Welcome to Maple Class!
We are a fabulous class of Year 5 and 6 children!
Here are our teachers - Mrs Holt and Miss Gooding!
Class information...
Our PE days for the Autumn 1 half term are: Wednesdays (Outdoor) and Mondays (Indoor) so please come to school in your active uniform on those days!
OUR first day back!!
We are back from the holidays fresh and ready to go! Today we have introduced our new topic about the Anglo-Saxons and begun to learn about the 7 Kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England! The class were introduced to our new topic area too where they can complete challenges relating to our topic independently to learn more about the Anglo-Saxons and achieve rewards for their efforts! At the end of the lesson we had a relay race game where the children went into teams of 7 and had to take it in turns to run to the board and write an Anglo-Saxon kingdom then the next child in the team had to run to the board and name another! By the time it got to the 7th child it had got a bit harder to work out which one was missing!! Well done everyone! Here's some photos from today! In future, I will endeavour to add a weekly update here on the website so that you can see all the things we have done that week. Enjoy today's photos!
8/9/23 - Our first week!
What a wonderful first week we have had! I have asked each and every one of Maple Class to give themselves a big pat on the back as they have been wonderful this week! As you may have read earlier in the week, we have been learning about the Anglo-Saxons in our topic work and reading about them during our guided reading sessions! Our Science began yesterday which is about adaptation, inhertiance and evolution! We began by discussing what we knew about these things and what we wanted to learn then our learning where we began with adaptation and how camels bodies are adapted for living in hot, dry conditions. We also learn an adaptation song which I am still singing to myself now!
In outdoor PE this week it was tri-golf. Indoor PE will begin on Monday. We have begun learning the days of the week in French and our maths has been about place value. In the photos below, you will see a picture of our 'Wall of Pride.' This is a special display to show the children who have been demonstrating excellent learning behaviours such as perseverence, motivation, concentration, changing strategy as needed etc. Congratulations to Anam and Rubie whose work and photo have already gone up on the wall of pride! Have a lovely weekend everyone!
This week's rewards!
Each day we celebrate the children who have earned the most points in our star of the day competitiion so if you have noticed your child wearing a 1st, 2nd or 3rd rosette sticker they have been in the top 3 for star of the day!
Today we celebrated our first superstar in assembly! Our winner was E;lkie for her kindness and helping others know how to hold a golf club and hit the ball during our PE lesson.
Congratulations to our house champions too! As the class have been so wonderful we ended up with 6 children all with the same number of winning house points! Well done to Gianella, Seb, Sonny, Eva, Tansy and Gracie who were our winners but there were many children only one or two house points behind so well done to everyone! The class were rewarded with a game of drip drip drop on Friday afternoon for such a super week!
Our year 6s visit haslingden high school!
Our Years 6s visiting Haslingden High on Tuesday morning to get a taster of lessons at high school! We went to an ICT lesson first and learnt to program a 'microbit.' First we designed a heart shape that then flashed, next we made our microbit display our initials and then we did a count down to blast off! At the end of the lesson, we had done so well that we were allowed to explore the program further ourselves and make the micorbit light up with anything we wanted. After that we were given some juice and biscuits and had a break.
After break it was history and the Great Fire of London with Mr Gizzi who showed us a video about the great fire of London then he provided us with different sources of evidence. We had read/look at the sources and decide on what the various causes of the fire were and the consequences of the fire. After that it was back on the bus back to school for lunch. We hope you all enjoyed your tours of Haslingden High in the evening with your families!
Weekly update 2! 15th September 2023
It's been another super busy week with lots of exciting learning taking place! Maple class are really enjoying our 'Anglo-Saxons' topic and many of the children have been bringing in things that they have done at home. At the start of the week, Gianella had drawn a fantastic Anglo-Saxon warrior picture; which she received the superstar award for today; and now she has created her own comic book of Beowolf which she has kindly said can go in the book corner for us all to read! Grace has also been busy at home, creating her own super book about the Anglo-Saxons, full of super facts and presented beautifully in different coloured pens! She too has said we can read her book in the book corner! During our Literacy lessons, we have continued with the story of 'Outlaw' and many of the children are bringing their own versions of the book into school and reading ahead to see what will happen next! We learnt the names of different Anglo-Saxon place names and their meanings in our history lesson on Monday then played 'Mallet's mallet' at the end where we had to try and remember the endings of the place names! In PE we have been continued our golf outdoors and controlling the swing of our clubs to hit the ball the correct distance. For indoor PE we are doing gymnastics!
