words makes for an almost uncrackable password? We made up our own and tested them on the website below. Why not have a go yourself? Mrs Godden completely bamboozled us in this week's grammar lesson. We were focusing on tenses and we already knew how to use past, present and future tenses, but she introduced us to the simple, progressive and perfect tenses. It wasn't easy to get our brains around all the different ways of writing verb tenses, but we gave it a good go, with some of us being more confident at it than others.  Take a look at the text box below for examples of each tense. 

Term Four, Week Four

On Wednesday this week, we welcomed all the governors into school for the day.  They observed our lessons, talked to us about what we like about school, had lunch with us and then attended the staff meeting after school. They were all very impressed with our behaviour and how hard we all work.  In Literacy we have been creating a factfile about the plague - Mrs Short has enjoyed reading all the gruesome facts - and we have investigated translating and reflecting shapes in our Maths lessons with Mrs Godden.  Music has been fun this term - we have been composing our own pieces and using lots of percussion instruments to create different beats. Along with each class, we will be performing our work to the rest of the school next Wednesday afternoon.  As this has been Science Week, we have been focusing on this subject. We were lucky enough to learn how to extract DNA from a strawberry, which was absolutely fascinating and great fun.  We also carried out an experiment to determine what happens to a shadow the further away from a light source it becomes.  All in all, this week has been busy. We have all worked hard and enjoyed our learning.

Term Four, Week Three

We enjoyed a really interesting trip to Canterbury mosque on Thursday morning, where we were greeted by Imam Ishan Khan and some other members of Canterbury's Muslim community.  We learnt about the features of the mosque and what happens there and were taught how to write out names in Arabic (the language in which the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, is written). We were also shown a fascinating film about Islamic inventions. Did you know that many scientific inventions were first suggested by Islamic scholars during the middle ages, including the camera, the clock, airplanes and the engine. After that, some of the ladies helped us to dress up in typical Islamic dress and they explained that it helps keep them cool as many Islamic countries are very hot.  Before we returned to school, we were treated to drinks, biscuits and dates and had a chance to ask the Imam any questions we still had.  We would like to pass on our thanks to Mrs Goldup, Ms Wilson and Mr Mowl for taking us to the mosque and bringing us back to school in time for lunch!

This weekend is Mothering Sunday, so we made some decorated bookmarks written in French for our mums.  They wished them 'Bonne Fête' and told them that they were 'Mon soleil, ma lune et toutes mes étoiles'. Hopefully our mums will have asked us all to translate our messages and they will enjoy a reminder of Mothers' Day each time their use their bookmarks.

Term Four Week Two

Well, what a strange week it has been for Oak Class. We set off for our much-anticipated trip to Arethusa on Monday and enjoyed swimming, games in the woods, a campfire with toasted marshmallows, high ropes and a blind-man trail before the centre decided that due to the weather, it felt it best to close for health and safety reasons.  The snow in Rochester was much worse than in Elham - well done to all the children who tackled the high-ropes in a blizzard - so it was best that we all got home safely when we could. Children and staff alike were all extremely disappointed to be coming home, so let's hope that Arethusa can organise for us to go back for a few days later in the year. 

We then made it into school on Wednesday, only for school to shut on Thursday!  Friday brought with it freezing rain and more snow (it is still snowing as I write this), so we closed at 1pm. Many children did manage to make it in, with half of Oak class arriving by 9am. Those that were here spent part of the morning creating some beautiful winter photo collages - have a look at them below.

As the freezing temperatures continue, we hope that everyone keeps warm and has a safe weekend, and that we may get back to normal next week!

Term Three Week Six

Tuesday 6th February was Safer Internet Day 2018 and during our computing session on Thursday, we discussed what made us happy and sad online, and then explored ways of dealing with online situations which make us feel worried or upset. We also learnt about the importance of behaving in a kind and sensible manner online, just was we would do 'offline', in the real world.  This fitted in very well with our visit to the Safety In Action event at The Three Hills centre in Folkestone on Tuesday.  Here we had the opportunity to meet and learn from a wide range of professionals from services such as the Fire Brigade, Coastguard and Network Rail.  We learnt a huge amount which will help us stay safe as we prepare to move on to secondary school. Subjects we covered in the hands-on sessions included: drugs and alcohol, online safety, railway safety, water safety, fire safety, emergency life support, road safety, school attendance, being yourself and personal space.  At the end of the sessions, there was a quiz. Each of our teams did extremely well, with one even scoring a perfect 100%!  Well done Oak Class for being such attentive and intelligent learners.

