Rawdon Littlemoor Primary School

What a busy week this has been! You can tell it's almost Christmas, and we are enjoying learning our carols ready for the carol concert in church on the last day of term.

In other music news, we are almost at the end of our time with Mrs Cosavella now, and are bringing all of our learning together by composing our own pieces. We have worked incredibly well in our groups, sharing ideas and cooperating brilliantly to produce our final pieces.

In DT lessons, we have started to build our Onagers (Roman catapults) and enjoyed improving our sawing and drilling skills. When they are completed, we shall be having our whole keystage Onager-off Competition to see whose catapult can fire a missile over the longets distance!

Today was Christmas dinner/ jumper day and we enjoyed eating together in the hall, pulling crackers (and telling terrible jokes) whilst listening to Christmas tunes. And after school today we have just finished our Christmas fair - it was lovely, and we are now all in the mood for the real thing in a couple of weeks' time!

On Monday, the children will be bringing home information about their Christmas party - so check planners for this.

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Jarvis

SNOW! We were all very excited on Thursday morning to see the first sprinkling of the white stuff, and made the most of it at breaktime. Apparently, I have to get some hot chocolate in my stock cupboard for when it snows again so we can all have a cup when we come inside (it's on my shopping list for this weekend!).

Our children sang and signed beautifully this afternoon at our Christingle assembly and really did us proud. The hall looked beautiful lit-up by candle light and we enjoyed watching some of our Year 6 friends perform solo parts too. Very brave!

This week we have started to look at journalistic writing in preparation for writing our own newspaper reports about the assasination of Julius Caesar next week. We have learned about how the news can be exaggerated sometimes, and what you read and see in print and online is not always as it first appears. We've had some very thoughtful and mature discussions. 

In maths we have learned some formulas to find the areas of 2D shapes, such as parallelograms and triangles. There's a lot to memorise, but we have worked incredibly hard and made brilliant progress. Next week, we will be looking at volume and learning the formulas associated with this.

In RE we have started to look at the character of Abraham, and the difficult decisions he had to face. This will progress into looking at the similariteis between the Jewish and Muslim faiths relating to him.

Bikeability for Year 6 has been taking place in school this week, and our children have been incredibly resilient in such cold weather! We were able to get the playground gritted yesterday, but the freezing conditions scuppered us this morning. You should have recieved an email from the office to confirm when your child's session has been rescheduled for next week. Sorry for the faff!

Wrap-up warm, and have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Jarvis

Happy Friday!

We've had some fantatsic history skills lesson this week, exploring Claudius's decision to invade Britain (with some excellent acting from Ava, who stepped-up to play Emperor Claudius himself!), and how the Roman army managed to keep control of such a vast empire. Apparently, organisation, obedience and lots of training are key - think on Kestrels!

In maths we have been exoploring the area of compound shapes, and are now doing really well at differentiating from the perimeter. While long division has been the main focus in our arithmetic work, with Year 6 doing an excellent job of coaching Year 5 through the process. A little more practice needed now to get us secure - but an excellent first go Year 5.

In Computing we have continued to look at what makes a successful website and begin to create our own on the theme of Roman legacy. You are such technological whizzes!

On Monday with Mr Couves, we explored water resistance and understood well the ways in which we can reduce drag and move through water more efficiently. Then on Tuesday, with Miss Cosavella, you were composing your own rhythms and compositions using xylophones - I could hear you from the library and it sounded very impressive!

And finally, thank you to the children for their excellent behaviour this week: we have been observed by other teachers a couple of times, and they have demonstrated an excellent attitude to work and enthusiasm for learning - you have all impressed the adults who have watched us working. A well-deserved weekend break for you all!

See you on Monday,

Mrs Jarvis

And here we are at the end of another busy week - the highlight being the arrival in school of some absolutely fantastic Roman Villa models! From cake, to Lego, to Minecraft, to recycling bin creations, they were all so brilliantly made and unique. We had a little exhibition in our classrooms on Thursday evening, for those who could make it, and next week we will take some time out of the usual lessons to present them to the class and talk through how we went about creating them, and what we learned along the way. Thank you to parents for your support with homework projects; the children really do love presenting them to their friends and having their moment!

In maths, we are leaving our number work behind for a while, and moving into measures with area, perimeter and volume work to now tackle. This work can be quite tricky, but I have been really impressed with how our resilience in maths is developing and our willingness to get stuck-in without fear of failing – super effort, Kestrels!

In English, we have enjoyed getting into the character of Boudicca, ready to write an autobiography. Again, it has been great to see how much confidence is growing in writing, and we have all made a great start to writing in a bolshie, blunt Boudicca-stylie! Well done to those people who were awarded their fountain pen licence this week –we are all working hard to make our handwriting the best it can be.

In science with Mr Couves, the Great Eggcellent Egg Drop took place on Monday, where we got to test out how our understanding of air resistance (coupled with our parachute designing skills!) has come along! Not too bad, it turns out, with only a few minor cracks occurring! Well done Kestrels! Next week, we will be moving our learning on by exploring the effects of water resistance on different shapes.

Have a lovely weekend whatever you’re up to,

Mrs Jarvis

Hope you all had a lovely half term! It’s been a hectic first week back for Kestrel class, but we have cracked-on admirably. The main event for us this week has been open day on Thursday. Our Year 6 children completed their Tour Guide training with Mr Allen earlier in the week and then worked in pairs to guide all of the families who arrived to look around our lovely school. They all received compliment slips from the visitors (which we are in the process of copying for parents to read), and the feedback was very heart-warming, talking of their amazing politeness, knowledge and pride in their school. Well done Year 6! Also really well done to Year 5, who had to suffer over 60 families passing through our classroom and asking lots of questions – you did a sterling job!

In our lessons, we have been honing our history skills this week, looking at picture sources to see what we can learn about Roman life in Britain; we have also been completing our coordinate maps of the empire, combining history and maths. In PE, we have started our unit of work on orienteering with a specialist coach, with the children learning how to communicate effectively (without losing too much patience!!) to guide their friends around courses blindfolded. (Outdoor PE will be on Thursdays until Christmas, to take advantage of the coach – the newsletter was incorrect).

In English we have been developing inference skills in reading, justifying responses with evidence from the text, and we have just started our new unit on autobiographies in our writing lessons.

Factors and prime numbers have been the order of the day in maths, while in science, the children have been exploring the elements that impact air resistance and started to make parachutes for their pet eggs(!). We will be launching them from a height on Monday with Mr Couves. Whose egg will crack first?! We shall see!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Mrs Jarvis