Good morning Class Four and welcome back to the final half term of this academic year.

I hope you all had a lovely half term and were able to do some nice things with your families. Hopefully you are feeling refreshed and ready for your home or school learning today.

It's going to be a very strange half term for all of us as a few Year 6 children will be returning to school today, but many of the Year 6s and all of Year 5 will be working from home still. At school, we will be doing the exact same learning as you are doing at home. The children in school will have to load up the laptops and work through the learning as independently as possible, just the same as you at home. This is good because it means everyone will be doing the same learning and if you are able to phone/message your friends, you will be able to talk about the same activities and see how each other has got on.

I will be in school each day with the Year 6 children. This means that if you do email me, I might not be able to respond as quickly as I had been before, but I will still respond as quickly as I can and am still here to help all of you 

My half term seemed to zoom by. I did a bit more gloss painting at home (only a little bit left to do!), some gardening, cleaning and cooking. I was in school all day on the Wednesday looking after key worker children and all day Thursday in a socially distanced staff meeting with Mr Woolley and the other teachers and then setting up the classroom. I went for a picnic with Mrs Pilgrim on the Tuesday and met up with my friend Hannah on Southampton Common on Thursday evening - she works at Southampton General Hospital and has been very busy during lockdown so I haven't heard from her much, so it was really lovely to catch up with her. Yesterday I ran another half marathon in the morning - Mrs Pilgrim was doing a challenge with her family and needed to run it and asked if I would like to join her. It was very hard work, especially as it's so hot, but I was so pleased that I had managed to do another one.

I hope you have a lovely day today and enjoy getting back into the home learning routine. This week, when you email, please can you send me:

• Your silent writing
• Your germ comic strip (so Mrs Soley can see as she planned this one)
• Any photos of fun things you got up to in half term which you want to share with us

Have a great day, work hard, love Miss Olver x

Here is a message from Mrs Soley:

Happy Monday class 4 (those at school and those of you at home),

I hope you have all had a lovely half term and enjoyed the gorgeous sunny weather.  Our garden has started to get more colourful as we had a delivery of flowers and plants.  Mr Soley and I planted up our hanging baskets with fuchsias.  I have no idea what colour they will be so it will be a lovely surprise.  We are still awaiting a delivery of a plant called nemesia, it’s quite lovely when it is out in full bloom.

We have also bought a little bird seed feeder for the garden which Mr Soley has hung on the fence.  Unfortunately, no birds have found it yet although lots seem to visit our garden.  Mr Soley has tried laying a trail of seed to it along with a tray of water but no luck so far. 

This week, of course, has been very important as my grandson had his first birthday.  I baked some baby cookies on Thursday which included his favourite thing; sultanas.  He seemed to like the first one he tried as most of it went into his mouth.  His mummy sent me a photo on Saturday of him eating another one and apparently making “num, num” sounds which I take to mean he was enjoying it.  He appeared to have a lovely day and was very lucky as he received many cards and presents from friends and family.  His mummy made a very rich chocolate cake onto which she put two of his digger toys and made it look as though the cake was being dug up.  Jacob was allowed a little piece, it’s only fair as it was his birthday.

I have included a photo of the birthday boy in his new summer hat; one of my favourites.

I hope you all continue to stay well and I will see some of you very soon.

Best wishes.

Mrs Soley xx

Maths

Year 5

Today you are going to be continuing with the work on fractions you were doing before half term. Go to the White Rose Maths Home Learning Year 5 website and find Summer Term Week 5, Lesson 1 which is called ‘Add and Subtract Fractions’. This is something we have looked at before in class, but it will be good for you to revise it. Watch the video and work through the worksheet. I have attached the answers so you can check your work. I have also included my workings for questions 4 and 7 which are a bit trickier.

If you have time, or want an extra challenge, have a look at the adding and subtracting space themed fraction activities below. There are three games/activities to choose from:

1. On Page 1, cut out the astronauts, complete the calculations and then stick them on the correct space ship, either the one on Page 2 or Page 3.
2. On Page 4, cut out the astronauts, put a paperclip on each one, then use a magnet to ‘fish’ out an astronaut and then complete that calculation.
3. If you have someone you can play with, complete one of the calculations on Page 6, if you get it right, then you can draw one line to join two of the dots on the grid on Page 5. The aim is to draw as many complete boxes as you can and to get more than your opponent.

*Answers for all three activities are on Page 7*

Year 6

Today you are going to be continuing your work on decimals from before half term. Go to the White Rose Maths Home Learning Year 6 website and find Summer Term Week 5, Lesson 4 which is called ‘Decimals as Fractions’. Watch the video and then complete the worksheet. I have attached the answers so you can check your work. I have also included my workings for Q3 and some of Q4 in case you want to see the method I have used and how I lay it out and a different way of showing the answer to Q6 in case you didn’t use the same model as the one on the answer sheet.

If you have time, or want an extra challenge, have a go at the extension sheet below which has three problems on similar to the pink problems we often do at school. I’ve also included the answers so you can check your work.

English

Remember to write an entry in your diary/journal at some point today.

For your silent writing task this week, you have two options:

1. Write a first day back recount of one of the things you did in half term
2. Write a newspaper report about half term/lockdown/home learning/returning to school

Option 1 – Recount

On the first day back after any school holiday, we always write a recount for our silent writing session. You normally pick one day, or it could even be one event/activity, to write about. It will be strange doing this today because again, like Easter, it wasn’t a normal holiday for any of us, but I’m sure you all did some nice things with your family and perhaps you could pick your favourite day to write about.

Option 2 – Newspaper Report

On Thursday, I have to send in this month’s entry for the Bishops Waltham Parish News. I am hoping that some of you might like to have a go at writing an entry for me (as last month I had to write it!). You could choose what you write the article about. You could do an article about what it’s been like to have half term at home with some of the lockdown restrictions still in place, or about home learning and what it is like doing your learning from home instead of school. If you are a Year 6 and you are back in school, you could talk about what it’s like being back in school.

Today I would like you to plan your writing using the planning sheets below. Tomorrow you will be writing your recount or report and then on Wednesday you will have time to check, edit and improve it.

Topic

This half term our new topic is called 'It's A Bugs Life'. We are going to start this week by looking at 'bugs' - we will be finding out about germs, what they are and how we can keep ourselves safe from the bad ones. Next week we will be moving on to look at animals and plants, exploring how they are classified into different groups, then looking at lifecycles and habitats and ending the term with some work on plants. I think you will really enjoy the topic as I know how much you all love learning about animals 

Today, start by looking at the Powerpoint below which talks about the scientist who first discovered germs and the different types of germs there are.

We know that one of the best ways we can keep ourselves safe from bad germs is to wash our hands thoroughly.

Have a go at the handwashing experiment below to see how washing your hands with antibacterial handwash can repel bad germs.

Spellings and Reading

Mrs Kimble has written some more spelling sentences for you. This half term we will be focusing on homophones (words which sound the same but are spelt differently). Start practising your sentences today ready for your test on Friday. Also do some independent reading of a book of your choice.