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    Kestrel Class Spring Term Topic Web 2025

    Week Beginning Monday 31st March

    What a super focused, final week to the term we have had Kestrels!

    This week, we have:

    - very much enjoyed the dress rehearsal we were invited to watch of the Year 3 and 4 performance about the Wemmicks (Well Done Year 3 and Year 4 - we thought you were all stars!);

    - completed some GPS and Arithmetic challenges as a termly review, focusing on parts of speech, structures within sentences, punctuation and spelling;

    - continued to read various texts including our class novel ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’, with a focus on identifying  and understanding key vocabulary to learn more about our characters;

    - shown focus and resilience in completing the termly writing assessment piece called Animal Park, where we used formal language to write a persuasive letter;

    - learnt how to find fractions of quantities, use our knowledge of fractions to find the value of the whole and how to model calculations when a fraction is multipled by an integer;

    - made use of various arithmetic skills to solve multi-faceted, multi-step problems;

    - used our knowledge of migration and population fluctuations to explain how these aspects impacted a specific area both positively and negatively over time;

    - learnt more about the Norse myth of ‘The Great Tree and the gods’ and how this helped Vikings to understand the role of gods like Odin, Thor and Loki in their lives;

    - used our oracy and presentation skills to read our self-made, mini-book stories with interwoven moral teachings to our fabulous Year 1 audience;

    - learnt how to complete an effective underarm serve then use our forehand/ backhand ground strokes for rallies and began to include volleys when needed in Tennis;

    - begun to learn about Living Christian Traditions in RWV;

    and

    - enjoyed some Easter Egg Hunting fun with our friends before the start of our Easter holidays.

    Happy Easter Kestrels! Enjoy your holiday time with your families 😊 

    Week Beginning Monday 24th March

    This week, Kestrels have:

    - completed review autumn GPS knowledge, focusing on parts of speech, punctuation and spelling;

    - read various texts including our class novel ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’ to continue to practise our reading comprehension skills, with a focus on reading the wording of the question carefully and identifying key vocabulary to frame an answer;

    - shown great resilience in completing their termly PUMA testing;

    - have learnt how to multiply unit, non-unit fractions and mixed numbers by integers;

    - explained how migration can change places both positively and negatively and made connections to their own home area;

    - begun to look at the Norse tale of ‘The Great Tree and the gods’ and how this helped Vikings to understand the role of gods like Odin, Thor and Loki in their lives;

    - considered the connections between colour, emotion and composition in Music;

    - used our forehand and backhand ground strokes for rallies in Tennis;

    - generated, through some all-consuming role play, ‘how’ and ‘why’ reasons/ explanations for how we could help to save a failing city zoo and placed them clearly and persuasively in a letter to the current owner;

    and

    - made a little something special for the mums/ mum-like figures in our lives.

     

    Keep up the fantastic effort Kestrels! ðŸ˜Š

    Week Beginning Monday 17th March

    This week, Kestrels have:

    - completed review tasks for GPS, focusing on parts of speech, punctuation and spelling;

    - read a variety of texts including a non-fiction about course fishing and a poetry about the seasons to help practise our reading comprehension skills, with a focus on reading the question carefully and underlining key vovabulary to help frame an answer;

    - shown great resilience in completing their termly PIRA testing;

    - have solved a variety of multistep word problems, which called on us to use our multiplication and division skills;

    - learnt more about migration with a focus on what it means to be a refugee, how the UNHCR help refugees and asylum seekers and how migration can change places both positively and negatively;

    - retold the Viking saga of Erik the Red and made connections to a longer sage involving his daughter Freydis;

    - considered the connections between colour and composition in Music;

    - continued to develop our forehand and backhand ground strokes for rallies in Tennis;

    - investigated how animal parks and zoos are put together the requirements of animals in such places;

    and

    - enjoyed a fascinatingly, educational visit to West Stow Anglo-Saxon village, where we were gifted with the perfect weather in which to investigate how Anglo-Saxons in Britain may have lived.

     

    What a fantastic week of learning Kestrels!

    Week Beginning 10th March 2025

    This week, Stretham Community Primary School have enjoyed Performing Arts Week...and what a week it has been!

    During Performing Arts Week, Kestrels, along with the rest of the school, have enjoyed:

    • meeting Rock Kidz who visited us on Monday 10th March. They turned our school hall into our own concert venue and allowed us to experience the amazing world of live music. The KS2 workshop that followed was energetic and engaging. We ended with a celebration assembly to really share the message of 'You Are Awesome So Be Awesome' (YASBA) to reinforce the positive mental health and self-esteem message of the whole day.

