Hotspur
Spring Term 2021
Happy New Year! Welcome to the Spring term. We hope you enjoyed a lovely Christmas and that you feel suitably rested and ready for the term ahead. Our main topic this term will be Rainforests. We will be basing a lot of our cross curricular work on this theme, focusing on where the major rainforests can be found around the world, the eco systems within them and why they are coming under threat in the modern world.
We’d like to take this opportunity to encourage you to visit the Hotspur class page on the school’s website. Here you will get a taste of what we are doing in class as photographs and video of what the children have been up to are regularly posted here.
English
During Literacy lessons we shall be looking at a number of genres, including: Classic fiction (Carrie’s War), War time poetry, Mystery stories
(Cogheart), and journalistic writing.
Maths
We shall focus, in Maths, on developing skills in multiplication, division, fractions, decimals and percentages, and shape. The Year 5 and 6 pupils will be attempting ‘Fluent in Five’ maths activities every morning and will continue to develop their ‘Mastery’ and reasoning to gain an in depth understanding of number and problem solving.
Science
In Science, our focus will be on the topics of ‘The Human Life Cycle ’ and ’Light’. We will do this through research, as well as a number of
exciting and interesting experiments.
P.E
PE will be on a Tuesday and a Friday Children will be developing skills in gymnastics, skipping, dodgeball and outdoor and adventurous
activities.
Please ensure pupils have the correct PE kit on those days.
P.S.H.E
Our Darwin Values focus this term will be ‘Bouncebackability’ and ‘Growthability. We want all of our pupils to become independent, self-motivated learners, and by working on these attributes we hope that the children will become more resilient.
We will also focus on the big feelings of ‘Anger ‘ and Happiness’.
Computing
In ICT we will be further developing pupil understanding of Coding, using ‘Sonic Pi’, as well as learning about how search engines work.
R.E
In RE, we will be studying:
Hinduism - Beliefs & How can Brahman be everywhere and in everything?
Christianity: Easter & How significant is it for Christians to believe God intended Jesus to die?
We always warmly welcome extra support in class, so please do not be afraid to offer to come in if you think there is something you could help with. Questions and queries about your child’s learning are also welcomed so please don’t hesitate to ask.
And finally, a quick reminder that any contribution to school fund are very much appreciated.
Mr Thomas Miss Pearson
E-Safety Stop Animation
Pumpkin Trail!! As you’ll seen in the photographs below, we really enjoyed going on out pumpkin trail today. There were so many pumpkins!!!
Here are the recipients of our first reading prizes. These Hotspur pupils have each received a new book mark as a reward for reading so much at home. Well done everyone!
Harvest Donations: Well done Hotspur! Our class brought in lots and lots of donations for this year’s Harvest. These will be sent to the Shrewsbury Food Bank, to help those less fortunate than ourselves.
Hotspur PE: The bleep test!
Storm Soundscape
The Arts Centre Telford came to deliver a music workshop to Hotspur and Attingham class this afternoon. Here we all are preparing to perform a storm soundscape.
Geography: Today we planned our own cities! Take a look!
Breakfast is served! All of our pupils are now given the opportunity to have a bagel for breakfast on arrival. Breakfast is so important, as it helps our pupils have the energy to learn throughout the morning.
Darwin Values: Bouncebackability. We spent the afternoon discussing the ways that we can support others to bounce back when things aren’t going their way. We created flowers with strong supportive roots based on the story ‘Bloom’ that Mrs. Benge read in a virtual assembly.
Big Feeling - Happiness: This week we will be focusing on all the things that make us happy, and how we can enjoy other people’s happiness.
Darwin Values - this term our Darwin Value is ‘Bouncebackability’. We hope that by discussing our experiences of lock down, we can support each other to bounce back into school life.
First day back - as if we’d never been away!
Autumn Term 2020
Welcome to the Autumn term. We have been looking forward to having the children back in school, and hope that they are looking forward to being back at school too.
We will support your child with their transition back into school life as best we can. You can rest assured that we have made our school as safe a place as it can possibly be and that we will give your children the time to adjust into their new class.
All of our school procedures, risk assessments and letters to parents can be found on our school website using the link below:
https://www.mountpleasant.shropshire.sch.uk/full-reopening-september-2020/
For the first five and a half weeks of term we will be running a ‘Catch Up’ curriculum to ensure that all pupils have had the chance to focus on the areas of the curriculum that they missed during lock down. In the forecast, you will see the areas that will be covered during this catch up period.
During Literacy lessons we shall be
looking at:
Writing — Descriptive language and story writing
GAPS — Verb tenses, verb inflections, apostrophes to show possession and conjunctions
Guided Reading — Matilda
To include: decoding, fluency, prediction, relating, vocab, author choices, sequencing, retrieval, inference and summarising.
We shall focus, in Maths, on developing skills in place value, the four operations, time, statistics, properties of shape and position and direction.
The Year 5 pupils will be attempting ‘Fluent in Five’ maths activities every morning and will continue to develop their ‘Mastery’ and reasoning to gain an in depth understanding of number and problem solving.
In Science, we shall be studying humans and keeping healthy. This topic will look at the human body - its bones and skeleton, its muscles and how we move.
We will also for learning about nutrition and what humans need to keep them healthy.
In history and geography we will be doing a local study of Shrewsbury and looking at the Tudor influence
and medieval buildings like the castle and The Abbey. We will then contrast these to Liverpool, looking at imports and exports and economic regions.
Our Darwin Values focus this term will be ‘Bounce-backabilty’. We want all of our pupils to become independent, self-motivated learners, and by working on these attributes we hope that the children will become more resilient. We will also be focusing on the big feeling of Happiness.
PE will be taught on a Tuesday and a Friday. Please ensure that your child has their P.E in school on these days.
Our focus for P.E will be on team building and problem solving.
Spellings will be given out on a weekly basis. Please help your child to learn their spellings and support your child where needed. Reading at home is very important. We expect children to read daily at home and that they are heard read by an adult at home at least twice a week. Each time a child reads, please remember to make a record in their reading diary.
We always warmly welcome extra support in class, so please do not be afraid to
offer to come in if you think there is something you could help with. Questions and queries about your child’s learning are also welcomed so please don’t hesitate to ask.
Mr Thomas Miss. Pearson
Parent Information Event - Keeping your child safe online
It's important to have an awareness of what your child is doing online, how to check their activity and what to do if you have concerns.
The following websites provide some useful information:
Childnet International
http://www.childnet.com/parents-and-carers
NSPCC
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/
Net aware