One Week To Go!

With one week until the half term, we've got an exciting week coming up!

First of all, we have a new addition to Birch Class who has settled right in and been made to feel welcome. I am very proud of both Year 5 and 6 for helping with that. 

In English, we have moved on from Cracking Contraptions and will be working on narrative writing inspired by the short film, 'Paraphernalia'. We have so far looked at creating a mood through setting description and have discussed some 'Tier 2 Vocabulary' which can be seen in our pyramid below. Tier 2 Vocabulary are robust, high-frequency words that are encountered across different subjects and these words can often have multiple meanings depending on the context. Using the video below, ask the children to pinpoint where in the short film we discussed some of the words and how they're Tier 2 words rather than Tier 1 or Tier 3 words. There was an excellent discussion on it today!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIBlme0VC3A

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In maths, we have had a couple of lessons recapping and adding to our knowledge of angles. The children in Year 5 have done an excellent job at recalling their knowledge of acute angles, right angles and obtuse angles and how many degrees each of them can be. I have been particularly impressed with how they've been able to use this knowledge to measure angles and explain direction. We used the following image to help us in today's lesson. They picked a starting point and which direction they were facing and decided where they needed to get to. Everyone was able to create their own problem with this information and figure out how many degrees they needed to turn to get somewhere and in which direction (clockwise or anticlockwise). They also drew on their mathematical language from fractions to explain how turning 180 degrees in either direction led to the same place due to the distance being equivalent either way. I was very impressed! See if you can test their knowledge of angles using the image.

In history last week, we read an abridged version of Martin Luther King Jr's 'I have a dream' speech. This was a discussion based lesson and I was very impressed with the insight that the children provided. Some children picked up on the metaphors like 'Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation' because it was more encouraging than without a metaphor. One children picked out this metaphor as being about hope and how it was King's way of saying that black people and their treatment had been in the dark and were being brought into the light. Other children noticed the reference to slavery at the beginning of the speech and pointed out that King's repeated use of 'One hundred years later...' (referring to it being one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation) was like saying that black people were still slaves in a way because of the segregation and inequality they faced in America then. Everyone had a lot to say about Martin Luther King Jr's references to white people in the speech, particularly when he says 'We cannot walk alone.' Year 5 and 6 recognised the importance of white people standing up for the rights of black people when they had none and how there wouldn't be equality until everyone stood together even after everything that has happened in history. We will be moving on to look at the march from Selma to Montgomery in the coming weeks before examining how the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s has impacted the world we live in today.

We have a very exciting week coming up. More rehearsals for A Midsummer's Night Dream will be taking place and it's amazing to see how the show is coming together, especially with all the hard work from Year 5 and 6 who are taking the lead for most of the play. We will also be having our Jubilee celebration on Friday afternoon. If your child has not yet come home with an invitation, they will do today. I don't know about everyone else but I'm very excited about the tea party!