    • our visit on Tuesday 11th March from Rock Steady, who shared rock/ pop band instruments in a whole school assembly before leading KS2 in a workshop to create our own band - with 2 vocalists, a lead guitar, a bass guitar, 2 keyboard players and a drummer.

    • Jack Stinton from JSDC  led a whole school dance assembly on Thursday 13th March with follow up workshops for each class on Thursday and Friday. We appreciated Jack's enthusiasm for dance which taught us that dance is for everyone.

    • Finally, on Friday 14th March, we were treated to an introduction to Music genres Assembly, where a Quartet played for us and shared their incredible instruments, knowledge and skill within the genres of classical, pop and jazz music.

    • A huge thank you to all our visitors for enriching our week with performing arts.

    This week, Kestrel class have also: continued to build the fluency of their division calculations to enable them to solve problems and reason to solutions in Maths; begun a new unit about Norse Culture starting with some drama to re-enact the Viking saga of Freydis and her Courage before writing this saga as a playscript in our own words; explored installation art creation just using the everyday objects around us, delved further into gender stereotypes in our Diversity and Community topic and started to look at the connections between colour and music, especially during festivities such as Holi.

    Please remember that you will still find the World Book Day story time videos, recorded by teachers at school just for your children, shared on your child's Seesaw page. Do share them as a family at home!

    Week Beginning Monday 3rd March

    Kestrels we have enjoyed a full and fun filled week together.

    • We started the week with a fantastic live author event involving Michael Rosen and the wonderful story tellers of the British Library, who shared some myths, legends and folktales that are based in nature and tell us ‘How Things Came to Be’.
    • We have learnt how important our multiplication/ Times Table skills are when learning how to complete efficient division calculations using the ‘bus stop’ method.
    • You have shown a fantastic understanding of the reasons for how and why the Vikings were able to dominate the Anglo-Saxons in Britain by 910 and your drama to model Aethelflaed's courageous stand at Chester was impressive.
    • You analysed the song lyrics of an MC Grammar World Book Day song with enthusiasm and were able to identify the purpose and audience intention behind the lyrics.
    • We have learnt more about immigration and emigration in Geography, linking the details to some families’ real-life experiences and identified the push and pull factors for those families.
    • We all enjoyed participating in our Shrove Tuesday Pancake Day races in our houses - it was such fun!
    • We have continued to build our foundation skills of forehand and backhand groundstrokes in Tennis (PE).
    • We have used what we learnt from our Michael Rosen Live Lesson about telling folk tales to plan our own tales to explain how things came to be and creating mini-book versions of these tales to share with an audience of younger pupils at school. You even created your own amazing illustrations!
    • We have taken part in lots of other fun, book-based learning activities throughout the week including sharing stories, making reading recommendation fortune tellers, designing book marks, participating in some draw and write-alongs with various authors and illustrators.
    • Kestrels ended the week with a fantastic and highly relaxing ‘snuggle up and read’ session in our reading relaxation zone.

    What a fantastically booky week we have had! Well done for a super week of learning and engagement Kestrels ðŸ˜Š

    Week Beginning Monday 24th February

    Welcome back from your half term holidays Kestrels!

    This week, we have been:

    - enjoying lots of book related discussion to reinvigorate our passion for reading for the half term - including finding an exciting new read for each member of the class and reading more sections of our class novels;

    - reviewing some key areas of Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling - including Relative Clauses, Parenthesis and Hyphens (particularly to join pre-fixes to root words) - to help us edit our writing;

    - photographing our installation art projects from the audience perspective and evaluating them for the quality of their outcomes;

    - further developing our rapid recall of Times Table skills and our number knowledge fluency;

    - refreshing our methods for long multiplication and utilising them for problem solving;

    - beginning to develop our formal written method for division;

    - discussing the surprising rise to power of Aethelflaed, an Anglo-Saxon princess, whose marriage and education gave her the opportunity to lead her kingdom to defend itself (by building burhs around key settlements) from the final advances of the Viking invaders;

    - considering the push and pull factors influencing Migration, especially those linked to refugees;

    - thinking about Diversity and Community in our new PSHE unit with a focus on who we are and stereotyping;

    and

    - learning about forehand ground strokes in our new Tennis unit in PE.