We have started a new topic in RE this week, looking at what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today. We will be investigating the importance of The Five Pillars to every Muslim, as well as the purpose and functions of the mosque.  Our visit to the Canterbury mosque on Thursday 8th March will be a great help in seeing the theory put into practice.  As part of our lesson, we looked at what might happen during each of our journeys through life and then decided on our own 'five pillars' which would help us through.  There was a very wide range, but the list included hope. love, kindness, perseverance, courage, respect, faith, independence, confidence and tolerance. It was very heart-warming to see that our children have such positive and sensible values instilled in them to help them face life's challenges.

We now have a week of rest to build up our reserves of energy ready for an amazing week of educational, fun and challenging activities at Arethusa.

Term Three Week Five

Despite the cold weather, all the brain power being used in class has kept the classroom warm!  In maths we have learnt how to calculate the mean (average) of a group of numbers, as well as practising how to find time intervals. Our best copies of 'The Plague Doctor' are now up on display and Mrs Godden was really impressed when she returned to class and saw the quality of our writing (and accompanying illustrations).  Our RE topic this term has been on The Gospel and we have been asking What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD) in different situations. Today we finished by looking at forgiveness; discovering stories about people who have forgiven others and then trying to write a formula for forgiveness - it was not an easy task, but it provoked lots of discussion.

Computing was fun as we learnt about ciphers (codes), in particular the Caesar Cipher, used by Julius Caesar himself around 2000 years ago.  Talking about the Romans, we have also been working on reading and writing Roman numerals this week.  Next Tuesday is Safer Internet Day and we will be carrying out activities next Thursday to make us think about how to keep ourselves safe and how to act appropriately online.  Don't forget that next Friday is Plimsoll Day when we are raising money for the RNLI by wearing plimsolls and trainers to school in return for a small donation of a £1.  

  Term Three Week Four

It has been a busy week in Oak Class this week with lots of great learning taking place.

On Monday we had a visit from the Dog's Trust where we learned all about the evolution of the wolf to the domesticated dogs of today.

We have been focusing on editing and improving our extended writing. This week we enjoyed learning all about plague doctors and then writing a story based on a short film clip about the plague. These will be displayed in the classroom if anybody  would like to read them- but be warned the subject matter is not for the squeamish!

In maths we have been learning algebra and Mrs Short has been very impressed with how good we all were at it! We now know how to find the nth term and express missing number problems algebraically. 

Term Three, Week Three

Well, another week has just flown by and we have covered lots of interesting and exciting new subjects.  Mrs Short introduced us to our new Topic for this term - The Plague!  We discussed what we already knew about it:

• It occurred in London in 1665-1666
• We think it was spread by fleas on rats
• It spread rapidly
• The nursery rhyme 'Ring-a-ring-o-roses' is about the plague

as well as what we wanted to find out.

In Maths, we continued to practice solving algebraic problems, and then learnt how to convert between miles and kilometres.  If you are out and about in the car, help us practice by asking what miles are in kilometres. e.g. 10 miles to Canterbury would be 16km.

Term Three, Week Two

Lots of exciting things have been happening in Oak Class this week.  There was much enthusiasm over Mrs Short teaching us how to use algebra in Maths!  We can now solve problems such as finding out what x equals in 5x - 2 = 18. (x = 4 in case you were not sure!). Mrs Everitt is now teaching us PE on Tuesday afternoons, (PE kits needed every week please) and this term we are focusing on dance. We learnt some warm-up exercises and routines, which we were very keen to show Mrs Godden before leaving on Friday!  Congratulations should go to Rosie, Izaak, Tommy and Lily who represented the school at a tag rugby tournament this week. They won three matches and drew two - a great result.  There was initial disappointment in class on Thursday when no laptops or iPads appeared for our Computing lesson and Mrs Godden explained that we would be learning to be cryptographers this term. That means that we will be investigating how to crack and create codes.  We began with learning a very old method of sending information - semaphore.  Some of us we more successful at deciphering people's messages than others, but we all had great fun trying.  Have a look at some pictures of us in action below. Next week we will be looking at Morse Code, so Mrs Godden would appreciate us bringing in a torch on Thursday. The sweet tin took a bit of a hit today as we had an almost 100% success rate in this week's spelling test - great work everyone. This week's spellings are trickier - they are all adverbs - but we are still hoping for more impressive scores.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Homework

