Chestnut Class

Mrs. Tyler  Class Teacher	Miss Bartlett Teaching Assistant

Welcome to Chestnut Class

A very warm welcome to Chestnut Class, a class of super enthusiastic year 3, 4, 5 and 6 children. We aim to foster and develop the growing independence of our children academically, socially and emotionally in preparation for the transition to secondary school. 

Learning: Curriculum

For more information about what the children will be learning this year, please see on our overview on the long term plan in the documents at the bottom of the page.  

General information for term 2

PE

Our PE days for term 3 are currently:

Mondays: Fitness with Mr. Kiely; Wednesday: swimming at Bradford-on-Avon pool

Homework

Homework is set on a Friday 3:20pm and is due in by 9am the following Friday. This gives the maximum amount of time to complete it. Children are encouraged to take responsibility for their learning and can ask to complete some of their homework during lunch break if they have other commitments during the week.

Homework comprises of a set of online tasks: weekly spellings set on Spellingshed, some grammar games on Rollama and times tables set on TTRockstars. The children will be practicing the timestables that best suits their learning and the number of games required will depend on accuracy and speed.

Your child will have a login sheet that they can use to remember their passwords. Please encourage your child to organise their time themselves in order to complete their homework, and continue developing as a responsible learner.

Chestnut class love to read! Being a fluent reader when reading out loud is really important for self-esteem, especially when the children move up to secondary school and need to read aloud in class. Please find time to hear your child read at least three times a week. Reading magazines, newspapers, websites and recipes are also all good sources of reading material as well as much-loved reading books. When you have heard your child read then please sign their reading record (they have been told to get it all ready for you!).

An optional creative homework is also set in the second week of term and it is due in on the week before the half term. This allows an enthusiastic child to show off what they can do and give an opportunity to share it with their teacher and their classmates in a celebration.Please find this term's copy in the documents below.

Teacher cover in class

Miss Bartlett will cover Chestnut class on a Monday afternoon when the children are doing PE and then covering French and music.

What are we doing in spring term 3?

In English, we are starting our new book, Survivors and our final piece of writing will be a journalistic piece. In maths, the year 3/4 are finishing their topic on division and multiplication then move onto area conversions and area and perimeter and finish on the start of a fractions unit. Year 5/6 will finish their work on multiplying and dividing fractions, using decimals and some work on area and perimeter.

In science, the year 5/6 will cover evolution and inheritance and the year 3/4 will work on their light unit. The children will be encouraged to ask their families about different characteristics - eye and hair colour and even if there is someone in the family who can roll their tongue - so be prepared for the questions!

In French with Miss Bartlett, the children will be working on school days which includes learning the vocabulary of the classroom. The yr3/4 will be encouraged to rehearse their vocabulary orally and the yr5/6 will work on writing and using the vocabulary in simple sentences. In music we will study the song A New Year Carol.

We have an art unit this term - mixed media portraits and in history, our topic is about the Maya and how they lived and what they believed. We will find out how this ancient civilisation has influenced modern life today.

In RE, we are investigating how pilgrimages are important to all faiths and finding out how it is the same and how it is different in the different religions.

In computing we will be practising our computational thinking and use that to help do some programming.

It will be another busy term and we are looking forward to spotting the first few signs of spring in our creative homework. Please encourage your child to take part and send in any photos to my email so that they can be shared with the class.

Autumn term 2 roundup!

Chestnut class have had an exceedingly busy term! In maths, we have mastered adding and subtracting fractions and general multiplication and division.

In English, we have written our own journey stories using our target vocabulary and new sentence structures. We did have a lot of fun immersing ourselves in the vocabulary: making ice towers, watching coloured water seep along paper towels; making tunnels in our classroom to crawl through and learning about “milling around”. The great thing about our words is the enthusiasm the class have to spot them in other books too.

In geography, we have been learning about volcanoes and had a good look at lava in the classroom. Some of us were surprised just how easily tephra crumbles in our hands.

