Dear all,

It was great to be back this week after our slightly extended Christmas break, although I was, like others, quite tired at the beginning of the week. Fortunately though this hasn’t stopped the term beginning in a productive way with some excellent products being made and these can now be put up on display.

It was so good to finally be able to give out the new books that we have for our class today. As I said in our assembly earlier in the week, reading really is your window into new worlds so please do take advantage of the brand new books available and take care of them so that you and many other children after you also have the chance to read the wonderful array of titles that we now have on the shelves. Don’t forget that if you wish to enter the competition to name our reading tree in the KS2 library, you need to give your class teacher a piece of paper with your name and class written on it and the name that you would like to give the tree by next Friday at the latest.

In English next week we will be starting to read Kensuke’s Kingdom, by Michael Morpurgo and we will focus on some key dilemmas of the opening part of the text.

In maths, we will be starting a unit on ratio by using the correct language and symbol before looking at how ratio is used in scale drawings.

In science, you will be finding out about the effects of smoking on people’s health.

We will be finishing off our geography unit next week by looking at how climate change is impacting the population and how the population is impacting on the the climate.

In computing, we will be beginning our unit on ‘Creating and Publishing’ by looking at some more advanced features of publishing software programs.

There is no formal homework for this week –this will start again next Friday.

Finally, as you know, from next week onwards, I have asked you all to come into school at 8:30 every morning, beginning on Monday. Whilst this is only 10 minutes earlier than normal, this will give us just a little bit more time in order to focus on some key areas of learning which will support you in your SATs so I hope that most of you are able to come in at that time.

Have a great weekend.

Mr Gradwell