Rufford Park Primary School

Week 6, ending 9 December

Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog

Show Music has greeted the children each morning this week, which has seemed pretty appropriate, as we have all been practising (at home AND at school, it seems!) for next Wednesday’s Y5/6 Christmas assembly. We are looking forward to sharing our work and our Christmas singing too. Looking forward to seeing you there, too.

Workwise, the children in Oak Tree have been furthering their knowledge of Fractions in Maths, and of Electricity in Science. One of these subjects has certainly been more fun than the other this week – I’ll let you try to guess which one! It was super to see so many faces light up when they realised that their homemade switch actually worked! Eureka!

A little more work has been done on Yeadon’s AVRO Factory and we have finished the WW2 journey, by evaluating which major event was likely to have been a historical turning point for the Allies – a very interesting discussion.

We are all looking forward to our winning Treat Afternoon, courtesy of FORP (next week!) and, of course, to our Christmas holiday!

Have a suitably busy, yet festive, weekend!

Mrs Adrienne Amos

Week 5, ending 2 December 2022

Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog

December already!? We haven’t gone Christmas-Crazy just yet in Oak Tree Class, you will be pleased to know, but we are busily practising a set of carols and readings with WW2 themes for you to enjoy on Wednesday 14 December. Hopefully, everyone has returned their ticket slip by now…

This week, our mornings have primarily been taken up with completing Autumn assessments in maths and English; we have had fun in other curriculum areas, though!

In our history topic session, we evaluated sources of information about the Blitz in 1940 and were surprised to realise that the ‘stiff upper lip’ played a huge part in thwarting the German’s plan to demoralise the British public. How funny we found the photograph of a milkman still going about his daily duties while all the buildings around him had been reduced to rubble! It certainly made us re-evaluate our original thoughts about the devastation of the Blitz.

We have started reading an auto-biographical account of a man, John Denison, who spent his teenage years in Yeadon, during WW2. Recognising street names and other places he talks about, including the old Avro factory, has sent ripples of delight across the classroom at times. We looked at Google maps too to help us get an idea of the area that John writes about, including gauging the size of the Avro factory during the war. These memoirs of John Denison have really helped to bring our topic alive – the local link has been fantastic!

As we haven’t been able to use the hall for any PE lessons this week, due to EYFS/KS1 Nativity rehearsals, we have embarked on a Daily Mile session, where we tried to run a mile. We calculated how many times we would need to run around the MUGA, plus a little extra up and down the path, would equate to a mile. We have done this a couple of times now and it has been so pleasing to see the children wanting to improve their own record each time! We have also introduced Go Noodle dances as part of our PE sessions. Ask your child to tell you all about “Banana, Banana, Meatball”!

Thank you again for all your donations for the school Christmas Fayre. They were certainly worth it – Oak Tree Class (along with Cherry Tree Class) won! So FORP (Friends Of Rufford Park) has been in touch to congratulate us and we are currently in discussions as to what our ‘treat’ will be…

Homework this weekend is a bit of Maths and Spellings, as usual, as well as learning a poem off by heart: In Flanders’ Fields.

Have a fun-filled weekend,

Mrs Adrienne Amos

Week 4, ending 25 November 2022

Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog

Northern Soul has been our theme music all week – such a splendid way to start each day! It was so entertaining seeing the children join in with some ‘oldies’ this week!

In Maths this week, we have needed to recap and revise Addition and Subtraction methods, as crucial aspects seem to have been forgotten by most! You may notice that this forms part of our homework  - do please join in with the addition/subtraction game in a bid to support their learning.

This week’s English has finished with thoughtful character studies about the man in The Piano – and I have been so pleased to see the effort from each and every child to improve their handwriting in their published piece.

Yet more skills have been learned in Tag Rugby with Matt this week – we now know the three main ways a rugby ball can be thrown. These sessions are so much fun!

Ukelele lessons are going from strength to strength, too. Silent Night and Jingle Bells are being learned right now, so hopefully we can impress you with our playing before the Christmas holidays. 