    Week Beginning Monday 10th February

    In our final week of this half term, Kestrel class have:

    - completed our biography writing for our choice of well-known scientist, Sir Isaac Newton or innovative installation artist Yayoi Kusama;

    -been continuing to challenge ourselves to improve the rapid recall of our times tables through our daily 30 Second Challenges;

    - been using the long multiplication method to solve problems and prove our reasoning;

    - used what we know about the complex Anglo-Saxon family tree to explain why the daughter of an Anglo-Saxon king would marry an ealdorman (a noble but not a king) from another kindgom during a time of unrest with incoming Vking invaders;

    - unpicked details from our Class Reader - 'The Boy at the Back of the Class' - to help us draw the key characters in our tale;

    - learnt more about the process and importance of Muslim prayer;

    - played mini-game sin Netball;

    - thrown ourselves wholeheartedly into our Maths morning challenges whilst others were trying a 'Dragon's Den' style activity

    and

    - very much enjoyed our 'Feel Good Friday' by putting our gymnastics skills to use and exploring various types of apparatus, by completing the final 'explosive' stage of our installation art projects inspired by the work of Cai Guo Qiang and also enjoying some mindful, musical and artistic 'me' time in Forest School.

    Kestrels, you have had a fabulous final week of the half term. Enjoy your well-deserved holidays!! 

    Week Beginning Monday 3rd February

    In Kestrel class this we have:

    - been researching the life of our choice of well-known scientist, Sir Isaac Newton or innovative installation artist Yayoi Kusama;

    - learnt about the formation and features of biography writing which is designed to celebrate the life of a chosen figure;

    - taken our biography research materials and begun to write the initial paragraphs of our biographies;

    -been challenging ourselves to improve the rapid recall of our times tables through our daily 30 Second Challenges;

    - been unpicking the complexities of long multiplication and this method's connection to our times tables skills;

    - used drama to role play the changes which occured in Britain as the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex stood alone against the Viking invaders;

    - learnt more about migration through hearing the real life story of someone who migrated for education and work from Turkey to London;

    - made connections between our learning about migration and our new Class Reader 'The Boy at the Back of the Class';

    - enjoyed the improvisation component of our Music unit on the 12-bar Blues;

    - programmed a microcomputer (a Crumble) using an, input, a switch and an output sparkle LED light in Computing;

    - thrown ourselves wholeheartedly into the NSPCC Number Day with a range of number based activities which enriched other areas of the curriculum beyond Maths, including PE (making number sentences using our gymnastic poses), Guided Reading (sharing number stories) and Art (Finding the Maths within Art).

     

    As always Kestrels, you have embraced your learning with enthusiasm and a 'give it a go' attitude. Well done!

    Week Beginning Monday 27th January

    This week, Kestrels have given energy and committment to:

    - revisiting our reading of the poem 'The Listeners' and using our comprehension skills to understand and re-write it in modern English;

    - build on our knowledge of the Early Viking Raids in Britain and learning how this coincided with the changes in kingship in the kingdom of Wessex with first Aethelred then his well-like younger brother, Alfred, taking the throne;

    - using the dramatic cover and blurb of Tony Bradman's 'Viking Boy' to remind us how we as readers seek features to help us engage with a text and how the clues an author gives us can help us to make logical predictions;

    - taking a mindful moment to recentre and take care of our mental health (Being creative helps us to do this in Kestrels!);

    - learning about our 'Rights, Rules and Responsibilities and how these change from childhood to adulthood in PSHE;

    - revisiting our Times Table skills through games and speed challenges to improve our speed and accuracy with key number and calculation strategies, especially when conclusing our fractions unit and in starting our learning about strategies for Long Multiplication;

    - comparing the spelling rules for words with the 'ei and ie' combination;

    - reading a newspaper report about an exciting Anglo-Saxon find and drawing out the information we needed from it to complete comprehension questions which developed our retrieval, vocabulary, summary and inference skills;

    - learning about living Muslim traditions in various global settings, including the Lebanon;

    - continuing our new Geography topic of Migration and asking 'Why do people migrate?' and comparing two women's migration stories;

    - developing our streegy and tenacious teamwork skills in netball and precision of movement when using gymnastic balances, apparatus and rolls into our sequences in PE;

    - understanding how Luca is going to progress in 'Race to Imagination Island';

    and

    - more fully understanding the phases of a scientific investigation with a focus on how to record and form conclusions from results by asking - Which materials electrical conductors and which are electrical insulators?

     

    Keep up the super attitude and engagement with your learning yes 

    Week Beginning Monday 20th January

    Kestrels have continued to dive into their learning with such enthusiasm this week and have been:

    - sharing the dramatic opening to Tony Bradman's 'Anglo-Saxon Boy', focusing on the power that the textual details have to conjure up strong images for us as readers;

    - finding out more about the Early Viking Raids in Britain, with a specific focus on the destruction of the monastery at Lindisfarne;

    - starting to learn about our 'Rights, Rules and Responsibilities in PSHE;

    - revisiting our arithmetic skills to improve our speed and accuracy with key number and calculation strategies;

    - rounding off our Fractions unit by learning how to add and subtract fractions and mixed numbers;

    - revising the spelling rules for words with the 'ie/ ei' combination;

    - playing the 12-bar blues and collaborating to create our own version of 'The Stretham Blues' with Mr Sweeney;

    - continuing our new Geography topic of Migration and asking 'Why do people migrate?';

    - using our teamwork skills in netball and collaborative skills to incorporate gymnastic balances, apparatus and rolls into our sequences in PE;

    - making further predictions about our reader 'Race to Imagination Island';

    and

    - completed all phases of a scientific investigation into the thermal properties of various materials asking - Which material would be the best thermal insulator for our tea cup?