During PSHE this week, we were working as a team. We had to find a way of counting to 20 with only one of us speaking at a time. If two of us tried to say a number at once we had to start again. Thankfully, Amber was on hand to come up with a strategy and take charge of the class to make it work! We then went into small group to build bridges that were at least 30cm long out of artstraws. The children had to make sure they were listening to each other and considering each others ideas and opinions.
week 2 awards!
It's been a tough job this week choosing who will receive this week's rewards because everyone has deserved something! In the end I decided upon:-
Maths - Ethan who has worked his socks off in maths all week and shown a great understanding in our lessons.
Superstar - Gianella for her beautiful Anglo-Saxon warrior picture.
Leaves - Seb for his amazing effort and enthusaiasm, Caitlin and Iris for their excellent effort and beautiful manners and Caidan for being so kind and helpful.
Congratulations to our house champion this week who is Gianella with 17 house points! Tansy and Caitlin are in 2nd with 15 points and Ethan in 3rd with 13. Well done everyone!
Enjoy looking at this week's photos!
Weekly update 3 - 22.9.23
It's been a wet and windy week at school this week but we haven't the weather dampen (pardon the pun!) our spirits. As you may have heard at home, the big topic of conversation this week has been blooket! I had planned one for our history lesson on Monday this week which was such a hit that the children have begged for more! We've ended up playing another to practise our science learning and maths!
The children have also enjoyed one of our challenges in the art area this week which was to make an Anglo-Saxon house! We had learnt about the different features of an Anglo-Saxon village on Monday and since then the classroom has been covered in straw as children thatch the roofs of their houses. So much so that Mr Matthias asked me if we were doing a nativity in our classroom!
I have been so pleased with how much the presentation of the children's work has improved in the 3 weeks we have spent together. This has been the focus of our recognition board and I am pleased to say that every leaf (every leaf has a child's name on and is added to the tree as they achive our focus!) has been added to our Maple tree! Well done everyone!
The children have also been writing their own legends this week in the style of the legend Gelert whose master entrusted him with his precious child but wrongly thought Gelert had killed the child. We have had Spongebob with his faithful friend Gary the snail losing Mr Crabs' secret formula. Shrek and donkey, Harry Potter's faithful friend snapping his wand and many more! A few examples of the writing are in the photos below.
Week 3 rewards
Well done to this week's super winners of rewards!
English - Eva - for her brilliant Legend
Superstar - Tansy - for her beautiful picture of the Anglo-Saxon village and for making so many amazing Anglo-Saxon items at home and completing so many challenges in our learning areas.
Leaves - Jasmine for all your super hard work and enthusiasm , Oliver - For working so hard in all we do and being so eager to please, Reuben - for being so enthusastic and helpful!
Congratulations to this week's house champions Caitlin and Lacey with a massive 17 house points this week!
Enjoy this week's photos!
Weeks 4 and 5!
We have been doing so much over the last two weeks but the main thing that has captured our enthusiasm is the 'Battle of the Bands' competition which ran from last Thursday to this Thursday on TT Rockstars! Our competitive spirit seriously kicked in and the children have been playing on TT Rockstars morning, noon and night which meant that we absolutely smashed the competition and were awarded the winning certificate and a Princess Poppy toy in assembly this morning! Princess Poppy is now snuggled up with Sandy the dog in our reading corner!.
During our topic lessons, Maple class have enjoyed making Anglo-Saxon jewellery from clay, thatched roof homes in the art area and have played the Anglo-Saxon game 'Nine Men's Morris.' They have also been drawing Anglo-Saxon brooches. Take a look at Riley's beautifully drawn brooch that awarded him a well-earned 'Superstar' award in last week's assembly!.
During PE we have continued playing golf and the children are using their chippers well to lift their ball off the ground. This week they were hitting their golf balls against the fence and were trying to lift the ball enough so that it hit the fence above the markers. If they were able to do this, they were then challenged to hit the ball over one marker but below another so that they needed to control the height. Somehow, Reuben managed this and got his ball stuck in the bars too!
In our English lessons, we have moved onto learning about persuassive texts and how advertisers use techniques such as alliteration and rhetorical questions to entice the customer and sell their products. We began the learning with some considerations about how we might advertise chocolate which meant that we needed to eat some to think about how we might describe it! This went down very well with the class!
Enjoy viewing this week's photos below!
Fortnightly update - Weeks 6 and 7!
We've now come to the end of our first half term together and so much has happened since our last update!