Don’t forget it’s the Christmas Fayre on Saturday – thank you for all the donations you have been sending in for the Christmas Movie Treat. (We are extremely hopeful that we could be the winners…. watch this space!)

Have a super weekend,

Mrs Adrienne Amos

Week 3, ending 17/11/22

Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog

A short week for us at RPPS, but it still gave us many opportunities for furthering learning! The children came in each morning to Rockabilly tunes, while they completed Early Bird Maths. Some children are still needing to work on recalling their Times Table facts, so extra time with Miss Hanna has been provided in the mornings too.

In English, one area we have been developing (along with handwriting, grammar and spellings!) is the use of effective sentence openers. By looking at a poignant video from LiteracyShed called The Piano, different sentence opener ideas have been encouraged in written tasks. Hopefully, this short unit will feed into all writing tasks over the next months. It would be really helpful if parents could help children identify some effective sentence openers in reading books, as your child reads to you.

In Science, we are beginning a new unit on Electricity and in PE we have started learning the rules and skills for Tag Rugby. The Dunkirk Evacuation made for a very interesting History lesson – we spent a lot of time discussing how this event really helped changed the direction of the Second World War.

Ukelele lessons are progressing well – we are all enjoying learning new notes, chords and songs each week. Monday mornings are so much fun! And we also had a lot of fun ‘buddying up’ with our two Reception classes this week, encouraging their learning of nursery rhymes, by sharing the ones we can recall! Twinkle Twinkle seemed to be the favourite one! I think Mrs Millen and Mrs Mace have photos of this heart-warming session on their class blogs – do have a look if you can by clicking the link here.

Homework this week continues with learning our spelling rules (-able words) and some Maths is coming home each week now too. Please encourage your child to complete their tasks independently and to bring their homework into school each Wednesday morning. If your child has also brought home a Times Table booklet this weekend, it means that more time needs to be spent on these at home as well. I would like each child to complete an activity page a week and bring the booklet in each Wednesday, too.

Have a very nice weekend! (Lucky children get an extra day!)

Mrs Adrienne Amos

Week 2, ending 11 November

Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog

This has been a great week for us in Oak Tree. We have finished our amazing double page spreads in English, on the Role of Women in WWII and we have come in each morning, listening to punk/punk pop music! 

These tunes have set us up well for motivated, enthusiastic learning.

As well as this, the children have spent a lot of time considering ‘Why we Remember’. Remembrance Day 2022 has had much more of a meaningful impact on our children this year, I feel, as we have been studying World War 2 for the term. Some children were able to invest time and thought when considering local fallen WW2 soldiers, by creating a Poppy Pebble. We hope, that by the end of Friday, every soldier from Yeadon who died, will have had a commemorative pebble, cross or wreath made in their name by the children in Y5/6. (Please see our photo.)

It has also been an exciting week for some of our athletes as SEVEN Oak Tree Class pupils represented Rufford Park Primary at an inter-school cross country event. It was really exciting to clap out of the classroom our seven sporting hopefuls on Wednesday afternoon.

Finally – a word about Reading in Year 5. Children can record any reading in their red reading records. This could be their school banded book, school library book, book club book or a book from home. As your child is now in Upper Key Stage Two, they can record independent reading in their reading record (as long as they can summarise what they have read!) alongside any reading they complete with an adult. Our goal is that children learn to enjoy reading for pleasure and achieve well during their time at Rufford Park and we want every child to leave at the end of Year 6 a confident and capable reader.

An interesting statistic from The Reading Agency, a national charity helping to create a world where everyone is reading, is that children who read books often at age 10 gain higher results in maths and English at age 16, than those who read less regularly. 

Reading for just 20 minutes per day equates to being exposed to roughly 1,800,000 words per year compared to reading for 5 minutes per day which equates to around 282,000 words a year. 

Have a super weekend – full of exciting reading, hopefully!

Yours, Mrs Adrienne Amos

(PS Do remember that next Friday is a Training Day for RPPS!)