Curriculum Letter

6th November 2006

Dear Parents,

This is the curriculum for the second half of the Autumn term.

English
Our literacy will be linked with our topic on World War II - poetry, stories and the lives of famous people. We will look at the Diary of Anne Frank in some detail. Our RATS project is commencing with a focus on Tae Kwondo: balanced arguments, instructions, letter writing and persuasive articles. Pupils will continue to receive weekly spelling families and are expected to do homework collecting words and learning how to spell them for periodic tests. Children should read each evening as part of their homework. Please note that all pupils are expected to join their handwriting in Year 6, pupils having difficulty with this will be provided with handwriting books so that they can practise at home.  

Maths
We will be following the National Numeracy Strategy, this half term is commencing with ratio and proportion; shape, followed by measures with an emphasis on mental maths. One of our maths targets is that pupils should be able to quickly recall multiplication facts up to 10 x 10, know the corresponding division facts and be able to apply this knowledge for other calculations eg decimals.

Science: we will be looking at Plants and Interdependence. Later we will be linking work on Electric circuits with design and technology work on Fairgrounds.

ICT: Pupils will be learning to use PowerPoint to produce a multimedia presentation which links to our history topic, studying history through the lives of famous people.  We will continue to use ICT across the curriculum to support children’s learning.

History: we will study the lives of Anne Frank and Sir Winston Churchill as a way of  finding out about World War II.

RE: we will find out how meaning is conveyed by religious symbols.

Music: this will be linked to our Christmas production.

PE: Indoor games and gym  will be our main activities. We will also have a Tae Kwondo session with a British champion.

Homework: children will continue to be set homework each week. Please ensure homework diaries are signed weekly with any extra comments you may wish to add We ask for your support in ensuring that children get into the good habit of handing homework in on time.

Christmas: the Christmas Fayre is on the 24th November and school finishes at 1.30pm on that day to allow for preparations. Our year 5 /6 Christmas performances are 12th December at 1.45pm and 13th December at 7.00pm. Tickets will be sent out in the usual way nearer the time and we look forward to seeing you there.

We hope you find this information useful.

Yours sincerely,

J. White                                   L. Iannarilli

TARGETS

We are continuing our targets based on punctuation for reading and writing. Your child will be able to tell you what they have already achieved and what they are now working on.

WRITING

Must use full stops, capital letters, question marks,exclamation marks and commas (where used) correctly in most sentences.

Should use commas effectively in sentences, separating elements such as short phrases, clauses and items in a list.

Could  use capital letters, full stops, commas, parenthetic commas, dashes, brackets, colons and semi colons effectively.

READING

Must  be able to explain the author’s choice of punctuation and relate this to meaning.
Should read with fluency using colons, semi colons, parenthetic commas,, dashes, brackets, question marks, exclamation marks, full stops and speech marks to support intonation & phrasing.
Could understand the use of connectives as sign posts to indicate a change of tone of voice, and recognise how this changes dependent on text type.

MATHS

Must  be able to order a set of positive and negative numbers.
Should be able to order a set of positive and negative numbers and calculate a rise or fall across ooC.
Could order a set of mixed numbers including decimals.