We have had a block week for DT – making a 4 page pop up book on a nursery rhyme. We are nearly there with these – look at our fantastic plans below.

In PE, we have been doing tag rugby and working on our skills working as a team. We also had extra PE sessions with Mr. Gunning from Ralph Alan and he put everyone through their paces in the hall. Glockenspiels were played enthusiastically for our music, Classroom Jazz, and in science we continued learning about forces and made some fantastically streamlined boats.

This term, we have taken part in some extra activities: we were lucky enough to be part of author Hannah Gold’s live lesson based on her book ‘Turtle Moon’; we had an amazing Christmas craft open day where we made exploding boxes as gifts for our family and friends; we tried out our enterprise skills and worked in groups to devise and run our own Christmas games stalls at the Christmas fair and Carols and our year 6 had the honour to do the readings and prayer at our Christingle service in the village church this week.

A really busy, happy term!

Happy Christmas from Chestnut class.

What are we doing in autumn term 2?

Another busy term in the run up to Christmas. In English this term, we are working on writing a journey story based on the 'Ice Palace' by Robert Swindells.

In maths, year 5/6 are starting their fraction units for the year, focussing on equivalent fractions, adding and subtracting and years 3/4 are continuing with their work on subtraction and then follow on with multiplication and division.

We will complete our two term science topic on forces under the title of 'Engineering' where the children will continue to plan and carry out lots of hands on investigative experiences.

Our topic for the term is a geography one based on the question "Why do people chose to live near volcanoes?". We will find out how and where volcanoes are formed and how that affects the people living near them.

In PE, the children will be learning the best strategies for tag rugby, having PE sessions with Mr. Gunning from Ralph Allen and taking part in outdoor learning with Mrs. Potten.

In French, we will be learning about transport and birthday celebrations. In RE we try to answer the question "Why religion looks different around the world" and in music we are looking at classroom jazz.

Our DT this term is very exciting and the children will research, plan, create and evaluate pop up books as part of mechanical systems.

Autumn term 1 roundup!

Wow! What a busy start to the academic year.

Everyone settled into class really well. The year 6 had an exciting residential to Plas Pencelli with Mrs. Wilson and they came back and delivered a great photo presentation to the parents with their best bits. Mrs. Wilson also gave some best bits for each child. The walk in the long, dark tunnel with no torches has to be the highlight story! Please see some of the photos below.

 We also were lucky to go to Bath's Children's Literacy Festival. The Yr5/6 saw Katherine Rundell (Impossible Creatures) and the Yr3/4 saw Adam Kay (Dexter Proctor, 10 year old doctor). Everyone came away with a copy of the books. it was fantastic to see the children reading and enjoying them over the following few days.

Our Wow! lesson for our new book in English (Odd and ther Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman) was linked to a Vikings topic so the class dissected some (fake) Viking poo to see what was in their diet. 

Year 5/6 also took part in the Palladian Trust sports event - tag tails and competed with other schools. By the end of the games, Westwood were becoming good at working together as a team to grab the other school's tags.

The children really enjoyed the art topic: I need space where they produced a futuristic picture using a fusion of printing and drawing. See some of their pictures below.

What are we doing in autumn term 1?

Welcome back to all the children into Chestnut class. This is the first term of a fantastic and busy year! The children will be learning all about Vikings, during our history lessons, focusing on the topic question ‘Were the Vikings raiders, traders or something else?’ Over the next 2 terms, our science focus will be ‘forces and magnets’.

During the third week, the year 6’s will be away on their residential for a week and the year 5’s will take part in a project.

Our book this term will be ‘Odd and the Frost Giants’, linking to our history topic. The final write will be an informal letter. We will focus on the grammar features of brackets, colons and semi-colons.

Our maths this term for Yr5/6 will be around the place value of numbers up to 10,000,000 and for Yr3/4 place value of numbers up to 1000.

Towards the end of term 1, we are looking forward to attending the Bath Literacy Festival, to see the author Katherine Rundell!