Curriculum Bulletin: Year 1

Curriculum Bulletin: Year 1

Autumn 2 

• This topic has a history focus. Not only will the children be learning about the toys they all enjoy playing with but they will also be exploring how toys have changed over the years.
• Creating a toy timeline.
• Investigating what toys their parents enjoyed and what their grandparents played with.
• Comparing the features of old and new toys including the design and the materials they are made from including similarities and differences.
• Participating in their own toy adventure.
• Here are some activities to support learning in class.

          

• The children have daily phonics lessons which help them to become more confident readers and writers.
• The children will be having weekly spelling tests and will be given a spelling log of all the words they will be tested on over the year.
• Useful games include phonics play  Deep Sea Phonics
• These are all the sounds the children need to be able to read.

• The children are involved in daily reading activities in school, whether they read individually, in a group or by exploring a text as a class.
• They will be able to identify and recognise characteristics of both fiction and nonfiction books.
• We recommend that the children read at least four times a week and record what they read in their reading log. In return they will receive a house point.
• Don’t forget you can also sign up for free with oxford owl.
• We will be reading and studying the Old Bear stories by Jane Hissy with the children as well as other toy stories.

• The children will continue to use their nuts and bolts when writing. They need to remember that each sentence begins with a capital letter, ends with a full stop and each word separated with a finger space.
• The children will be taught about using different words at the start of sentences.
• There will be opportunities for the children to write for different purposes including: a story map, a recount, a character profile and a poster.

• Consolidating counting forwards and backwards to 20
• Practise counting in 2’s and 10’s forwards and backwards
• Learn the value of different coins game
• Using addition and subtraction in real life situations in the context of money
• Exploring Measure with a focus on height and length.
• Learn the names and properties of 2D and 3D shapes game

Days to remember

• PE is taught every Monday and Thursday. Please make sure a PE kit is in school for these days.
• We have the opportunity to go to the library and change our books every Tuesday.
• Spellings will be tested every Friday.

Curriculum Bulletin: Year 2

Autumn 2: Fire, Fire! 

English: 

• To create a wanted poster about Guy Fawkes. 
• To write a diary entry from the point of view of Samuel Pepys 
• Read firework poems and answer questions about them. 
• Create a firework poem. 
• Design and write a cure for The Plague.
• The writings targets are: to use a comma in a list and to use a noun phrase. 

The class novel will be Charlie and Lola: We completely must go to London. 

Maths:

• To subtract a two-digit number and ones and a two-digit number and tens.
• To subtract mentally a two-digit number from another two-digit number.
• To recognise the relationships between addition and subtraction.
• To recognise the inverse relationships between addition and subtraction and use this to check calculations and work out missing number problems
• To count in twos, fives and tens from 0 and use counting strategies to solve problems
• To recall and use multiplication facts for the 2, 5 and 10 multiplication tables to solve simple problems. 
• To use the greater than, less than and equal to signs ( > , <, = ) to compare and order numbers. 

Topic:  

• Learn about the history of The Great Fire of London and The Plague. 
• Compare doctors and nurses from The Plague and today. 
• Compare the houses from 1666 and today. 
• Use different art techniques to create a picture representing The Great Fire of London.
• In music the objective is to learn and create chants and rhymes. 
• In PE the children will create and perform a firework dance. 
• In computing the children will learn about algorithms using a program on Discovery Education. 

Homework:

• Homework will continue to be set on a Tuesday whereby you will be informed on the mathematical methods that your child has been taught in school.
• The new spellings sections will be sent home on a Tuesday and the spelling test will be on a Monday. 

Cross Country League - Week 2

Even thought half term kicked in at 3:15 on Friday, the school cross country team were hard at work at the Sports Centre.

Week 2 of the schools' cross country league was dry and the sun was out - ideal running conditions. Lots of Team Oakwood used the conditions to improve on their week 1 positions.

See how well we did this week below, and remember there's just 2 more weeks of the league to go.