     

    Another week of super engagement and collaborative skillsyes 

    Week Beginning Monday 13th January

    What a super week we have had Kestrels! Our first full one back after the holidays and we have covered so much, including:

    - rehearsing the difference between formal and informal language in preparation for our main writing task, as well as revisiting how to vary our sentence structures for effect;

    - using our researched knowledge from History about the story of the finds at Sutton Hoo by landowner Ediith Pretty and her excavator Basil Brown to create an imagined diary from the perspective of one of these figures;

    - creating a podcast script for an interview between the host of a podcast and either Ediith Pretty or Basil Brown about their Sutton Hoo finds (as if podcasts had existed in the 1930s-1940s);

    - using our pre-taught Computing skill of recording our voices in Audacity, to record our self-written history podcasts;

    - revisiting our arithmetic skills to refresh memories of our key number and calculation strategies;

    - comparing and ordering fractions of varying sizes, especially those greater than 1 (in either mixed number or improper fraction form) and using methods that compared the fractions by making either making the numerators or the denominators equal;

    - collaborating on our group tables to summarise the role of a specific prophet within the Muslim faith as our end of unit summary of knowledge;

    - beginning new topics in both History and Geography (The Lady of the Mercians - the introduction of the Vikings in Britain and Migration respectively);

    - learning the first line of the 12 bar blues in Music; 

    - developing both our netball skills and collaborative gymnastic balances in PE;

    - enjoying a little more of our reader 'Race to Imagination Island';

    and

    - learning about the amazing 3D installation and performance art of Cai Guo-Qiang and planning how we will create our own at a smaller scale.

     

    Keep up the excellent attitude and collaborative skillsyes 

    Week Beginning Monday 6th January

    Happy New Year Kestrels...and what a brilliant first week back you have had!

    You have begun the term with your trademark happy chatter to catch us all up on what happened over the holidays and have then got stuck straight back into your learning - well done! 

    This week, we have:

    - invested a lot of time completing independent research to answer the questions - What was found at Sutton Hoo and why were these finds so significant? - as part of our History learning about Anglo-Saxons;

    - used our knowledge to plan a diary entry in the voice of one of the two main figures connected to the archaeological finds at Sutton Hoo - Edith Pretty and Basil Brown;

    - reviewed our knowledge of clauses with a focus on subordinate and relative clauses and considered how to use these sentence structures in our diary writing;

    - revisited our understanding of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions and how we can use them more effectively in our writing;

    - consolidated our understanding of how to convert fractions and how this knowledge can help us to compare and order fractions whether the numerators and/ or denominators are the same or not;

    - concluded our unit on Oceans by looking at the mutual impact of people on oceans and oceans on people;

    - practised our rapid recall of times tables daily - we have realised how valuable this knowledge is to us as mathematicians (TTRockstars is a a really FUN way to practise at home!)

    - started a new Music unit looking at 'The Blues';

    - begun to develop our netball and gymnastic skills in PE;  

    - completed our Stories of the Prophets unit in RWV by studying the prophets Dawud and Suleyman to find out which themes connect these prophets for Muslims

    and

    - enjoyed our first computing lesson back with Mrs. Bowen.

    Autumn Term Topic Overview

    Week Beginning Monday 9th December

    In our penultimate week of this term, Kestrel class have been busy:

    - learning British Sign Language to accompany our offering for the church service next week;

    - investigating the features of effective instruction writing;

    - taking part in our whole school art project with Mrs. Spencer (Look at our colourful, self portraits - we think they are spectacular!);

    - watching the KS1/ EYFS Nativity Dress Rehearsal - we thought the children were all AMAZING!

    - continuing to practise our arithmetic skills including all four operations, integers and decimals - even taking turns to be 'the teacher' to explain our method and counting strategies to avoid errors;

    - discussing our current class novel - Step Father Christmas (an advent calendar in a book) - and made predictions about both the plot and character arcs;

    - working with Fractions to be able to recognise and convert both mixed numbers and improper fractions effectively back and forth, making use of models as a visual aid;

    - catching up on our Michael Rosen Day viewing;

    - developing out teamwork skills of communication and collaboration in PE, whilst also working on our game play for TAG rugby with Mr Banham;

    - participating in the Santa Dash on our Festive Friday;

    - enjoying a one off dance session in PE with Mr Sweeney;

    - discussing thermal conduction and insulation in Science in preparation for our Science investigation;

    - enjoying our book advent calendar;

    - embedding our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, especially that of Mercia;

    - and participating in Christmas jumper day!