In English, we have now completed our work on persuassive adverts that we had begun in our last update! Since then, we have looked at the language used in adverts and moved into radio adverts! We have learnt about features such as the use of rhetorical questions, use of wow adjectives, use of alliteration and the use of small print which is done as 'fast talking' on a radio advert! The children have planned their own radio advert in groups to advertise the school to prospective parents and we recorded them today! Please see our videos below! In our spelling work we have been learning about how -tial and -cial on the ends of words make the 'shul' sounds and how -tial tends to follow a consonant and -cial tends to follow a vowel. This led to game on Wednesday this week where we had to spell a given word then hunt the stones with the correct sounds to make the word before we could be given the next word. The children really enjoyed practising their spellings in a fun and active way!
In our Science lessons, the class have continued their learnng on evolution, inhertiance and adaptation. The children have been learning about Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, writing biographies about the scientists this week. We also looked at how horses have changed and evolved over the last 50 million years!!
20th October 2023
In our topic learning, we have learnt all about the discovery of the Anglo-Saxon ship discovered in Sutton Hoo in the 1930s! We have also got a nice new display shelving unit where we have displayed all our Anglo-Saxon jewellery pieces and the items the children have been making in the art and topic areas!
Between November 14th and 16th the school are entered into the 'England Rocks' competition on TT Rockstars! The class with the most correct answers over these two days will win a £100 amazon voucher and we are determined to win!! There's no homework over the half term holiday but I've told the class keep practising their tables in preparation for this competition!! We had 7 more children who received their certificates this week for improving their rockstar status this week and 4 more last week! Well done Maple Class!!
Last last mention! There's a spare jumper in class that none of the children will claim! It's an Asda jumper aged 9-10 and appears pretty new. If anyone is missing a jumper, please let me know. Have a fab half term break everyone! Enjoy this week's photos and our radio adverts!
Update! 10.11.23
We have now completed 2 full weeks since returning to school from our half term holiday and what a lot we have done already! This half term, we have continued our learning about the Anglo-Saxons in our topic sessions and have learnt about the Anglo-Saxon gods and how Christianity was introduced to Anglo-Saxon Britain. During our Literacy lessons we have been reading 'The Wizard of Oz.' We started this learning by creating our own tornadoes in jars and the children created some brilliant ones! Since then we have been reading the book and have written a diary as if we are Dorothy and have written a letter to the Wizard of Oz to ask for help! See photos below!
Our Science this half term is all about light. We have learnt about how light travels in straight lines and demonstrated how the light was travelling from a torch to our eyes with a piece of string. On Monday this week, we had a Martial arts club in to give us a taster session. You may have seen some of our photos on the newsletter today too! Our PE lessons this half term are focussed on hockey skills for our outdoor sessions with the sports (although due to the weather one of our sessions have taken place indoors!) and our indoor PE sessions also include hockey where we practising passing, dribbling and intercepting skills but we also do this with netball, basketball, rugby and football!
Last but not least, your children may have told you that the 'England Rocks' competition begins on TT Rockstars on Tuesday 14th next week. I have decided that we definately ARE going to win this competition and mention it once or twice a day to the children!! They will have one hour per day on Tuesday and Wednesday to answer as many times tables questions correctly as they can! The class who average the most correct answers as a class will be the winners! So please encouarge your children to practise their tables in preparation! Thank you!
Enjoy our photos below.
Fortnightly update - 1/12/23
Apologies! I've left it 3 weeks instead of 2 for our update! Time is going so quickly! So much happened since our last update - we had antibullying week which included odd socks day - it's good to be different - and 'positive noticing day. On Odd socks day, we sat in a circle with our odd socks facing into the middle and we all held hands to signify our togetherness! The children loved writing leaves for each other on 'Positive noticing day' and wearing the leaves they had been presented with pride!
Next we had the England Rocks competition on TT Rockstars! Out of 118,500 schools in the country, Waterfoot Primary came 85th which is a very impressive result! Maple class were the highest scoring class in the school and we also had the highest scoring pupil in the school! Our certificate is displayed in our classroom window which you may have seen when picking up your child!
Many of our photos in this update are from our Science lessons where we have been learning about light! The children have learnt about how light travels in straight lines how it reflects off objects so that we can see them. We have done experiments to show how the light reflects off mirrors so that we can see objects that are behind us and used string to show the direction of the light travelling then we made our own periscopes and tested them by sitting under our tables and looking above them with our periscopes! We were very excited when they worked!
Christmas has arrived in maple class!
Christmas has now arrived in Maple Class and the children had a wonderful time decorating the classroom and singing and dancing to Christmas music! Our classroom now looks like an explosion in a tinsel factory! It looks fantastic! Merry Christmas everyone!
Our Christmas show and party!
