Welcome to Years Five and Six. We are taught by Miss Gazzard (Mrs Norris), Mr Fairbridge and Mrs Robson- and supported by Mrs Dye. Our days are jam packed and crammed with learning opportunities. Attendance is crucial to our academic success. As the oldest children in school, we know we have to reach the target of 97% every week. The class with the highest attendance gets to have Archie the snake in our room for the following week and a treat from Mrs Thornton. We are grateful we can come into school at 8am and eat a free breakfast with our friends; this means we are rarely late and always ready to learn starting with our morning arithmetic job. Our three simple rules are “Be Safe, Be Ready and Be Respectful.”
You will be aware that we are in the process of joining the Lingfield Trust. In its simplest terms this means that we will benefit from the expertise of staff from a wide range of schools while still keeping the identity and ethos of our small, family school.
Reading is Miss Gazzard’s passion and she expects all the children in school to read aloud to a grown up every night. If we get three signatures in our reading diaries, we are entered into the weekly “Book Draw” where we have the chance to win a book from the school library. Our library has books arranged in different genres so that our teachers know our reader identity.
We have spelling lessons every Monday and enjoy learning about the etymology of words. Guided Reading takes place four days a week; we use the Reciprocal Reading approach – asking questions to clarify our understanding of new words. To enhance our History curriculum, we will be reading Evie’s War. Our writing follows a careful sequence which incorporates the grammar we are learning .We will be writing our own version of Hansel and Gretel in the first part of the term.
We begin each maths lesson with a basic skills exercise, honing and consolidating those basic maths practices that are essential to our ongoing education. The main part of the lesson begins with a challenge linked to how well we have understood the previous lesson in the sequence or supported by an adult if we have struggled. We know how essential the multiplication tables are and have opportunities to use the Times Table Rock Stars app. This improves our fluency and our recall speed. Our staff also like it if we challenge them to battles on Times Table Rock Stars and are always checking if we have managed to increase the speed in which we answer. We are currently 13th in a league of 30 local schools. Our teachers are passionate about us getting into the top ten!
Mrs Dye is our new Teaching Assistant from September. We are delighted to welcome her to our Lingdale family. Mrs Dye has two young children and a husband who works for the RAF –photographing the Red Arrows- he is going to come and pay us a visit to tell us all about his amazing job. Last term, we welcomed Mr Thornton into class to explain what his role as Health and Safety manager in the new mine entails. Please let us know if any family members would like to come into school and share their work experiences with the children. We would be more than happy to listen. Mrs Dye is also going to be running a Lego after school club. Watch this space for details.
Mr Fairbridge will continue to teach us Computing- sharing expertise –with an ongoing focus on online safety. We now have enough lap tops and I-Pads for us all to have our own; we are looking forward to using Purple Mash for a lot of our learning.
Mrs Robson continues to lead Physical Education as well as French, Art and Design Technology.
Our Head Teacher Mrs Thornton keeps us safe on the playground every day once we have eaten lunch. She knows know how important it is for us to have fresh air while learning how to take turns and resolve any differences that may happen in our football matches! She also checks our uniform, reading and homework and praises us in Friday’s Celebration Assembly.
We have many reward systems across school. We know when we have made an adult proud. We have a weekly competition to see who can collect the most “ smilies” every week and are allowed a dip in the prize box to celebrate. If a postcard from Dale, the school mascot, drops through our letterboxes, we know we have done something very impressive. Children who have 100% attendance are invited to have breakfast with the Head Teacher every half term. We love our sausage and bacon butties! We are soon going to be introducing Class Dojo which is an interactive way of keeping in touch with families- sharing photographs and homework and celebrating achievements – letter to follow.
We are not perfect all of the time but the grown – ups working with us give us plenty of chances to put this right. We get reminders and warnings to help us stay on track and it is rare for anyone to receive a red card – this means we lose 15 minutes of our next break to reflect.
Trips/Visits
On September 20th – 22nd we, will be attending a two day residential to Carlton Adventure Centre where we will learn many skills and face many fears whilst supporting our friends. To support our History curriculum, we will visit The Pannett Park Museum in October where we will learn more about WW1 and the wreck of The Rohilla.
We wish Mrs Hoffman all the very best as she starts her new career path- her empathy will be sadly missed – please pop back and hear us read Miss Hoff!
Below are free resources that will help support your child’s learning. If you require any help with printing please just ask.