Reading, spellings and times tables practice as usual please. This week's spellings are all adverbs.  There is no other homework this week, but Mr Godden would appreciate each child bringing in a torch for our Computing lesson on Thursday.  Some of the class were also very keen to learn the , so there is a link to this below.  There are also several videos and songs on YouTube to help you learn. There may even be prizes for anyone who manages to learn it all!

Term Three, Week One

A very warm 'welcome back' to everyone after the Christmas break.  It has been a very short week, so not too much to report.  We have been learning how to calculate the volume of cuboids in maths, and today in literacy we tackled the tricky apostrophe!  It's a hard piece of punctuation to get right, especially when using it for possession and it often gets used incorrectly. Which of these sentences uses the apostrophe correctly?

The dog had buried it's bone in the garden.

or

The dog had buried its bone in the back garden.

The Gospel (meaning 'good news') is our new topic in RE and this week we learnt about Jesus's teaching in The Sermon on the Mount.  Many of his words of wisdom are well-know such as 'Love thy neighbour as you love yourself' and 'Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you'.

And not forgetting that this term is our Arethusa week - a wonderful experience for everyone to look forward to.

Homework

Reading, spellings and times tables practice as usual please. This week's spellings are all homophones such as to/two/too and there/their/they're.  No other homework this week.

Term Two, Week Six

We have enjoyed an exciting final week of term in the run-up to Christmas, the highlight of which must be the Christingle service on Thursday afternoon.  During the morning we discussed the significance of each part of the Christingle and then made our own to take to church with us. As Year 6, we were asked to lead the service by Rev. Jane, which we did with aplomb!  It was a privilege to light our candles first, then to process with them around the church whilst all the the other children had their candles lit before we sang together.  We have also enjoyed other Christmas activities this week including Christmas co-ordinates pictures in maths and making a cross-stitch snowman bookmark. Finally on Friday, we made woven heart basket decorations which were filled with sweets for us to take home.  We hope that everyone enjoys a happy, fun-filled Christmas and returns to school in January full of energy and ready to learn!

Homework

Reading - please keep reading every day during the holidays and try to complete at least one book so you can do a book quiz on your return.

Spellings - Make sure you revise/learn all the words on the Years 3/4 and 5/6 words list - you will be tested on 15 random words from each list on Friday 6th January.

Times Tables - everyone is now on either the Bronze, Silver or Gold tests.

There is no other homework over the holidays other than to learn your spellings.

Term Two, Week Three

It has been much quieter this week than last.  We have really enjoying finishing our Greek masks and beginning to rehearse our play, 'The Sad Story of Sisyphus'.  Our masks are looking great, so we hope our acting will do them justice.  Maths this week has focused on calculating percentages (with Mrs Short) and solving reasoning problems about 3D shape (with Mrs Godden). Most of us also practised an arithmetic test on Friday, with us all improving on our last one, some of us by up to 10 points. Well done us!

Could you explain the difference between a co-ordinating and a subordinating conjunction? Well neither could  we before Friday, but now we know that they are only seven co-ordinating conjunctions and we can remember them by using the mnemonic FANBOYS (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So).  Some of us learnt what a mnemonic was too and Rory pointed out that it starts with a silent 'm'.

We surprised ourselves in French by managing to translate, as a class, a whole French recipe into English. We learnt to recognise how imperative (bossy) verbs look in French sentences. Do you know what any of these mean? Mettez, versez, étalez, mélangez, malaxez and formez? Next week we will try translating another recipe on our own (with the aid of dictionaries of course) and if we have time before Christmas, we may even get to bake something yummy.

Homework

Reading - please keep reading for at least 20 minutes every day. We would like every child to complete a book quiz at least once every two weeks, and preferably once a week. Don't forget completed Reading Records on Mondays.

Spellings - This week's words are all words with the -ough spelling.  Ths week's were very tricky with very few children getting all their words correct, so hopefully we will be giving out more sweets next week. Don't forget your home spelling book though!