     

    One more week until the Christmas holidays and so many lovely events with one another still to enjoy coming up in the final week. Don't forget our school Christmas church service next Friday at St James'!

    Week Beginning 2nd December

    This week, we welcome the start of December and the festive season at Stretham.

    Kestrel class have been:

    - Diving deep into our fractions knowledge to refresh our awareness of unit, non-unit and equivalent fractions;

    - Completing our dragon descriptions by editing to perfect our final outcomes;

    - Recording tracks using the audio function on our laptops and then layering them to play back as part of our Computing unit;

    - Learning more about the position and growth of the kingdom of Mercia;

    - having engaging conversations about installation art and how examples can be grouped and what consistutes a piece of installation art;

    - Classifying and grouping materials basde on their properties - with a focus on transparency, hardness and magnetism;

    - Finding out about the vital role our oceans play in the regulation of our climate and what we need to be mindful of to protect our planet for the future;

    - Reviewing the key features of instruction writing with a focus on key punctuation and imperative verbs;

    - Learning about instructions in French too;

    - Reading our festive class novel which is set up as an advent calendar book; written to give us 1 chapter for each day of December in the run up to Christmas (The story has us gripped already!);

    - Dipping back into our Fitness unit in PE to complete some festive fitness challenges and have even started to create our '12 Days of Fitness' to keep us all fit and healthy over the Christmas holidays.

    We also enjoyed starting our class 'Book Advent Calendar' where each of us will take home our own mini-book to enjoy over Christmas and keep as a festive treat.

     

    To those coming to the disco tonight, I hope you have a fun evening...and to everyone else, have an amazing weekend!

    Week Beginning 25th November

    With great enthusiasm, Kestrels have been learning about:

    - Multiplying and dividing both integers and decimals by 10/100/1000 in Maths using a range of methods including modelling on a place value chart, as well as undertaking fluency and reasoning tasks. We have also revisited our existing knowledge of Fractions;

    - A kind kiwi bird called Manu in a story called 'Manu the Kiwi of Kindness' and completing oral reading comprehension to help us revisit skills of retrieval, vocabulary building, summary and inference, as well as  reflecting on our  PSHE learning around kindness and working together;

    -how to create festive crafts to please our Christmas Fair audience;

    - Using our own imagined dragon designs, we began to describe who our dragons were, what they looked like and where they were using noun phrases, figurative language, powerful verbs and varied structures;

    - Revisited our dragon word exploration and vocabulary gathering work from last week to help us develop our phrases into effective series of sentences/ paragraphs;

    - Reading more of our class novel - Race to Imagination Island to find out how the newly formed teams are getting on in the race;

    - Enjoying Christmas Craft afternoon with our families;

    - How Christianity came to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms via kings like King Aethelbert and their connections to greater kingdoms like the Franks and to a religious leader - the Pope;

    - Understanding the impact of weather patterns from the Atlantic on people’s lives on various landmasses;

    - Enjoying Tag Rugby with Mr Kirby and exploring our next Dance by Chance section called 'Rock 'n' Roll' with Mrs. E;

    - Discussing the Islamic religious story called 'Ibrahim's Call' to reflect on how the role of the prophet is important in the Islamic faith;

    - Visiting the Book Fair and searching for new and exciting reads to buy;

    and

    - Taking part in our school Christmas Fair after school on Friday - Thank you all for your support!

    Week Beginning 18th November

    Kestrels have engaged with the following learning opportunities together this week:

    - Reviewing our knowledge of Multiples and learning about Factors/ Common Factors/ Primes/ and Square/Cube numbers in Maths using a range of methods including concrete modelling, fluency and reasoning tasks;

    -Sharing a story called 'Ice Dragon' and completing a reading comprehension linked to our reading to help us revisit skills of retrieval, vocabulary building, summary and inference;

    -Playing a game to develop our descriptive vocabulary, with a specific focus on adjectives and synonyms for these adjectives, to help grow our word base for our dragon project;

    - Drawing and labelling our own imagined dragons after being inspired by Cressida Cowell's versions (from How To Train Your Dragon) and those from other stories like 'The Ice Dragon' and 'The Land of Roar';

    - Collecting our descriptive language to help us create a vivid picture of our own dragons using words alone;