We hope you all enjoyed our Christmas show 'Away in a spaceship!' The children had worked so hard to learn all the songs, their actions and the script for the show and I'm sure you'll agree that they did themselves proud! Thank you to all the family members who were able to come along and watch us! We celebrated in the afternoon with a Christmas party; playing Christmas corners, heads & tails and musical bumps before settling down for a bit of party food before home time. Here are some pictures of our Maple Class children! Lots more photos of all the Upper Juniors have been posted on the Waterfoot Facebook page.
OUR FIRST TWO WEEKS OF SPRING 1!
Welcome back to all our Maple families! We hope you all had a very happy Christmas and new year! We are already two weeks into the new school Spring term and already we have done so much! This half term, our topic is 'Heroes and Villains' and in English we have begun with a Villain - Macbeth! The children have seemed to really like this Shakephere story and have written some fantastic descriptions of the setting when Macbeth was fighting in the battle against the Norwegians and then they have written letters home to Lady Macbeth to tell her what has been happening. We are currently working on newspaper reports about the death of King Duncan which we will finish next week. To help our learning about Newspaper reports we also have some real newspapers in our book nook where the children can catch up on current news! During our Science lessons, the children have been learning about Scientific heroes! We began with Professor Stephen Hawking and investigated how black holes work (see the photos) then we have moved onto learning about Libbie Hyman and how she classified different creatures. Our group names have changed this half term too to reflect the learning we are doing in art about different Portrait artrists. Last term we were different Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms now our group names are Rembrant, Verneer, Van Dyke, Da Vinci and Picasso!
Parental information
For your information parents, the Year 6 children are now receiving a piece of SPAG homework in addition to their spellings (on EdShed) and Maths so they now have 3 pieces of homework to complete each week. As always, homework goes out on a Wednesday and should be returned to school on a Monday. Years 5 have received their 'Go-Velo' cycling course letter this week too so please send back your completed forms as soon as you can.
Finally, the NSPCC rocks event is due to begin on TT Rockstars in a few weeks so I have been reminding Maple class to keep on practising their tables! Our class came 85th in the whole country for England Rocks out of hundreds of Thousands of classes and this time I have set them the challenge of getting even higher than 85th! Keep practising everyone! Thanks so much! Have a lovely weekend!
Spring 1 - weeks 3 and 4 update!
There's been plenty going on in the last two weeks, which has included two special days - internet safety day and NSPCC number day today!
On internet safety day, the children enjoyed doing a workshop with our guest Lindsay. In class, we played a game of blooket all about social media and made fortune tellers all about online safety!
During our English lessons, our work has now moved on from our learning about the Villain 'Macbeth' and we have started researching and writing non-chronological reports about a superhero or villain of our choice! It turns out there are many superheroes/villains that Mrs Holt has never heard of!! I look forward to posting some photos of our completed reports next week!
PE continues with Rugby outdoors and creative movement indoors. We played some relay games in the hall last week and after moving up and down the hall, each member of each team had to stand somewhere in the hall in a creative pose then each subsequent member of the team had to join them and stand in another creative pose. We ended up with some very interesting shapes by the end as you will see in our photos!
Finally, as you'll know, we've celebrated NSPCC number day today and taken part in the NSPCC rocks competition. Further photos from this day have been posted on our Waterfoot Facebook page. We hope your children enjoyed the day!
Parent reminders
Year 5 families - Don't forget! We are doing our 'Go Velo' bike riding next week on Monday and Tuesday! Come to school wearing sensible clothes for riding bikes - no jeans or jewellery!
Just a reminder that homework is set every Wednesday and should be completed by the following Monday. The Year 6s complete a piece of Maths homework, spellings on EdShed and a piece of SPAG to do on the website www.spag.com. The Year 5s have a piece of Maths homework, (either on sumdog or on paper) and spellings work to do on EdShed. Please ensure your child has completed their homework by Monday. Thanks!
It is also the first night of our parents evening appointments next week, the second evening being in the first week back after half term. Please make sure you have booked your appoints. You will have received your link to book it through school ping. You have until Monday 5th Feb to book your appointment. Thanks!
UPDATE! 9Th Feb 2024
It's the turn of our Year 5s to do their 'Go Velo' bikeability training this week and how well our Year 5s did! On Monday morning, we learnt about how to do the various safety checks we should do before riding our bikes then we had a ride on the playground where the trainers could see how confidently we rode our bikes. The confident riders then moved onto pracctise briefly looking over their shoulders as they rode in preparation for getting out onto the roads! By the end of Monday, all children were riding their bikes independently! We were so proud of all the children!
Inside, we have continued our learning about heroes and villains! The children had been researching their favourite superheroes/villains last week and this week they have organised their information, created subheadings for their non-chronological reports and selecting appropriate pictures to print and stick in or draw themselves. The children have been very proud of the non-chronolgical reports that they have created and many wanted their photos taking with their brilliant work to show our families!