Times Tables - everyone is now on either the Bronze or Silver tests.

There is no other homework this week, but please bring in your RE work from last week if you haven't already done so.

Term Two, Week Two

It seems like we have been back for more than two weeks already!  As usual, we have had a very busy week learning how to calculate percentages and how to identify describe and make nets of 3D shapes in Maths.  As it is Remembrance Sunday this week, Mrs Short has shown us film from World War I and we have talked about Elham's war memorial and all those who gave up their lives for our futures.  We visited the war memorial and planted a cross for each name engraved on it, then the whole school attended a church service which we led as a class.  All this learning led us onto writing our own remembrance poems, using vivid description and emotive language. Mrs Short was very impressed with everyone's work and even gave out some Gold Awards!  We were also lucky enough to receive a visit from Mr Henry Shackleton this week. He is Elham's own Lancaster Bomber pilot who flew 18 missions to Germany before being shot down over Berlin and ending up as a prisoner-of-war.  Now aged 95, he can still recount his experiences in fantastic detail and we had plenty of questions to ask him at the end of his visit.

We also got quite excited about our Topic work this week as we investigated the theatre in Ancient Greece and read the script of a Greek play we will perform once we have completed our Greek masks.

Homework

RE Homework - you have been given a sheet of statements to cut out and paste onto a line, deciding where they would best fit. If you are unsure what to do, please ask Mrs Short on Monday or Mrs Godden on Wednesday. Homework is due in next Friday 17th November please.

Reading - please keep reading for at least 20 minutes every day. We would like every child to complete a book quiz at least once every two weeks, and preferably once a week. Don't forget completed Reading Records on Mondays.

Spellings - This week's words are all words with either an ei or ie spelling in them - these can be tricky!  Well done to so many of you for doing really well with your spellings and remembering your Home Spelling Book every week. Most of the class got all their spelling right this week - it is costing Mrs Godden a fortune in sweets!

Times Tables - most of the class are now onto their Bronze tests with a few moving up to Silver next week.

Term One, Week 6

It has been a busy and exciting week in Oak Class. As well as our normal lessons, we have enjoyed a drama session on Greek gods and goddesses as well as learning CPR from the Kent Fire and Rescue Team.  Well done to everyone for remembering so much of the CPR training the following day. This is what the class remembered (and top marks to Tommy Goldup who knew it all and helped write the following information):

CPR - Call Push Rescue

When you find an injured person, first check for danger and then call for help on 999.

Then try to get a response from them. Begin by talking to them. If there is no response, shake their shoulders and then tap hard on their collarbone.

If there is still no response, then check if they are breathing by putting your ear next to their mouth and watching their body to see if there is rise and fall in the chest.

If they are not breathing, then start CPR by repeatedly pushing hard on the chest using both hands.  This is hard work, so swap with another person if you get tired.  Continue doing this until help arrives.

If they are breathing, then put them in the recovery position and wait for help.

We also learned about defibrilators.  They are quite easy to use as they talk to you and instruct you what to do at each stage.  Mrs Godden pointed out that we would soon have one in village, sited in the old telephone box with the word 'Defibrilator' written in the windows at the top.

Friday afternoon with Ian from KIC Theatre what great fun.  We were acting out scenes from the lives of Greek gods and goddesses such as Zeus, Apollo, Hercules, Athena and Aphrodite (to link in with our Greeks topic this term).  We also acted out scenes featuring superheroes and everyday heroes such as doctors, firemen and other people who help others in trouble.  We are really looking forward to seeing all the superhero costumes next Friday!

We ended the week by drawing our self-portraits to feature on the 2017 school tea towel. Look out for details about how to buy yours coming soon.

Homework

Reading - please keep reading for at least 20 minutes every day. We would like every child to complete a book quiz at least once every two weeks, and preferably once a week.

Spellings - This week's words are all taken from the Year 5/6 list, so you may well know some of them already.  Well done to so many of you for doing really well with your spellings and remembering your Home Spelling Book every week.

Times Tables - most of the class have now successfully completed all their times tables up to 12x and will therefore begin on Bronze 1 next Thursday.

GPS Homework - there is a sheet to complete on writing noun phrases (taught in class today, Friday 13th October).  Please hand this in by next Friday 20th October. A copy is attached below if you have lost your sheet.