    - Reading more of our class novel - Race to Imagination Island to catch up with our characters (some children made some excellent connections between the main dragon character in 'The Ice Dragon' and our main character Luca in our class novel - super thinking skills shown!);

    - Exploring the connections that Anglo-Saxon (Jutish) kings like King Aethelbert made with other lands like the Franks to ensure their power and position;

    - Studying ocean currents (currents not currants!) in Geography and the connection between ocean currents and climate. We even re-created a gyre in the classroom;

    - Enjoying Tag Rugby with Mr Kirby where we used our throwing, receiving and dodging skills and developed our Dance by Chance dance with Mrs. E;

    - Revisiting another Islamic religious story called 'Ibrahim's Call' to teach us more about the role of the prophet in the Islamic faith;

    - Enjoying trying the new lunch menu;

    and

    - Taking part in our Non-Uniform Day on Friday to help us prepare a collection of tombola prizes for the Christmas Fair - Thank you for your donations!

    Week Beginning Monday 11th November

    It has been such a busy week at Stretham but we have enjoyed some fantastic learning opportunities together.

    This week, Kestrel class have:

    - been learning about Multiples in Maths using a range of methods including concrete modelling, game playing and reasoning tasks;

    - written a fantasy diary entry that saw our characters (scientists, explorers, friends across galaxies) entring the colourful and simply breathtaking world of a moon called Pandora;

    - completed our own designs for 'doodlers' based on our evaluation of the prototype doodler we made together at school;

    - continued to read our class novel - Race to Imagination Island - to find out if our predictions about team groupings were correct;

    - explored how the migrations of the three Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) to Britain actually happened;

    - investigated maritime trade in Geography;

    - read a brilliantly challenging poem by Benjamin Zephaniah called 'We Refugees' and discussed the message the poet was trying to convey;

    - enjoyed a selection of Michael Rosen poems (especially his performance poems like Chocolate Cake and Strict) as Tuesday this week marked the first ever Michael Rosen Day;

    - participated in further Tag Rugby session with Mr Kirby and engaged with our Dance by Chance unit with Mrs. E;

    and

    - participated in Kindness Week by discussing the difference between unkind/ mean acts and true acts of bullying including bullying online and tried to carryout random acts of kindness with our Positivity Jars to spread a little cheer.

    We celebrated Children In Need together on Friday, dressed in spots, stripes or Pudsey clothing and put our pennies on Pudsey to raise a little extra for the charity. Sadly, we also had to say goodbye to Mrs Marsh but we got a chance to thank her for all she has done and give her a little treat from all of us. Kestrels also made her her own positivity jar to take away with her filled with all our messages of kindness.

    Week Beginning Monday 4th November

    Welcome back Kestrels! We have loved hearing about your half term adventures but have really enhjoyed seeing your smiling faces in school again.

    We have had a full first week back and have:

    - completed our work around formal addition, subtraction and related skills;

    - read further into our class novel 'Race to Imagination Island' and made predictions about who we thought would form a team in the main race based on the contextual clues;

    - made a comparison between two poems we have been reading - 'The Listeners' and 'The Highway Man' and a reflection on Part 2 of the 2nd poem - the children had very strong opinions on the outcome of the story for Bess;

    - started our unit on Anglo-Saxons by learning about how, when and why the Romans left Britain and what happened when tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes made attacks by land and sea - we used role play to imagine the pleas from the remaining Romans to the emperor in Constantinople and imagined how the 3 different tribes would have responded to the other incoming tribes wants for land;

    - collected descriptive language to use in our writing from other subjects, texts we have read and our own experiences of visiting other locations;

    - begun to use our descriptive language skills to write a diary entry imagining that we are visiting a fantasy moon called 'Pandora';

    - welcomed in representatives from the NSPCC to share a session with us about their 'Speak Out. Stay Safe.' campaign. They taught us all about the ways some children can be treated, how we can keep ourselves safe and helped us to identify safe adults in our lives to support us both in school and at home;

    - continued to build our musical skills using the glockenspiels to play a specific tune;

    - learnt about the oceans and seas of the world and where to locate them;

    - enjoyed revisiting our knowledge of school subjects with Madame Connolly;

    - begun to re-tell the story of Nuh and his Ark from the Islamic faith using our own retelling techniques;

    and

    - have begun to learn the rules of TAG rugby with Mr. Kirby and how to 'Dance by Chance' in PE with Mrs. E.

    It has been such a full and fun first week back. Thank you for your enthusiasm Kestrels.

    Week Beginning Monday 21st October

    Well done for a fantastic first half term in Year 5, Kestrels.

