Mental maths, eerie eyes and Stanway School!

What another amazing week in Class 5!

In English, we have been looking at instructional texts. First we studied imperative verbs and time-related conjunctions, and then we looked into how brackets can be used in our writing to help us add extra information.

By the end of the week we were ready to write our own dastardly criminal mastermind instructions! We had instructions on how to rob banks, steal the crown jewels, and even to turn Colchester into zombies (it was, quite frankly, frightening how evil Class 5 could really be when they put their minds to it)! We have obviously been very inspired by the wickedness of Artemis Fowl in our class book!

In maths we have been going mental this week! Don't worry, that doesn't mean we were over-excited. We simply needed to go over how to work out addition and subtraction problems in our heads, and discuss the techniques that we use.

We then got to work in our table groups and create our own posters illustrating the mental methods we had discussed - our classroom is looking a lot more colourful as a result!

In science, year 6 had fun learning about how we see with our eyes and interpret what we see with our brains. We performed experiments that proved we had a blind spot in the back of our eye, as well as discovering what our dominant eye was and looking at mind-bending optical illusions!

Finally on Friday we got a chance to go on the Stanway taster day! We were all very excited to go, as you can tell by these photographs.

Don't forget to come back to Fordham on Monday children!

Mrs Crawley

iSing Pop!

What a wonderful musical week we have had!

At the end of last week, some of our year 6 stepped up in front of the class and spoke beautifully about why they would like to become a house captain. Mrs. Sibley was super impressed with the public speaking talent we had in class! House Captain decisions will be announced next week.

In English we have completed our unit on descriptive writing, and all managed to make improvements in our descriptions of our criminal masterminds. We also started investigating our first spelling rule - looking at 'ough' spellings.

In maths we also completed our unit on place value, and we are now thinking of the different mental methods that we use to help us add and subtract ready for next week.

In topic we concluded our look at crime and punishment in the Roman period by making our own Roman curse tablets. We had to choose a crime that had been made against us, a God to appeal to and an appropriate (and in a lot of cases quite silly) curses to put upon that person. We then etched our curse onto a strip of silver-looking plastic (a safer replica to the lead sheeting that they used in Roman times!)

In science year 6 discovered how the eyes help us to see things, and that our eyes see things upside down! To prove this we made our own pinhole cameras, and were amazed to see how they worked!

We did an experiment to see how our pupils change size according to the light

We quickly discovered that if we hid in the dark our pinhole cameras worked much better...

... and the jumper-wearing craze soon took hold!

We also realised poking out of the dark cupboard worked too!

Of course the major highlight of this week was learning 7 songs, recording an album and taking part in 2 performances with iSing Pop! Here are some photos of us in rehearsals, reminders of a great week!

Just a reminder that homework this week will be due in on Thursday 29^th September instead of the usual 30^th, as we will be enjoying our taster day at Stanway on that day!

Mrs Crawley

Whatever the Weather

In a week that has had all sorts of weather; we have had all sorts of learning going on in Class 5 too!

In theme we began our topic of Crime and Punishment! We started with the task of ordering the different time periods in British History, which led to lots of interesting discussions where we managed to clear up a lot of misconceptions!

 We started our look into Crime and Punishment through the ages by looking at the Roman legal system. We learnt some of the crimes and interesting punishments for them – and were suitably outraged that the severity of the punishment depended on your social standing!

We then had a chance to work in our groups and create our own ‘Roman Crimestoppers’ recreations of some of the crimes and punishments we had discovered, and very much enjoyed wrapping ourselves up in sheets for added authenticity.

In maths we have continued our work on numbers with a focus on comparing, ordering and most importantly rounding! Most of us felt very confident by Friday that we were able to round decimals to different decimal places.

In science on Wednesday, we blocked out the glorious sun so year 6 could conduct experiments about how to change the size of a shadow depending on the distance of the light source. Many of us were able to suggest ways of making our test fair and more accurate.

In literacy this week we have been looking at descriptive devices to help us with describing our criminal masterminds. We explored the role of similes, thought about how to show emotions instead of telling them and explored how we could write these sentences with a variety of sentence starters. At the end of the week, some of our brave year 6s did a small presentation to Mrs Sibley explaining why they would make good House Captains. Results for said presentations will be announced soon!

Our first homework was given out this week. Pupils have 2 pages of their CGP Maths books to complete, based on place value of large numbers and rounding decimal numbers. Their spelling homework this week is to decorate their class spellings poster for this half term. Homework will be due on Friday 23^rd September.

Next week: Get your vocal chords ready for iSing Pop week!

Mrs Crawley