Term One, Week Four

Another busy week has flown past, culminating in our Harvest Festival at the Methodist church on Friday afternoon with Rev. Kevin and Mr File leading our worship.  We all really enjoying watching each class's presentation on the theme of harvest - Hazel Class's A to Z was particularly lovely.  In Oaks, we sang a harvest song to the tune of 'If you're happy and you know it' with the whole congregation joining in with the 'Amens' at the end of each line. There are lots of photos on our harvest service on the home page. Thank you to everyone who kindly donated food to go the the Rainbow Centre in Folkestone so that they may help people less fortunate than us.

Earlier in the week we enjoyed a particularly sticky day when we began work on our Greek masks by using papier mâché pasted to balloons.  The next stage will be to decorate them- we cannot wait to see the results.

In maths this week we have been working on factors and multiples with Mrs Short and on angles in polygons with Mrs Godden. Do you know what the internal angles always add up to in these shapes? Triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon? The diagram below will help you work them all out.

Food and celebrations is the theme of our new unit of work in French and this week we learnt some vocabulary  for food such as une pomme, des chips (not chips, but crisps), du gâteau, du fromage and de l'eau.  Next week we will be drawing our lunches and describing what we ate and drank in French.

Please keep learning your spellings each week - you are all doing really well with them! 

Homework

Reading - please read over the weekend and write about what you have read in your Reading Journal.  These are collected in and checked every Monday, so please ensure they are back in school at the beginning of each week.

Spellings - This week's words all end in the -ence/-ance spelling and don't forget to learn your 3/4 and 5/6 words too.  Also, you need to remember to bring in your Home Spelling Book on Friday if you want to earn a sweet for getting all your spellings correct.

Times Tables - we will be checking that all the children know their 9 and 10 times tables off by heart on Thursday morning. Please practice these if you are not yet secure with your tables.

There is no other homework this week.

Term One, Week Three

We welcomed back Mrs Short this week - it was good to see her well again - and Oak Class are beginning to settle into their new weekly routine.  Monday afternoon saw the children having their second boxing skills lesson, and on Wednesday their began their new topic work with Mrs Short. This term they will be learning all about the Ancient Greeks, including making Greek masks and performing a short Greek play.  This is always much enjoyed by both the Oak pupils and the rest of the school to whom they perform.

We are working on consolidating key basic skills in maths and this week's focus was on rounding.  Almost all the children were successful in their 5x and 6x tables tests, so will move on to 7x and 8x next week - keep practising please!  RE does not always sound the most interesting of lessons, but we all really enjoyed learning about the story of creation in Genesis. Mrs Godden played a piece of music called 'The Almighty' whilst she read the story to us.  Whilst she was reading, we drew a picture and wrote a short description of what happened on each of the seven days.  Mrs Godden was very impressed with many of these picture stories.  We also discussed why the music was a good reflection of the story. A link to this is given below, so you can listen and make up your own mind.

A really nice surprise this week was when Mrs Hickman (our music teacher) turned up with brand new Glockenspiels for us to play.  We were very keen to start playing, but had to wait patiently until Mrs Hickman had explained what we needed to do first.  We worked in pairs to compose our own music, which was great fun. Some pictures of us doing this can be seen below.

Bon weekend tout le monde!

Homework

Reading - please read over the weekend and write about what you have read in your Reading Journal.  These are collected in and checked every Monday, so please ensure they are back in school at the beginning of each week.

Spellings - This week's words all end in the -ent/-ant spelling and don't forget to learn your 3/4 and 5/6 words too.  Also, you need to remember to bring in your Home Spelling Book on Friday if you want to earn a sweet for getting all your spellings correct.

Times Tables - we will be checking that all the children know their 7 and 8 times tables off by heart on Thursday morning. Please practice these if you are not yet secure with your tables.

English - please complete the worksheet on pronouns. We learnt about these in Friday's GPS lesson, so you should be able to do this easily. This is due back by Friday 29th September please. 