     You have completed Week 8 of this half term by:

    - continuing to develop your calculation skills through inverse pyramid challenges, 4 in a Row games and multi-step problem solving;

    - reading the incredible poem, 'The Listeners' by Walter de la Mare and making links between it and 'The Highway Man' by Alfred Noyce;

    - using your GPS knowledge of expanded noun phrases, effective verbs and adjectives to build a descriptive text entitled 'Autumn Walk';

    - drawing together your knowledge from the Geography unit 'Why is California so Thirsty?' to create a poster to explain the interlinked aspects of water use, water management and the impact of drought;

    - creating an interactive moon phases dial to help us explain the movement of the Moon in relation to the Earth's movement about the Sun;

    - explaining how Early Islamic thinkers paved the way for modern mathematicians, physicians and scientists;

    - investigating how electronic doodlers can be adapted to create different patterns (using various artist's materials) by changing how the counterweight is placed;

    - finding out about the upcoming Hindu festival of Diwali and creating a Diwali inspired decoration featuring rangoli patterns and paper diva lanterns;

    - seeing how coordination supports our fitness development;

    and

    - reading our class novel to unpick the unlikely friendship that has developed between our main character Luca and another racer called Grayson.

     

    I hope you all enjoy your well deserved half term holiday. See you in November! smiley

    Week Beginning Monday 14th October 

    This week, Kestrel class have been:

    - reviewing and developing their mental strategies and formal column methods for addition and subtraction;

    - gathering sensory language to create a descriptive write on an autumn theme;

    - learning how to effectively pink pen edit our free writes; 

    - considering the next steps for California and their water management, for both rural and urban settings, to help avoid future drought;

    - creating a scientific model to help us explain the movement of the Earth's moon in relation to Earth and the Sun;

    - demonstrating their understanding of how Early Islamic civilisations learnt about the wider world through astronomy, maths and geography;

    - enjoying Computing sessions with Mrs. Bowen, where they discussed things that cannot be found on the world wide web and why;

    - able to show Mr Kirby that they have learnt to run their own games of football, including the refereeing responsibilities, without him having to step in;

    - continuing their analysis of The Highwayman - Part 1 - a poem by Alfred Noyce, making predictions about the narrative to come in Part 2;

    - enjoyed a French session with Madame Connolly describing others traits;

    - continued to dissect our class novel - Race to Imagination Island - considering the character traits of one of the racers called Tiago;

    and

    - completed another phase of our Fitness sessions focusing on balance.

     

    A big well done to the Year 5 girls who participated in the Girls' Football event on Friday.

    We have also rounded off our week by 'Wearing Pink' to raise awareness for Breast Cancer. Well done to everyone who joined in!

    Week Beginning 7th October

    Kestrel class has had a busy week of learning and activities related to wider school life.

    We have:

    - been inspired by the paralympic athlete, Sean Rose, and his story which showed the importance of determination, resilience and a positive attitude;

    - completed fitness circuits with Sean Rose to test our strength, agility and resilience;

    - continued to read our Class Novel - Imagination Island - and have summarise the stry so far whilst making predictions about what will happen next;

    - completed our learning about number in Maths and have moved on to the mental strategies and formal written methods for addition;

    - explored how Day and Night happen across the time zones of the world;

    - learnt about the greatest minds in our Early Islamic Civilisation studies and their learning in astrnomy, geometry and geography;

    -questioned what will be next for California in their forward planning for water provision and drought reduction;

    - completed our explanation text in English, where we used our scientific knowledge of how Day and Night happens, to explain it to our audience;

    - learnt a bit more about the First Prophet according to the Islamic faith;

    - enjoyed PE with Mr Kirby - where he praised us for our teamwork and our fantastic Computing lesson with Mrs. Bowen;

    - enjoyed a live webinar with author Hannah Gold (The Last Bear/ The Lost Whale/ Turtle Moon) and the illustrator of these texts - Levi Pinfold. We were able to pose our questions to them and receive live responses;

    - participated in team related fitness activities to improve our agility, speed and application of game tactics;

    - listened to the speeches for (given by Year 6) and participated in the vote for our house captains for the year;

     and we have started to look at the language of a poem called 'The Highway Man' by Alfred Noyce - we enjoyed being dictionary detectives to find out the meaning of archaic vocabulary.

     

    Keep up the positive attitudes Kestrels!

    Week Beginning Monday 30th September

    Kestrel class settled in for a positive week, depsite the weather having other plans on Monday and Tuesday.