Curriculum Bulletin: Year 5

Autumn 2 
Maths 

This term we will be looking at:

• Written methods for multiplication starting with expanded method (click here for an example ) , moving to long multiplication (click here for an example)
• Written methods for division (click here for an example of the bus stop method)
• Revisiting our knowledge of the 4 operations
• Using our number and operation skills to problem solve, thinking about how to select operations and solve problems

It is really important that even if your child already has their Bronze Table Log that they continue to practise as their recall needs to be as quick as possible to assist the mathematical methods we are using.

English

In English we will be working on the following:

• Developing a point of view on an issue to form an argument, debating and writing to persuade
• Writing to inform (creating a fact file) using features including subheadings and headings
• Revising different types of word class to help our sentence work (adjectives, verbs, prepositions, adverbs, determiners, pronouns, nouns, proper nouns) 
• Using speech in our writing and punctuating it correctly
• Revising using an apostrophe to omit (form a contraction) and show possession 
• Identifying the difference between a clause and a phrase 
• Using a comma to separate clauses
• Developing our independent editing skills as part of our writing process, using our ‘Nuts and Bolts’ to help us

Reading
We will be studying the Power of Reading text Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill (linking in with our Fierce Earth topic).

Our class novel and shared text will be Northen Lights, by Philip Pullman.

During our shared reading sessions we will be focusing on building and developing the following reading skills:

• Responding to the text, drawing on reading and research
• Retrieving information from a variety of texts (newspapers, narratives, non-fiction and poetry)
• Identifying and understanding the features of text
• Identifying the intended audience of a text and the purpose of a text (e.g. non-fiction texts are to inform the reader, fiction books are to entertain the reader)
• Reflecting and asking questions around a text

Fierce Earth is a geography based topic, where pupils will learn about the following:

Mountains

• What is a mountain and how are mountains formed?
• Study famous mountains and mountain ranges around the world.
• Study famous explorers and mountain exhibitions.
• To understand why certain plants and animals are best suited to the mountain environment..
• Look at how climate change is impacting on the mountain environment

Volcanoes

• How are volcanoes formed?
• Where in the world are volcanos?
• What does the inside of a volcano look like?
• What happens when a volcano erupts? This includes an explosive investigation! Take a look at last year's BLOG post.

Earthquakes

• What is an earthquake and what are tectonic plates?
• What happens when an earthquake strikes?
• How are people's lives affected living in an earthquake zone?
• How do people try and survive earthquakes?

Key dates for your diary
Monday 12th December- Christmas production (afternoon and evening performance)
Homework will be set weekly on Thursdays to be due in the following Thursday
Reading logs will continue to be checked every Monday. As with last term, we are looking for 4 reading entries a week
PE days will continue to be Mondays and Tuesdays

Solubility scientist in action!

In Year 5 over the last couple of days we have being very busy scientists. We have being revisiting the properties of different materials, looking at how we can sort materials based on their properties.

Then we have learnt about solutions and mixtures: how they are formed and what makes a material soluble or insoluble. Next we were set the task of designing a fair test experiment to test if several substances were soluble or insoluble. We had a great time predicting and getting stuck into our investigations.

Finally, we looked at reversible and irreversible changes and how solutions and mixtures can be separated (using evaporation, magnetism, filtration and sieving).

Year 3 VE Tea Dance

Year 3 learn a little poem!

Be Bright Be Seen

Our Travel Team took charge of their own assembly this morning to bring us a very important message. Cyclists and pedestrians must always wear bright clothing to be safe on the road in the evening - especially if they want to grow up to be able to do all of this:

Titanic Exhibition

Our homework this half term was a home learning project based around our history topic, The Titanic. This was a great opportunity for us all to get creative and have some fun with our learning.

KS1 Athletics Festival

On Monday 10 children took part in an athletics festival with other schools from across the city. The children had a go at all the activities, including long jump, shot put, target throw, ball bounce and speed bounce. The children scored points for their achievement and effort on each station.

At the end they had a go at racing in teams against other schools which was fun and competitive!