Central Idea: Families can support the local community

In RM we have continued our inquiry into how families can support the local community, and this week we have focused on the Royal Family after reading 'The Queen's Hat' as a class. The children then wrote their own letters to the Queen which were absolutely fantastic!

We have also continued to count up to 20 and beyond in maths and the children are growing in confidence with this, being able to use their subitising skills too in order to identify numbers of objects up to 10.

Well done team!

Central Idea: Families can support the local community.

As part of our inquiry into how families can support the local community, we have been discussing the roles that our family members play, discussing their jobs and responsibilities and how they have a positive impact on others.

Following these discussions, the children have produced some fantastic writing about the roles their families play and how important other members of our community are. There were also some fantastic paintings of our mummies and daddies at work!

You can see in the example above that Daisy has drawn a brilliant picture of her mum at work, doing her job as a post lady.

Daisy said: "This is my mummy, she is a post lady and she delivers letters to people. This helps other people because they can read what she gives to them."

We have also continued to work on subitising in maths, and we have been counting forwards and backwards to 20 and beyond. We even managed to count all the way up to 30 and back as a team on Thursday - well done RMC, I'm very proud of you.

Mr Roper

Central Idea: Communities have different jobs in order to help society function

It's been a short but busy week 1M. We have been busy creating and painting clay rockets after learning about and reading the book 'Mae Among The Stars'. Following on from our detective work last week we have used our skills to write a letter to Mr Dosad about the biscuit thief in our school.

In maths we are counting in 2's 5's and 10's with a view to move on to 'groups of' very shortly.

In science we are learning all about plants. We have been learning about the parts of a tree and what the function of those parts is.

Central Idea: Communities function more effectively when there are rules and responsibilities

We have enjoyed our Science learning this week, combining our topics of plants and seasons to investigate deciduous and evergreen trees. We are incredibly fortunate to have so many natural resources on our school grounds and the children enjoyed exploring the woodland and looking at the difference between the types of tree we have.

During our inquiry, we have researched the leaders who make the rules in our country and wrote some interesting facts about Queen Elizabeth II. The children's favourite fact was that The Queen gets two birthdays every year.

We have had great fun with our writing focus of Traditional Tales and have particularly enjoyed comparing two versions of Rapunzel. Some of us particularly enjoyed the version where Rapunzel doesn't need a prince and becomes her own hero by coming up with a clever plan and escaping the witch #girlpower

Central Idea: Communities provide services designed to meet people's needs.

Due to the SATs assessments this week, our learning journey has been slightly different to usual. However, we have found plenty of time to carry on delving into our central idea. This week, we have begun our second line of inquiry on how communities can survive without services. With this, we have been able to locate and focus on the continent of Africa, exploring how Marden and rural African villages compare in relation to the services they have on offer. We have noted vast differences between the services available and have started to appreciate how fortunate we are within our community. We are looking forward to exploring this further, especially in seeing how these communities survive without basic commodities such as electricity and water.

Central Idea: Places can change as a result of human impact and organisations.

This week we had a surprise project delivered to our classroom. We have been exploring the Secret Treasures of Kent box and finding out new information about some of the most amazing places, that are right on our doorstep. The children researched, planned and created their very own advert about one of the locations. They also focused on persuasive techniques, to include within their advert! We are going to enter these into the competition, that could win us a trip to one of the locations! Fingers crossed!

In maths we continued looking at measurement, specifically equivalent lengths and comparing lengths. The children have looked at m, cm and mm and are becoming more confident with their knowledge on measurement.

We have also looked at present perfect and past perfect tense, where the children worked together to identify sentences that were written in these tenses. I was super impressed with what great communicators they were while working in pairs and their class discussion.

Central Idea: Economic activities rely on systems of production, exchange and consumption of goods.

This week we have continued our learning about trade and where our produce come from. We have looked further into our 'food miles' from origin to plate. We then looked at the global supply chain. Focussing on the full journey of items, the processes involved and the necessary jobs at each step of the process. This flowed nicely into discussions based around the equality of trade. We have begun to study the journey of cotton. Starting with the cotton pickers in Peru all the way through to the large fashion companies in Europe. We are now looking at how to get a fairer deal for garment workers.

