Shark Class
2021-2022

Year 4/5/6 are taught by Miss Jackson on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday mornings and Mrs McFarlane on Thursday afternoon and Friday. Shark Class are also joined by Miss Batten our HLTA and Mrs Alexander as focused support and TA.
Sharks are a class of 22 pupils, who love a challenge and take pride in the work that they produce. Shark Class work hard in all aspects of their learning and persevere to achieve their goals both for themselves and their classmates. Shark Class work very hard whilst embracing ISP Christian values and enjoying learning.

                    

Sharks are all aware of their termly targets for English and Maths and are always working hard to achieve these goals. Termly targets are generated from internal termly assessments. We also record these in our class work books. We chose to display our Autumn targets on bee's in keeping with our floral themed classroom this year! At the start of the Spring term we added some flowers to our display at the bottom to show our updated targets. At the beginning of Summer term we will again add to this display in the form of honey pots.

Shark Class Team are very proud of all pupils and know that everyone will work hard to achieve their potential this academic year.

Class Newsletters

Autumn Newletter 2021

Spring Newsletter 2022


Curriculum Maps

Homework

Reading: 

In Shark Class, the children are expected to read every night for about 20-30 mins and record it in their reading diaries. Please also use this time to discuss the book and ask appropriate questions to further develop comprehension skills. Reading can be done independently, although it is still important that your child reads aloud regularly too. Please ensure that you, or your child, add a comment to their reading record each time they read.  Diaries are checked every week and children receive dojo points for the completion of this homework. We enjoy using our class reading area to really engross ourselves in our books! Within our reading area we have a Shark class book review scrapbook where we have begun recording our thoughts about personal reads and class books. We have enjoyed discussing some interesting themes and thought provoking questions that arise from the books we read.

                    

 

Spelling:

Spellings are taken from the statutory word lists for Year 4,5/6. Year 4 are still on a mixed list with Year 3 and we regularly review if children need to move onto a new list. For children who are struggling with phonics and word patterns we also access the HFW list to allow these simplier words to be embedded and learnt before progressing. Some of our children also access daily RWI sessions with specialised phonics teachers in the lower end of the school. Shark Class spellings can be found in their individual spelling books, every child has their own folder to be brought into school on a Monday ready for testing. New spellings are stuck into books and sent home on a Wednesday. Spellings should be continued to be practised throughout the week to ensure children are continually developing their skills and in turn are embedding this knowledge throughout their written work.
 

English & Maths Homework:

All children in Shark Class are set a weekly English and Maths activity, this is sent home on a Wednesday and should be returned by the following Monday. The activity will always be something that has been previously learnt at school in the week to ensure consolidation of learning and allows us to make time for interventions at the end of every half term to fill in the gaps for learning and progression. Each half term a challenge is et for homework instead of a specialised subject piece and children are asked to revisit each spelling and maths area that has been covered that half term.

CGP Books:

CGP books are used throughout the week to support class activities for mental maths, punctuation, spelling and grammar. Children will be set a weekly task to help develop their skills around National Assessment papers. The questioning techniques the CGP books use enable the children to practise the skills and knowledge that they have learnt in class. Year 6 use targeted question books to help develop their knowledge of SATs style questions and the ability to decode langauge to help assist with modelling answers.

My Happy Mind:

My Happy Mind is a new wellbeing and brain programme that began in Spring term, the children learn to manage their feelings, emotions and brain development in the form of whole class sessions on a Monday morning before learning begins. Journelling forms a part of this and the children enjoy learnoing breathing techniques.
 

Wellbeing Wednesday's:

Proud Wall:

 

Take a look at what we have been up to....

Autumn/Spring Term

English

In Shark Class, we have enjoyed using Talk for Writing to uplevel our writing and have took time to look at the skills involved in the process. We have produced some fantastic pieces of writing, starting with a 'Cold Task' to show how much we already know, developing our toolkit, before having a go at a 'Hot Task' using everything we have learnt. We have looked at adding a range of writing techniques and vocabularly to our work including: adverbs, adjectives, fronted adverbials, similies and onomatopoeia to make our writing even more exciting to read! So far this academic year we have focused on suspense, warning, settings and instructions. We have created some fantastic pieces of writing and the techniques we are learning overspill into our topic writing. We are very proud of our beautiful writing displays for English and our Topic focus.

World Book Day

 

Maths

In Maths we use the Hamilton scheme for planning and enjoy using the resources from this scheme, alongside a mix of mastery maths from White Rose and Classroom Secrets. We take the learning statements from each year group to ensure every child is covering Maths relevant to their year group, this helps tp secure diffrentiation by year group.. We have a a whole class focus but then branch off into year groups to complete diffrentiated tasks. Our focus' in Maths so far this academic year has been Addition and Subtraction, Multiplication and Division, Place Value, Time and Timetables and Decimals and Fractions. We have become really confident with these topic areas. We have focused on quick recall of answers as well as word problems and reasoning.We also enjoy practical maths where at all possible, using the natural environment to create opportunities to learn outdoors.

Every Thursday morning, we complete our Times Table Rock Stars Grid. We challenge ourselves each week to beat our previous scores.

Every Friday morning, we complete our Big Maths Beat That! These are quick recall Maths questions where we also try to beat our scores and move through the levels!

          

 

Topic

In Autumn term, our topic was Incredible India. We enjoyed looking at the Geography linked to India. We located it on a map, looked at surrounding countries and continents and also looked at the mountain range the Himalayas. We also learnt about and researched famous landmarks including the Taj Mahal. We even managed to create some fantastic art work to display in our sketch books and our classroom corridor! We also managed to design and build our very own Taj Mahal models! We were excited to hold a whole school theme day in Autumn Term 2 based on India; check back for some more information and pictures from this!

In the Spring term, our topic is Rainforests, we are currently exploring the canopy in the rainforest and have enjoyed building our own mini rainforest in a plastic bottle. We have looked at the animals that live in the rainforest and have created habitat factfiles.

                    
                                                                                                                      

Science

Science coverage in Shark Class this year:

Computing

This term,our focus is Internet Safety. We are celebrating Internet Safety Day on February 7th. We have previously explored word processing through tables, fonts and editing. Our Computer skills are varied and this is a skill, that if at all possible, we can practise at home. 

R.E
coming soon ....


P.E

Swimming