    A large proportion of the class joyfully participated in Bikeability activities each morning this week to try to achieve their Level 2. The whole class has also:

    - continued to develop our Maths skills around comparing, ordering and rounding values, whilst forging deeper connections through our reasoning challenges;

    - been 'wowed' by the history and proportions of the 'California Aqueduct' and what it achieved for the farmers of California;

    - been excited to see how 'creative' electrical systems can do in DT;

    - enjoyed further chapters of our class novel - Race  to Imagination Island - and further explorations of different forms of text including song lyrics;

    - explored how day and night actually happen by becoming planet Earth and experiencing the rotation that makes up a 24hour day;

    - enjoyed their History lesson with Mr. Sweeney this week where they learnt about the 'House of Wisdom';

    - focused beautifully on the skills required to play an African folk tune (Shosholoza) on the glockenspiels in unison;

    - continued to develop our grammar, punctuation and spelling knowledge;

    - participated well in our PE sessions for football and fitness;

    and 

    - started learning how to structure explanation texts.

     

    Keep being the best versions of yourselves Kestrels smiley

    Week Beginning Monday 23rd September

    Kestrels have trying hard to show their best in their learning this week. We have been:

    - using our communication skills to plan and write letters - informal and formal - varying the structure, content and language to fit our audience;

    - building on our Place Value knowledge by building and partitioning numbers to 1,000,000 using Gattegno charts, place value charts and numberlines;

    - finding out how much water is needed to grow some of the most popular crops in California (Did you know that 9 litres of water are required to grow just 2 almonds!) and how sustainable ththe growth of these crops will be in drought ridden areas;

    - investigating electrical systems inside devices at home such as electrical handmixers and fans and the series circuits that make them work;

    - learning the differences between the Geocentric (Earth at centre) and Heliocentric (Sun at centre) models of our Solar System created by our greatest scientific minds and how they formed these hypotheses so long ago without the technology we have today;

    - acting out the next stage in al-Mansur's origin story for the city of Baghdad and understanding how he needed to cooperate with his people to bring his great plan into being;

    - building our fitness levels through micro-circuits (in the Hall - due to the torrential rain);

    and have continued to read our class novel 'Race to Imagination Island' alongside excerpts from a range of fiction and non-fiction texts.

    Another super week Kestrels with lots to be proud of too!

    Week Beginning Monday 16th September

    Kestrels have been throwing themselves into all aspects of their learning this week. We have been:

    - reading our Class Novel - Race to Imagination Island by Mel Taylor-Bessant - and thinking about the main character Luca;

    - been working on our calculation skills (with some of us being brave enough to take on the role of 'teacher' to explain the process)  and then breaking down numbers into the millions for their place value components - even beginning to count using Powers of 10 and Gattegno charts;

    - writing a collective class poem all about autumn which was inspired by our reading of 'Here We Are' by Oliver Jeffers, as well as poems by Grace Nichols(Cosmic Disco) and Valeria Bloom (Autumn Gilt). We focus on the language which gave each poem its theme then used our poetry knowledge to play with the structure and punctuation to achieve the right effect for our audience;

    - learning about the order and properties of the planets within our solar system through an investigation task that made us all use our oracy skills too;

    - thinking about the impact of droughts on various communities including our focus area of California using satellite images;

    - learning more about al-Mansur's perfect city of Baghdad and why he chose this location;

    - thinking about the messengers of god in Religion and Worldviews;

    - putting our fitness to the test in PE by building on our speed, endurance and agility;

    - learning about the incredible work of Dorothy Vaughan - one of the first African-American women to be a department leader at NASA and NACA;

    - reviewing our knowledge of electrical systems, ready to do some investigating of Electrical Systems in DT;

    - and enjoying lessons in Computing with Mrs Bowen and French with Madame Connolly.

    Welcome Back to a new school year at Stretham Community Primary School

    Welcome to Year 5 and Kestrel class. What a fast paced return to school we have had!

    Over the last week, we have enjoyed:

    - sharing the book 'Here We Are' as a whole school and finding out what it means to us and where we fit within the world;

    - sharing other texts including excerpts from 'The Jamie Drake Equation' by Christopher Edge and some poetry by Grace Nicole;

    - revisiting key calculation skills, finding out how to use Roman Numerals and finding different ways to represent value of digits in Maths;

    - finding out about the role of water, the water cycle (through a brilliant song and dance routine) and its importance in California (Geography);

    - learning about Early Islamic civilisations in History and the amazing story of al-Mansur and his round city which we acted out together;

    - developing our call and repeat singing skills through the South African song 'Shosholoza' sung acapella; 

    - beginning our unit on Earth and Space in Science, where we used evidence from the past to find ways to prove that the Earth is a spherical body;

    - lessons in PE, Computing and RWV too.

    We have particiularly enjoyed sharing our new class novel - 'Race to Imagination Island' - and making predictions about the characters and plot.

     

    What a lovely first week, welcoming the new members of the class, setting our expectations for learning and behaviour and getting started with our learning too!

    Well done Kestrels - keep it up!