Class Four – Years 5 & 6

Welcome to Class Four

We are a class of year 5 and 6 children taught by Mr Dean.

Our class email address is: class4@levens.cumbria.sch.uk - please feel free to contact us with any questions you have and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Any urgent enquiries or drop-off & pick up arrangements must be sent to office@levens.cumbria.sch.uk as the class inbox is not monitored during teaching time.

Swimming lessons have now concluded for this year. PE sessions are on a Tuesday and Thursday. We have finished our slot with Barrow Raiders, but students are still welcome to come in their PE kit for Feelgood Friday where Mr Dean will lead a range of teamwork, social skills and leadership activities.

Home Learning Information

Homework will continue to be set and checked each Friday - it must be submitted on Friday unless otherwise specified. Each student has a blue homework diary where they record what they need to do each week please bring these in every day as they are used regularly!

Spellings will now also be set and tested on a Friday. Students will be taught a range of strategies for learning their spellings but encouraging them to practice daily is really valuable. Little and often is the key!

Reading: Students are expected to read regularly at home too - around five times a week - both alone and with an adult. This should be acknowledged by a parent signature in a reading record. Pupils regularly read to adults and other children as part of our guided reading lessons and in the wider curriculum, as well as being given guidance on their independent reading with suggestions about what to read next as appropriate. This will also be recorded in the child’s reading record.

Online learning Links:

- TTRockstars - We use TTRockstars in school to practise our times tables. Practising little and often is the key to success!

- IDL - To improve spelling, students have opportunities in school to use the IDL application. This can also be accessed from home if needed.

- Mathletics - Maths homework will often be set on Mathletics. Students must complete all of their homework, or achieve 350 points (whichever is lower) before they can access Mathletics games.

Forgotten your login information? Login information for the services above can usually be found inside a student's home learning diary. If you have lost or forgotten your username or password, please let us know as soon as you can and we will be able to reset it for you.

Curriculum Information - Autumn Term 2024-25

Maths: Maths in the spring term will continue our work on fractions, including multiplying and dividing fractions. We extend this knowledge by looking at decimals and percentages, exploring how these relate to fractions and how they can be used independently. We also study area, perimeter and volume, looking at making these measurements and calculations with a variety of different shapes, including measuring the volume of cuboids.

English: Our writing this term begins with a unit on ‘The Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes. Using this text as our inspiration, we write across a range of genres, including descriptive narrative, letters and newspaper reports. Following this, we focus more precisely on narrative style as we read a selection of Rudyard Kiplings “Just So” stories. Our history topic also inspires our narrative writing, as we learn and re-tell the Mayan creation story. SPaG continues to be interwoven throughout our English lessons where appropriate, with additional focussed sessions throughout the week. This term, we will develop the use of advanced punctuation including dashes, hyphens, semi colons.

Guided Reading: The arrangements for guided reading remain the same, with Mr Dean & Mrs Farraday teaching specific groups of children. All children begin the term by continuing their in-depth study of carefully selected novels. Following this, Year 6 move on to looking at test technique exam preparation for their reading test in May while year 5 study different types of non-fiction texts, locating and retrieving key information.

Science: Spring term is marked by two separate topics. We begin by studying evolution and inheritance – examining how things change over time, adaptation to specific environments and variation within species. In the second half of the term we move on to studying living things and their habitats, applying our knowledge to classify living things.

History & Geography: Using our residential trip to Edinburgh as a basis, we will make comparisons between Edinburgh and our local area using maps and field sketches. We will also learn how to read OS maps, including the 8 points of the compass and how to use digital mapping.

Art: During the spring term, Class 4 will be inspired by the artist Sandra Pearce, as we explore monoprinting using foliage and flowers as our starting point. We will look at the detailed work of Georgia O’Keefe’s close-up flower studies to inspire our own watercolour creations. We also have another clay-based project planned for later this term with Nigel Edmondson.

P.E.: In the first half of this term we complete the second part of our gymnastics unit as we develop synchronisation and begin to incorporate apparatus. Alongside this, we will also develop skills in basketball, growing our understanding of defensive strategies.

R.E.: Our Christian value for the Spring term is Respect. We begin the term by studying the life and character of Jesus, exploring parables about his teaching and applying these to the modern world. As we move towards Easter, we consider this important date in the Christian calendar and examine it through the context of a victory.

SCARF: To coincide with our Christian value of respect, we study respect in two contexts in our SCARF lessons. In the first term, we consider how to show respect to others in our “valuing difference” unit of work. Following this, we learn how to respect ourselves through our “being my best” unit.

Computing: This term, we examine databases and how they work to store and organise information. We will compare physical and digital methods of achieving this. We also study simple video editing, using a range of techniques to manipulate recorded footage.

Design & Technology: Following our visit to Edinburgh and focus on mapping in Geography, we apply our design and coding skills to build a simple device to help us navigate the world around us. We also study bridges, and the techniques which can be used to reinforce and strengthen structures.

French: This term our French lessons include numbers, time and places in town.

Music: As well as continuing to learn a range of songs and hymns in worship, in music lessons we explore how music can teach us about our community.