In maths we have been working with money. We have been looking at pounds and pence, coins and notes. We have been finding different combinations to make the same total, we have been comparing the amount of money and we have been solving a range of problems with money.

Central Idea: Transportation systems can be developed to meet the needs of a community

As part of our inquiry into transportation systems we went on a school outing. We started by doing some vehicle data collection in Marden and then caught the train to Tonbridge so we could compare our findings - we had to work really fast as there were so many more vehicles in the town. We were also able to compare our findings to a city by looking at some live traffic cameras in London. We had a lovely time on our trip and were really lucky with the weather! We even managed to find time to play in the park.

Please can we remind you to provide a water bottle and a sunhat now that the weather is getting warmer. If your child needs to reapply suncream then please ensure that it is named and in their bag for them to do so at lunch time.

Central Idea: Roles and responsibilities lead to successful leadership.

Maths - This week in maths we have continued to look at decimals, exploring the relationship between fractions and decimals. We have also moved on to exploring thousandths, using practical resources to understand that these represent 1/1000 of a whole. Using this new knowledge, we have been able to reason and problem solve, including identifying thousandths on a number line.

Inquiry - Through our second line of inquiry, we have completed our learning about Eyam and the Great Plague, producing and publishing some wonderful stories, which you can see above. We have then started to think about our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including looking at how school leaders responded to the new challenges in schools. We wrote questions and then interviewed both Mr Dosad and Mrs Rawling in order to understand the response that was undertaken in their previous schools.

Science - In science, we looked at thermal insulators, thinking about which materials were best for keeping the drink warm. The children designed their own experiment, created tables for their results and analysed these results using graphs. They were then able to draw informed conclusions about which materials were the best thermal conductors.

Next week we will be completing an exciting DT project so look out for updates through social media and (hopefully!) some brilliant final pieces to bring home.

Central Idea: Roles and responsibilities lead to successful leadership.

We have been challenging ourselves further in our maths learning this week, as we have moved onto decimal numbers up to 3 decimal places. The children are building on their prior knowledge to now understand the concept of thousandths, and how we write a number with thousandths in it. They are working very hard and showing great perseverance with the trickier questions!

The class became young scientists this week, and showed off their 'working scientifically' skills to test materials for their effectiveness as insulators. They thought about the term 'thermal insulation,' and how this could apply to keeping a 'cup of tea' hot. They then carried out their own experiment, created tables for their results and analysed these results using graphs. They were then able to draw informed conclusions about which materials were the best thermal conductors.

We are now delving into our second line of inquiry and we have completed our learning about Eyam and the Great Plague, producing and publishing some wonderful stories which you can see above. We have also started to think about our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including looking at how school leaders responded to the new challenges in schools. As a class, we thought of some interesting questions to pose to Mr Dosad and Mrs Rawlings, in order to understand the response that was undertaken in their previous schools.

We are very excited to complete our DT project next week!

Central Idea: Conflict shapes society

Inquiry - We have been using our knowledge of WW2 to support our creative writing, whereby children have been writing a descriptive narrative which also incorporates dialogue. In order to do this, children have needed to work within very accurate and complex grammatical structures to convey character thoughts, emotions and actions as well as moving the story on. Our editing has needed to be very thorough during this writing process. Following our study of the repercussions for Germany at the end of WW1, children have begun to inquire into the rise of Hitler.

Maths - This week, we have revised area, perimeter and volume in addition to shape, space and measure of angles. We continue to practise our basic arithmetic skills to ensure speed and accuracy of recall.

Science - The children have been thoroughly engaged in our new topic of electricity and we have really enjoyed finding out more about how electricity is generated. We have learnt about renewable and non-renewable resources of electricity as well as considering the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Notices:

As you know, next week is SATs week. We have invited all year 6 children to come in early (Monday to Thursday) for an 8.15am breakfast which we will cook for them. We hope that by coming in early, it will give them a chance to relax before the tests as well as having a good breakfast and a chance to feel well-prepared for the demands of each day.

Cake Sale - Tuesday 24th May, 3.00-3.15pm, KS1 Playground. We would be so grateful if you could provide your child with a shop-bought cake for this fundraising sale. If you prefer to make a cake, please ensure all ingredients/allergens are written down and can be displayed with the cake.