5 Mr Girling

Welcome to Kestrels Class Page

Teacher: Mr Girling

Teaching Assistant: Mrs Singh

This term, in Maths, the children have been learning about prime numbers, factors, square numbers and cube numbers. Next we will be multiplying 3-digit numbers by a 2-digit number.

In English, pupils will be reading the book Sky Hawk, by Gill Lewis, and they will be learning to write fiction with suspense and tension.

This half-term in year 5, pupils will also be learning about:

• Tectonic plates and continents.
• Reversible and irreversible reactions in Science (also see below for our big experiment)
• The Anglo-Saxons.
• Going on holiday (in French)
• Wisdom in Christianity.

Multiplication and Division

Pupils can improve their times tables speed by playing on TTRockstars. Their usernames and passwords are in the front cover of their homework books.

Congratulations to Thomas for being last week's top player in 5G. He answered 789 correct questions in the half-term holiday! Also well done to Harrison and Lilly who came 2nd and 3rd.

Reading

We expect pupils to read a story book at home regularly. It is good for pupils to read out loud to an adult each week (parents, or grandparents for example) and it really helps if that adult asks a few questions about the book to check that the child understands.

For example: "Do you know what that word means?" or "Why do you think she said that?" or "What do you think he will do next?" These questions help the child to think more deeply about the book rather than just skim read it.

Home Learning

We will send work home each Friday and we would like to get it back by the following Wednesday. If a pupil is finding their homework difficult he or she should tell the teacher instead of handing the book back undone. The work will always be based on what the pupil has already been learning in class.

P.E.

P.E. will be on Tuesday and Wednesday. Pupils must come to school already wearing their P.E. kit: white t-shirt and black or navy blue trousers/shorts.

Pupils should wear sports shoes.

Pupils can also bring a school uniform jumper to keep warm during the other lessons of the day.

Working Scientifically

This term we have been studying materials, such as plastic and paper. We also learnt about the damage that plastic pollution is doing to the environment, especially the world's oceans and their wildlife.

We wanted to know which type of bag is the most environmentally friendly. That is the type that will biodegrade or decompose the quickest in the environment. We are running a scientific experiment to find out.

We put four different types of bag into four flower pots and buried the bags in soil. We will wait for 10 days, then empty them out to check what has happened to the bags. Then we will check every month to see which bag is the first to decompose. The pots were left outside exposed to the rain, sun and wind.

First results

After 10 days we tipped out the soil and inspected the bags. Here are some photos of how the bags appeared after 10 days in soil. Only the paper bag was visibly different and had started to disintegrate. The other bags were wet but otherwise still intact.