Super swimmers!!

We are well over half way through our swimming lessons for this year and I am amazed at the progress most of the children have made in such a short space of time!

Maliha is my superstar swimmer of the day! She was so proud of herself when she did some 'real' swimming!

Mohammed made me laugh with all his splashing about, he is very enthusaistic about swimming from one width of the pool to another but does soak everyone around him whilst doing so! He seems to be having a great time though! Silya is also coming along in leaps and bounds in that group and did some fantastic floating on her back this lesson.

Mariam, Ekhaw, Karim and Courtney are all excellent powerful swimmers. Karim in particular has an excellent backstroke. Lots of children in that group are very confident which is brilliant, but tend to sink or stop a lot.... keep the kicking going kids! All of the children though put in so much effort, I really enjoy watching them.

Finally, a special mention for Sinem who has grown in confidence and is almost unrecongisable from the girl at the beginning of the year. She swims brilliantly with a float now and is getting much better at putting her head in the water!

It would be great for the kids to practise their skills outside of the lessons and Seymours is only down the road for most people. If the children could go either by themselves or with older brothers and sisters or parents it would make such a big difference.

The Highwayman

In Literacy we have been learning about the poem the Highwayman and in a few weeks will be presenting a special assembly to Year 6 about it. This will be recorded and put on a podcast for everyone to listen to! We are finding some of it tricky as there are lots of unfamiliar words and the themes are quite complex to understand!

However 5Magenta are doing a very good job and working very hard. Here is some of our homework of a character profile of Tim the Ostler....

I can see a face. He is scary and angry and I can see his hand is weird. He is not wearing good clothes. He doesn't want to smile. His hair is like a crazy tree with a long neck and large face.

By Asim

Tim has an unusual hair style. People describe his hair as toilet brush hair, which he ignores. His teeth are as sharp as a dog and he looks a bit like one too! His nose is flat like a first reader book and his eyebrows are thick. Tim is very tall, even bigger than his door. He has huge eyes like a cat, infact maybe even bigger, Tim looks like he has strong arms, when you touch it they feel like iron.

Tim like playing with dogs. Everyone calls him Mr Iron. He doesn't like bullies because when they see him, they laugh at him and how he looks. Tim likes to go shopping for clothes. He hates his hair the most because he thinks it looks ugly.

By Nadia

Nadia has used lots of brilliant language features in her character descriptions! How many can you identify?

Tim is a very poor man, he works as a servant for the landlord. He has spiky hair and a big nose. He also looks very scary with a weird hair style. He may seem bad and evil but really he is a kind and gentle man. He hides the Highwayman sometimes. He likes to help around the house, he shares his food with the poor and does everything he can for the landlord. He always tries his best to help everybody.

By Ali

I really like this one because it is so different to everybody else's interpretation. Ali really used his imagination to create this character.... (unfortunately Tim is not the nice, gentle creature Ali believes him to be...)

Class challenge: Can you draw the best picture of the highwayman, entries must be black and white and no larger than A4... best ones to be displayed on next week's blog and 2HP's!!!

Hello and welcome back!

Welcome back, I hope you have all had a wonderful half term. Nearly everyone had completed all their holiday homework to a very high standard which was a fantastic start to the day. Well done 5Magenta!!!

This half term is going to be a short but very busy one. We are starting our History topic of the Tudors and I have been amazed at how much the children aloready know. Any research you could do at home would be fantastic, the BBC have lots of information on their website. Anyone who could find any better or more interesting ones will get a housepoint! We will also be linking our Art with the Tudors and the big outcome is for the children to design and create their own Tudor outfit. They will be using lots of different types of material to do this.

In Science we will be studying the topic of the Human body. Both the National History Museum and the Science Museum have galleries with exhibitions about the body. There is something for all age groups and it is absolutely free. Please try to get along as it will really help the children's learning and understanding and it is a cheap fun day out!!

The WOW words box has been placed and lovingly decorated in the classroom and the best entry will be picked out on Friday and one lucky child will win a prize.

Antarctica trip to NHM!

Today we went on our trip to Antarctica! (Well a special exhibition at the National History Museum anyway!) We were lucky enough to have fantastic weather despite a bad forecast and spent a very enjoyable day where most of Year 5 were absolute super stars!

Ask your child about the activities we did there and about the special talk some of us were lucky to receive on penguins.

Some of us pretended we were penguins and considered how we would keep warm!

We were a little disappointed with the dark room as it wasn't actually very dark, just a video!

We all went around the exhibitions and had a chance to play the games. We can use our ticket to graduate and become ice commanders and receive a real certificate. If your child can do it at home or get to the library that would be fantastic.

How many different activities did you take part in?

This is a real snow-mobile!

Here we had the chance to be deep sea divers! We had to race each other to get to the bottom... it was harder than it looked!

Essential items needed for a trip to Antarctica!

There are lots more photos that I could show you... we will try to put them on display!

Hi everyone,

Thank you to you all for coming to the parent teacher meetings. It has been great that everyone has managed to make it in and have a chance to speak to you about your child's progress. We are right in the middle of our Antarctica project at the moment and are eagerly looking forward to our trip next Friday.

This morning we prepared our triop eggs for hatching so soon will have delightful creatures from the dinosaur age learning with us in class!

I will put some more photos on as soon as they hatch!

I have also spoken to the children about a new display we will be creating in our class. It is called 'WOW' words and we want to find as many interesting words to use in our writing. We want to stretch our vocabulary as much as we can. You can help them by telling them better adjectives or verbs for words they already know or words they find in their reading. They may also like to use a dictionary or ask older brothers and sisters for help.

Antarctica trip

Hi all,
Just a quick blog to let you know that we have managed to book a school trip to the National History Museum where there is a special exhibition about Antarctica. Some of the children were disappointed we weren't going to Antarctica but this was the best we could do!
Letters will be sent out asap and if you could return your money promptly we would be very grateful! If there are any problems with this please come and see one of the Year 5 team.

I have found another website you may like to look at... there are lots of interactive resources. Lots of you are amazing the teachers with your knowledge in class which is brilliant, some children have even taught the teacher's interesting facts. Keep it up!!!

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/teacher_resources/index.php

Also a quick reminder that parents evenings are next week and one of us will be downstairs in the bottom hall every morning until Wednesday for you to make an appointment. Otherwise you can come to class after school. If neither of these is convenient we will be allocating times but it would be great if you chose your own times as we would like to see as many of you as possible.

Antarctica

Welcome back, I hope you all enjoyed a lovely break over the holidays, lots of you seem to have gone on wonderful holidays, the Year 5 teachers are rather jealous!

This half term is going to be a busy one for us as we are beginning our Antarctica project. We will be learning about it in Literacy, Geography, Science and ICT lessons for the next six weeks so it is really important children don't miss school unnecessarily as they will really suffer and have big gaps in their knowledge.

We have already been impressed about the facts that the children already know about Antarctica so if you could encourage them to continue to find out fascinating facts, it makes our lessons even better. Any trips to the local library would also be appreciated.

Here are some good websites, you may like to look at if you have a computer at home, we will also be using them in school.

http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215022/animals.htm

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/

http://www.classroomantarctica.aad.gov.au/

You may also like to check the google or bbc websites...

Can you find out any information about the animals that live in Antarctica? Housepoints will be given out on Thursday's lesson for those that teach the teachers!!! It will be particularly helpful for writing our non-chronological reports on different Antarctic animals.

Happy New Year!