Our science this half term have been about the various types of scientist (including the work they do) and the famous scientist heroes who have made significant scientific breakthrough which have made such an improvement to the life of humans. In our pictures, you will see the children 'freeze framing' a part of Alexander Flemming's work on the discovery of penicillin. Ask your child which part of the Flemmings work they are acting in their photo!
Finally, a super well done to our amazing class who won the NSPCC rocks competition. Maple class gained the most points scored in our school and we also the top player in the school (Anam) 2nd highest points scorer (Mariyam), 4th (Caitlin), 5th (Parker), 7th (Sophie) and 9th (Oliver). Well done everyone!
Parental reminders!
Over the half term holidays, the Year 6 children have their spag.com homework to do (although I know several have done it already!) and another 'half' SATs arithmetic paper to do (We've had some Year 5s requesting to do it too!!) I have not set any homework to do on EdShed for any of the children and the Year 5s have not been given any maths to do during the holidays.
World book day is coming up at the start of March! The theme is 'a bedtime story' where we can come to school in our comfy pyjamas that we may wear to have a bedtime story. I may bring my dressing gown too! Part of the world book day fun is our 'Extreme Reading competition which was a huge success a few years ago! Can you have your photo taken in an extreme situation?? We've prevously had children reading whilst jumping on a trampoline, hanging upside down, there was even someone lying on an ironning board in the past! I look forward to seeing your fabulous extreme reading ideas!
Maple class update! 15/3/24
There's been so much going on during the last few weeks! We have celebrated world book day and British Science week in addition to all the other day to day learning activities we have been doing! In history, we have been learning all about the Mayan Empire - where in the world they were from, their day-to-day lives, beliefs, rituals and their number system! Our PE lessons have been based upon athletics outdoors and tennis skills indoor where we have been practising hitting the ball with a forehand and a backhand swing! Our weekly science lessons have been about forces this half term. We have been learning all about air resistance and how vehicles and objects can be streamlined to make them more aerodynamic! We have also experimented with moving objects through water and how applying more force to the object just makes a splash rather than making it move faster! This caused great amusement amongst the class and we had a few soggy tables and items by the end of the lesson!
Our ICT lessons this half term have been about spreadsheets. The class are doing really well at creating sets of data on tables, applying different formulae to make calculations and copying formulae for speed. The class have been doing really well with this and we are going to record our scores from our athletics lessons on our spreadsheets at the end of term.!
British science week
During British Science week, we did a full science day where our theme was 'time.' We started by creating our own pendulums and we timed our swings. The children then investigated what would happen if they attached a small piece of card to their pendulum then what would happen if they attached a large piece of card to the pendulum. They noticed that the card slowed the pendulum down and when I asked what they thought it was slowing the pendulum down, they all recognised that the card was creating more air resistance. Well done everyone! After breaktime, we learnt about the brain and how neurons connect to each other. We learnt how the most active time in a human's life for neuron's to connect is during the first 5 years of a child's life. After dinner, we went out into our woodland area. The class collected lots of natural objects from the area and then tested dropping these items from the same height and seeing if our partners could react quickly enough to catch the falling item. At the end of the afternoon we had a cup of hot chocolate around basecamp.
Maple class update! 26th April 2024
We are now into the summer term and our final full term of primary school for our Year 6s! We have had a wonderful start to the school term with the class working exceptionally hard and demonstrating boundless enthusiasm! Our half termly topic activity sheet went out in the first week of the term and we have had lots of things being made and written on our topic of the rainforest already! Some of the children's work is in the window for everyone to see and some is on display on our 'rainforest' display board! See the pictures below of them! If you haven't seen our topic homework activity sheet, you can find it here on the school website by going to 'parents' then 'homework' then scrolling down to Summer Term 2024.
As part of our topic learning, the children have already learnt about the countries in South America and those that the rainforest goes into, they have learnt about the different layers of the rainforest and been researching different animals that live there. In our topic area, we have lots of books to read and a rainforest board game which the children have enjoyed playing during morning challenge!
Our DT work this half term is about food and the children started last week with a 'bush-tucker' trial, trying lots of foods that they may not have tried before! (We gave them funny names to make them sound like things you might eat on I'm a celebrity!) This week, we tried foods and compared them to the eatwell plate; considering their nutrional value and how we could make them even healthier!
Our PE this half term is cricket (on Mondays) and Netball on Wednesdays so please make sure you come to school in trainers on those days! Enjoy this fortnight's photos!
