Dear Parents/Carers,

I hope you have had a good week. At school, we have had another busy week and can not believe we are already nearing the half term.  Last week, I had the pleasure of watching Chestnut Class perform their assembly to their parents.  It was thoroughly enjoyable and great to see how much the children have learned already.  We had a special visitor in this week who talked to us about harvest and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for your generous donations. 

Both the teachers and I are looking forward to seeing you at the parents' meeting next week either in person or online.  We have sent the log in details home today as a for google classroom if you have an online meeting.  Mrs Perry, our SENCO,  has also made appointments available if you would like to speak to her in addition to the class teacher. 

I hope you have a good half term when it arrives. 

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me.  

Kind regards,

Mrs Wright

Pear class has been working hard learning a lot of different things and practicing new skills.

If you would like to find out more about our interesting learning, please read on!

Maths

We have moved on from looking at place value but will keep practicing these skills. We are now focusing on using our understanding of numbers to add and subtract. We have started this by doing one more and one less and ten more and ten less. We are using 100 squares and cubes to help us.

Science
We have been learning about ‘Materials and their Properties’. We began by exploring different materials, describing their uses. This led to a discussion about the different ways we can use materials and how they are suited to their purpose. Next week, we will be designing a coat using our new knowledge about what materials should be used for what.

English

We have been reading the story of Anansi the spider and how his 6 sons rescued him. This is a traditional story from the Ashanti people of Ghana. We have been using the story to write our own version, where we are writing about a different animal going on an adventure and what happens to them.  We have been working hard to put our writing in order and use describing words in front of our nouns.

Computing

We developed our understanding of technology and how it can help us. We have become more familiar with the different components of a computer by developing our keyboard and mouse skills. We have also looked at how we can use information technology safely and what other things we can do to have a break from information technology.

Geography

In Geography, we have been learning all about our world that we live in and what the words continents and countries mean. We are now able to use a map to find where countries are within continents.

Art

We have been having lots of fun exploring how to use our pencils to draw different lines and different colour oil pastels to blend. We are now putting these skills together to create our own cityscapes. We have used different artists’ landscapes to inspire us to draw our own cityscape over the top of our blended oil pastel background.

PSHCE

For these lessons, we have been carrying on thinking about being me in my world. We have been looking at rights, responsibilities, rewards and consequences. Some of our lessons have been adapted to focus on how we can make good choices in the playground and all of the positive ways we can play and act with each other.

If you are wanting your Year 5 child to take the South West Herts Schools Consortium tests at the beginning of Year 6, in 2024, please refer to the South West Herts Schools Consortium website.  This will give you information on how to register for the tests, calendar dates for deadlines, free test materials, FAQs, contact numbers and the account page to Parent Portal. If you are interested, this may also be the time to start thinking about consortium tuition for your child.  We as a school do not provide tuition and so this will need to be an external provider. 

Academic Tests: Parmiter's, Queens, Rickmansworth, St Clement Danes, Watford Boys and Watford Girls

Music Aptitude Test: Parmiters, Queens, Rickmansworth, St Clement Danes, Watford Boys, Watford Girls, Croxley Danes. 

Sports Test: Queens.