Oak Tree Class Blog
Oak Tree Class Blog
Week 1, ending 9 June 2023
Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog
Welcome back after half term!
Well done to these pupils this week.
Reader of the Week: Seth
Special Mention Pupil: Henry
We have started this half term with a full and varied week.
Our new PE sessions of Rounders and Tennis were well-received by the children – please keep your fingers crossed for warm and pleasant weather on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the next six weeks, so our lessons can happen without rain!
Because the weather forecast for Friday was so warm, I made the decision not to do the Weekly Mile – but it has been great seeing the children from Oak Tree Class join in each lunchtime with the extra physical activities that Sam has organised. This is in a bid to keep our children moving. We are ever conscious that many children (not all!) would prefer to pick up a game controller nowadays for entertainment, rather than run a round for a while; this should help to raise every pupil’s fitness level.
I am so proud of the published pieces of work on Darwin’s Dragons that we concluded this week in our English lessons. I hope you will be too! In these tasks, the children have been allowed to choose four different text types to write in – the results have been stunning! And I have been particularly impressed by their presentation skills too – excellent handwriting (in pen!) and fantastic illustrations with captions.
In Maths, we continue to work on the Y5 concepts – this unit is all about the properties of shapes. We are particularly looking at angles – acute, obtuse, right and reflex. See how many angles you can find in real life during this weekend!
Homework is a revision of the method for subtraction.
Have a super weekend – see you next week.
Yours
Mrs Adrienne Amos
Week 6, ending 26 May 2023
Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog
Well done to these superstars from Oak Class!
Reader of the Week: Isabella
Special mention Pupil: Archie
Reading Ambassador: Oliver
Our week has been accompanied by Male Music Legends, during our Early Bird Maths tasks. It is true to say that Michael Jackson was the firm favourite. We haven’t had the same sort of excitement in our sessions as last week, but we have still enjoyed our learning hugely in Oak Tree Class!
Our maths unit on Statistics has been a real winner for this set of children – they have loved working on tables and charts and timetables. I was very happy to see them cope with the tasks and activities they were all set and good progress was made. In English, we have been continuing to write a creative response to Darwin’s Dragons. Clearly the children are enjoying this book, according to their excellent book reviews on Thursday. We shall finish these in the first week back after our break.
We finished our Athletics sessions in PE, by working alongside our Y3 pupils – it was a treat for Miss Sims and me to witness the collaborative learning that was taking place for the hour. (And the weather was lovely, so it was a double pleasure!)
Homework this week is a little bit different. ALL children will bring home spellings, but for some children, who I feel still need a bit of a reminder or a boost in their arithmetic skills, I am sending home a set of calculations for them to work through. (It has been quite a while since we have done multiplication and division, so these are timely reminders before the move up to Y6. Thank you for your support in these tasks.)
I hope you all have a lovely half term week planned.
Yours,
Mrs Adrienne Amos
Week 5, ending 19 May
Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog
Well done to these pupils from Oak Class!
Reader of the Week: Charlie
Special mention Pupil: Joseph
Wow! Wow! Wow! What a fantastic week we have had in Oak Tree Class! We definitely did some Maths and English – all going very well at this point in the term – but the highlight has totally been our ‘Day of Art’ on Wednesday. Mr Laughton came to Rufford Park Primary and helped the children learn much more about birds and their feathers, as well as instructing the children to create amazing images of birds. The children made detailed sketches from actual feathers first, then they used chalk pastels and created impressive bird images on black card.
After Mr Laughton had demonstrated strategies for drawing a bird (a kingfisher), Oak Tree pupils spent much of the afternoon drawing a detailed sketch of a bird of their choice. These results were stunning. I was so proud of how well they interacted with our visitor (he said he thought they were very well behaved and a ‘fun’ class!) and was impressed with how much they had learned from the morning’s activities.
In Science, due to our topic on the circulatory system, we identified all the components of blood and had a go at making it! Such fun! Quite gross, but we loved it. Your child should now know all about the components of blood AND be able to tell you about how our blood becomes oxygenated (now our favourite scientific word!).
PE has also been splendid this week – more athletics (this time we worked on Throwing) and we had yet another super Dance session with Alex on a Friday afternoon. Again, another visiting teacher who seems to enjoy working with Oak Tree Class.
Homework is Spellings and Maths again. The Maths is all about Area, which we have been working on for the past couple of weeks.
Have a lovely weekend – let’s hope the sun shines.
Surely it is nearly Summer?!
Yours,
Mrs Adrienne Amos
Week 4, ending 12 May
Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog
Well done to these pupils this week!
Reader of the Week: Oliver
Special Mention Pupil: Kadie
Reggae music has started our mornings off all week – Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’ was by far the most popular!
In Maths, it has been wonderful to see how focussed the children have been when learning about calculating the Perimeter of 2D-shapes. They have really tried hard to grasp some of the trickiest concepts (like missing lengths) and have displayed an encouraging ‘Have-a-go’ attitude to all tasks.
In English sessions, we have been delving further into the story of Syms, in Darwin’s Dragons. This story is becoming more and more exciting – and gradually more pupils are confidently reading from the class novel in Guided Reading Sessions. Well done to those guys!
Despite the rain, we have done brilliantly in the Mini Marathon (I say ‘we’, but I really mean ‘they’!!). Each child has completed at least one mile – some much more than that. I have been impressed with the resilience and effort that some children have employed in this venture – especially those who haven’t traditionally loved PE sessions. Each child has really tried to push themselves – thus improving their fitness level, too. I have also seen this determination in our Athletics lesson on Jumping. The children practised a standing long jump and then investigated if they could jump further by incorporating a little run up. Everyone seemed quite exhausted at the end of it, but they were all happy that they had improved their jumping skills considerably. Well done, Oak Tree Pupils!
Have a super weekend – back to school on Monday for a much-anticipated Ukulele lesson with Mr Jennings.
Yours,
Mrs Adrienne Amos
Week 3, ending 5 May
Mrs Amos (a.amos) on: Oak Tree Class Blog
Well done to these pupils!
Reader of the Week: Tilly
Special mention Pupil: Melissa
Powerful ballads have started our mornings off all week – Whitney H being the firm favourite amongst Oak Tree Class, I believe!
In this week’s assembly, we were told that Mr Cooke and Mr Spence have signed us up to a Mini Marathon over the next two weeks. Please don’t be surprised if you are told that PE kit is allowed to be worn on another day, as Oak Tree Class is very keen to do the Weekly Mile. Usually, our PE sessions are on Tuesdays and Fridays, but a Weekly Mile session may also be introduced for Oak Tree Class on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Taking part in the Mini Marathon has been very much enjoyed this week – and everyone wants to participate even more next week. This is very encouraging.
In Maths, we have finally concluded Fractions, Decimals and Percentages for Y5 – yahoo! Onto Area and Perimeter next week. Also, we have finished writing Healthy Lunchbox leaflets for our Y2 pupils, so next week we shall be exploring more about our class novel, Darwin’s Dragons. The story has been exciting so far.
Wildlife drawing forms the main part of our Art sessions this term and I have been so impressed with the sketches and drawings (of feathers and birds) I have seen already. It would be really useful if you could encourage the children to look out local birdlife and observe and recognise details of the plumage.
Have a super long weekend!
Yours,
Mrs Adrienne Amos