Welcome to Steadman class page

Welcome to the Steadman class page! We are a wonderful bunch of Year 5 and 6 children. Here you will find important information about our class.

Mr Flaherty is the class teacher. Mr Ford will be taking the class for PE on Tuesday afternoons and Mrs Sheen will be teaching the class every other Monday afternoon.

Curriculum Overview – Spring Term

In English this half-term, our class text will be "Hansel and Gretel" by Neil Gaiman. We will be starting this unit in our first week and we will use the characters and settings to inform our writing.

In Maths, we will be focusing on statistics, shape and geometry this term as well as continuing to focus on addition, subtraction multiplication and division. In our daily fluency work, we will be reviewing learning from previous term to help us recall key facts as well as recapping content from earlier year groups.

Our Science units are Air Quality and Pollution and Electricity The children will be learning about causes of pollution in their local area as well as ways of monitoring air quality. In their Electricity unit, the children will be learning how to make a simple series circuit as well as how to use scientific symbols in their scientific drawings.

Our History enquiry this term is The Anglo Saxons. The children will be learning about how the Anglo Saxons settled in England and what life was like for this civilisation after the Romans left Britain.

Our Geography enquiry this term will be "Where does our energy come from?" In this inquiry, the children will be studying the change to renewable energy as well as identifying future trends in the UK's energy system.

We will also have a weekly French lesson where the children will be developing their vocabulary and develop their conversation skills.

Reading

Listening to your child read aloud at home is really beneficial, so your support is greatly appreciated. Reading aloud on a regular basis supports both your child’s reading fluency and expression. We encourage children to read a range of genres, but also to read texts which they find interesting. Your child will also have the opportunity to bring Big Cat books home, which include both fiction and non-fiction, as well as poetry. Please record any reading your child does at home on the BoomReader app. When your child finishes their book, they will complete a quiz on it in school on Accelerated Reader. This will assess their understanding of the text. The children can also complete this quiz at home if preferred.

To further support your child's comprehension skills, please ask a range of questions. 

PE

PE sessions are on Tuesday with Mr Ford  The children are to come in their PE kit. Please ensure that all PE kit is clearly labelled with your child’s name.

Long hair should be tied back for lessons. Jewellery should not be worn in school. This is especially important for PE.

Water bottles, snack and school bags

Children are permitted to bring water bottles into school.  Please ensure that bottles are taken home on a daily basis for washing and are clearly labelled with your child’s name.

Children are encouraged to bring a healthy snack in to eat during their morning break. As we have children with nut allergies in school, please ensure that snacks from home are nut free. 

Children need to bring in their black school bags and reading books each day.

Homework

Homework this term will focus on the three core areas of: reading, times tables practice and spellings. We will also be setting additional reading and maths homework for the children in Year 5 and 6.

• Spellings: An overview of the spellings for the year will be sent home. Please practise these each week with your child. You may also wish to look ahead at future spellings to support them further. The spellings patterns follow those we are learning in school.
• Reading: Children are expected to read a minimum of five times at home. Please record these reads on Boomreader - thank you for your support with this.
• Times Tables: TT Rock Stars allows your child to test their times table ability against the clock in studio mode or practise following this week’s teacher set activity. The teacher set activity will set a different combination of times tables to focus on building your child's confidence and ability in time for the Times Tables test at the end of the year.  You can log in via https://ttrockstars.com/ or by downloading the app. Login details will be sent home, but please contact me if you need these again.
• Maths and Reading CGP books - the children will bring home their CGP books and have a number of pages to complete each week. Please return these books each Thursday and we will mark them in school. CGP books will be sent out each Friday.

Should your child have any questions/queries regarding their homework tasks, please encourage them to ask a member of staff so that additional help and support can be given.

Contact

Please feel free to contact me via my school e-mail: tflaherty@tarvinprimary.school

Alternatively, you can contact me via the school office or at the end of the day (01829 740399).

Kind regards,

Mr Flaherty