Oak Tree Class Blog
Oak Tree Class Blog
Week 3, ending 8 March 2024
Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog
Reader: Eva
Special Mention: Amelia
Congratulations to these hard workers this week!
Gosh, it has been a busy week here at Rufford Park! The music genre that the children in Oak have been listening to has been ‘Legendary Bands’. The Who, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones are among the tunes we have enjoyed.
In Maths, we have started some work on Decimals/Percentages, but we have also spent time recapping the key methods (algorithms) for Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division. Homework this weekend is also refreshing the children’s memories of these methods.
Our news reports about the alleged yeti/bigfoot visit continue in English lessons – we have been working especially hard to keep our language formal and to use relative clauses to add extra information. They are going to be a superb final piece of work, I think: one to be proud of.
Oliver rehearsals have continued for Y5 children – only a week or so to go now. Hopefully, all children can be at the two evening performances – it is really important you let me know as soon as possible if this is not the case. Costumes need to be brought in on Monday, on a coat hanger and covered by a named plastic bag. (This way, we can hang them up on the costume rack we now have in Oak Tree’s classroom.)
World Book Day was a real highlight of the week for us – during this day, the children designed their own book covers for AI inspired blurbs, they had an extremely entertaining assembly by the author, Phil Earle, they spend time reading a huge variety of non-fiction books and also were encouraged to visit other KS2 classrooms to listen to a newly purchased audio book for half an hour. We are really trying to inspire children to find a genre, an author or a type of book to love – and thus become real Readers for Pleasure.
Have a great weekend
Yours,
Mrs Adrienne Amos
Week 2, ending 1 March 2024
Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog
Reader:
Special Mention:
None this week, due to no Special Mention Assembly
EMO tunes have been the music theme for this week and Avril Lavigne’s classic hit, Sk8er Boi, was by far the most popular. Tune!
In English, the children are continuing to learn about newspapers and are constructing their own news report about a possible Yeti sighting in Yeadon – you may have heard something about this already! In Maths, we have finished our Y5 work on fractions, and now know how to multiply fractions and find fractions of quantities. Homework reflects these two concepts.
A big highlight for the children this week was to listen to the antics of James Ketchell, adventurer, thanks to the generosity of FORP and spend part of the afternoon listening to his key ‘rules to live by’. Some of these were: never to give up on something you really want to do; if you find something hard, then take it a small step at a time and always be kind. I hope that your child will be able to expand on this a little more!
In our art session, we looked at the work on linear perspective by Susie Barstow and the children have created some beautiful landscapes, following her style.
Oliver rehearsals and prop making sessions continue – not long to go now! So please do encourage your child to learn their words (if they have not already done so) and remember to book your tickets for one of the three shows on offer (Tuesday, 19th March at 1.30 and 6pm and Wednesday, 20th at 6pm).
Homework is Maths and Spellings – both are due in on Wednesday (and do remember World Book Day is on Thursday, 7th March and we are encouraging the children to come dressed as the character they represented on their thought bubble - someone inspirational).
I hope you have a super weekend.
Yours,
Mrs Adrienne Amos
Week 1, ending 23 February
Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog
Reader: Viraaj
Special Mention: Lillie
Well done to these children!
Welcome back to school for Spring Term 2! K-Pop has greeted the children every day – from BTS to 2NE1…(every day is a school day, even for teachers!).
This week, even though it has only been four days for the children, has been super busy. We have started back on fractions, including multiplying them and we are continuing to look at the conventions of newspapers.
In other news (!), Oliver rehearsals continue and we are all enjoying putting together the scenes and songs, as well as designing and making the scenery for our production. Hopefully, costumes are being collected together by family and friends - please do contact me if there is an issue regarding the clothing your child needs. Email me, as usual, at oak@ruffordparkprimary.org.uk
In our Art unit this term, we have been looking at American landscapes and the children thoroughly enjoyed piecing together their own American Landscape, in the style of Ansel Adams, by cutting at and overlaying key images from his phenomenal photographs. I was really wowed by the finished products!
Rivers was the theme for our topic lesson this week – a real geography skills session, where the children looked at maps and atlases, comparing a river in California and the river Wharfe. I have challenged the children to learn the names of ten rivers this term, including five from Great Britain. Perhaps you could help them with this too? We are making a real effort to develop our geography knowledge during this topic.
I hope you have a lovely weekend,
Yours,
Mrs Adrienne Amos
Week 5, ending 9 February 2024
Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog
Reader: Henry M
Special Mention: Finn
Well done to these children this week!
Rap and Hip Hop have greeted the children each morning – don’t worry though, I have vetted each and every song to ensure a ‘clean’ version has been played!
This week has been Internet Safety Week – and here is a link for you to follow and hopefully help to start a conversation with your children about this very important subject.
https://saferinternet.org.uk/guide-and-resource/parents-and-carers
We have spent quite a lot of time in discussion about how important it is that we keep ourselves as safe online, as we do irl. (in real life!)
Maths has been the short method for division, but we are also introducing an Arithmetic Test each week in Y5. This is in a bid to prepare the children well for their prospective work in Y6so any help you can give your child in addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions would be very helpful. Each child has the aim to improve the score (even by one mark!)) each week. Science has been more about Forces and we also learned about the Water Cycle in our Topic session – which seems more science-y than geography really. But it does filter in nicely with work on rivers. We had our inter-team rugby tournament as well in PE. A very busy week!
Letters should be in bags about costumes for Oliver and the song words should be there too!
A fun half term was finished with our second try at Oak Tree's Got Talent. Winners pics are attached! First = Da Squirting Squirtles and Second was Amber
Have a super half term.
Yours,
Mrs Adrienne Amos
Week 4, ending 2 February
Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog
Reader: Rumina
Special Mention: Luke
Well done to these children this week!
At last January is over!! Woop! What an inordinately long month it seemed to be!!
Another busy busy week in Oak Tree Class, but we really seem to be motoring through the Y5 curriculum and seeing some great progress!
Our music genre this week has been Disco – and even though YMCA probably received the largest response, the Bee Gees ‘Stayin’ Alive’ had lots of heads bopping to the beat!
We have finally completed our non-chronological reports and each child has produce a fantastic double page spread on the theme of Twinned Towns/Sister Cities. Miss Suggitt and I hope to display them as soon as possible.
Methods for long multiplication have been learned in maths – some of you may well recall the ‘grid method’? Lots of children have really seen the benefit of using this technique before moving onto the more traditional algorithm for long multiplication. Homework this week reflects this learning – please do support your child in these questions and encourage them to show all their working out.
We have continued learning the skills for Tag Rugby in PE and next week, there is hopefully going to be an intra-school Tag Rugby competition which is very exciting! [Pray for good weather!!]
An extra home learning task the children have been set is to try to memorise as many US state names as they can – and, if possible, their abbreviated form eg NY for New York, FL for Florida. This work complements our studies in geography, where we will soon be comparing Yorkshire with the Western USA. Many children are thoroughly enjoying this work, I am pleased to say.
I hope you all enjoy your weekends,
Yours,
Mrs Adrienne Amos