Term One, Week Two

Year 6 have begun to settle into the routine of Oak Class. On Monday morning, they were lucky enough to work on their teamwork skills with Josh Kennedy from the Shepway Sports Partnership.  Josh is English Super Bantum Weight Boxing Champion. As well as training and taking part in fights himself, he also uses his boxing knowledge to train children in this sport. For the next six weeks, Oak Class will be learning basic boxing skills from Josh on Monday afternoons. At the end of this time, each child will be assessed, as if they meet all the criteria, they will be awarded a Boxing Bronze Award. Please make sure your child's PE kit is in school at all times, and if they have their own boxing gloves, they can be brought in for Monday's lessons.  Some pictures from Josh's sessions can be seen below.

We began our first Science unit of the year this week - Evolution and Inheritance. We had fun learning about the concepts of DNA, genes and inheritance and discussed the traits that we have inherited from our parents and grand-parents.  Did you know what if you can roll your tongue, this is an inherited trait?!  This week's homework is to investigate in more detail the traits we get from our parents.  A copy of the worksheet is available if your child has lost theirs. It is due in by Friday 22nd September.

Friday afternoon is our RE lesson time, and we are introducing the children to our new way of teaching The Bible called 'Understanding Christianity'.  There are icons representing events, ideas and people from The Bible and the children had some very good debates over what each icon represents.  A copy of the icons is attached below. Can you match each picture to one to these: God, Creation, The Fall, People of God, Kingdom of God, Incarnation, Salvation and The Gospel?

Mrs Short will return to school next Monday, 18th September, and will teach Oak Class on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Mrs Godden will then take over and teach Thursdays and Fridays.

Homework

Reading - please read over the weekend and write about what you have read in your Reading Journal.  These are collected in and checked every Monday, so please ensure they are back in school at the beginning of each week.

Spellings - Each child has their Home Spelling Book with 15 words to learn for our test on Friday morning.  In addition, they will be tested each week on two random words from the Year 3/4 and 5/6 statutory word lists (in their books). This week's words all end in the -cious/-tious spelling.

Times Tables - we will be checking that all the children know their 5 and 6 times tables off by heart on Thursday morning. We will then work our way through all the tables (2 per week) up to 12x. Each child must show they know them all before moving on to the Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum tests. Please practice if you are not yet secure with your tables.

Science - please complete the worksheet about you and your parents, showing what you have inherited from each of them. This is due back by Friday 22nd September please. Download a copy below if you have lost yours.

Term One, Week One

Firstly, a big 'Welcome back' to the whole class. The children have settled in to Oak Class very quickly and seem pleased to finally be at the top of the school and the responsibilities that this brings with it.  We quickly sorted out who would cover which jobs and there are lots of them - buddies, computer monitors, register monitors, Eco monitors and Junior Road Safety Officers.  We also held a class vote for the team leaders for the year with the following results:

Red Team            Megan and Rory

Blue Team           Lily and Carwyn

Green Team         Rosie and Isaac

Yellow Team        Jessica and Benjamin

Thursday, of course, was spent with the majority of the children taking the Kent Test.  We are very proud of how hard they all tried and it was noted how calm they all were too. There was no fuss - they just got on with it.  Well done everyone.

Each child designed their own crest this week, showing the things which are important to them and which they like, along with a motto.  We had a wide variety of mottoes to reflect each child's personality including:

• 'Love what you do'
• Always try your best'
• 'Never give up'
• 'Be the best that you can be'
• 'Be kind and respectful'
• 'Keep calm and eat a banana'

They also wrote a short piece about their aims and aspirations for the year. These, along with their crest and photos will be up on display in class, so why not have a look at them during our first 'Drop-in' session next Wednesday?

It may have been a short week for the children, but there were a few tired-looking faces in class by Friday afternoon (including the staff!). We hope you all enjoy the weekend and we look forward to beginning a new, more settled week on Monday.

Homework

Reading - please read over the weekend and write about what you have read in your Reading Journal.  These are collected in and checked every Monday, so please ensure they are back in school at the beginning of each week.

Spellings - Each child has their Home Spelling Book with 15 words to learn for our test on Friday morning.  In addition, they will be tested each week on two random words from the Year 3/4 and 5/6 statutory word lists - a copy of this is stuck in the back of each child's Home Spelling Book.

Times Tables - we will be checking that all the children know their 2, 3 and 4 times tables off by heart on Thursday morning. We will then work our way through all the tables (2 per week) up to 12x. Each child must show they know them all before moving on to the Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum tests. Please practice if you are not yet secure with your tables.