What a great week this week has been.

We really enjoyed the pantomime yesterday - before anyone comments - oh yes we did!

We've also really enjoyed planning our designs for our bridges, learning about water resistance in science, learning about the different parts of a volcano in geography and starting our practise sessions for our school Christmas performance.

Thank you again to everyone who is getting on board with the homework we are sending home - hopefully, you can see that it's not too much for the children and they can show you what they have been learning in the classroom.

P.E. kit - it is getting colder now so jogging bottoms/jumpers are a great idea to include for P.E. kit on Tuesday.

Times tables - please spend a little time each night practising times table questions with the children. They will come home have a range of strategies they have been taught at school including singing, chanting and learning their table facts by rote. We apologise for ruining any nursery rhymes for you by turning them into times table songs.

Next week:

Next week, we have our first assessment week of the year. The children will be sitting a three part reading paper (which includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry pieces of writing), a spelling test, a SPaG test and 3 separate maths papers.

This is their opportunity to show us what they have learnt this year and also for us to see where they still have gaps in their learning so we can plan what to do about these.

So that the children can achieve their potential, please make sure that they are well rested, they bring a full water bottle to school each day and that you reiterate the same messages that we will be giving them - we want their best effort. If they don't know something or they get something wrong, it is not the end of the world as long as they try their best. The last thing we want is any of the children losing sleep or becoming upset about these assessments. We will try to share any successes with them as soon as we have marked each of the different papers.

As well as the assessments, we have some lovely things planned in the afternoons. We will be having a lesson from a company called Tech She Can which will be a virtual lesson all about space tech for human health. The company worked with the current Y6s a lot last year and delivered excellent, engaging lessons throughout the year. We will also continue practising for our performance.