Welcome to Willow Class!
Willow Class are Year Five and Six pupils, taught by Miss Thomas.
Mrs Bradley-McKay also teaches us once a week, and we are lucky to be supported by Mrs Bowers and Mrs Luckett.
This term, our topic is 'Who Am I?', where we will be focusing on Evolution and Identity. We will be exploring Darwin's theory of Evolution and Inheritance, learning to use watercolours to record fieldwork, understanding how evolution can fit alongside religious beliefs, reflecting on our own sense of identity, and understanding what makes us 'us'!
Our Parent Pack and Knowledge Organiser below will tell you everything you need to know about what we are learning this term, as well as our routines and homework expectations!
Signing up to our Book Blog
Dear Parents,
Our Willow Class Book Blog is now live! This is the blog where children will share at least three book recommendations each term. They will also be able to use this to search for book recommendations from their peers.
You can find it here: https://willowclassbookblog.edublogs.org/ or using the link on our webpage- although due to privacy settings, you will not be able to see this until you have signed up as below.
Every child in the class will need to be signed up for an Edublogs account by a parent. Whilst Edublogs is a site designed specifically for school-based blogs and is as secure at possible, it will be down to parents to ensure that children are using this safely and respectfully. This is why we are asking for parents to sign up their children up for an account using their own email address.
Parents, you will need to:
- Register your child up for an Edublogs account using your email address at www.edublogs.org
- Ask your child to pick a username and password and ask them to record this down to ensure that they remember it. You do not need to click ‘I want a site’, as our site is already set up!
- Email me (via the school office) to let me know the email address and username that you have used. I will then add each child to allow them to contribute to the blog- they will then have access to post on it.
- Your role is now complete! (Other than overseeing children’s use of the blog at home).
Once all children are signed up, we will look at how to write a post successfully in school, alongside some Computing lessons on Internet Safety. This will be your child’s first of three book recommendations this term- so they will just need to do two more between now and half term!
If you have any further questions or concerns, please do get in contact.
Thankyou for your support,
Best wishes,
Miss Thomas
SATs Information for Parents
We have now held our SATs information meeting for parents- thankyou to all who came! If you did not attend (or would like to check any information), the presentation used can be found below.
Please do remember that if you have any questions or concerns, get in touch!
House Captains
The greatest honour bestowed upon children at Andoversford has been decided! This week, our House Captains and Deputy House Captains have been chosen in an exciting anonymous voting process. They can't wait to get stuck into their first responsibilities- including leading their first celebration assembly this Friday! Well done to everyone who wrote such fantastic, passionate letters of application.
Hockey
This week was our first Hockey lesson- we enjoyed learning how to dribble (despite the drizzle!) and keep control of the ball when changing direction. We look forward to improving our skills over the course of the term, leading to us being able to play a full game!
Our first book choices of the year
So exciting!
We were especially excited by the new selection of books bought for the class- so many new authors, stories and non-fiction books to explore!
Highlights from Willow Class 2022-23
Tuesday 25th April 2023
Science: Life Cycles
Today, we had a very unusual visitor - Flame the Bearded Dragon!
Last term, in Science, Willow Class were learning all about life cycles.
After lots of organising, we finally arranged for Oscar to bring in his pet from home to tell us all about her life cycle!
A HUGE thank you to Oscar and his family for this experience. You can certainly tell Willow Class enjoyed holding Flame!
Thursday 16th March 2023
English: Information Texts
We have been writing our own information texts this weeks about either a bee, butterfly or wasp.
We researched the information independently, then spent time publishing our text in a way we thought it would be easily read. Of course, we then added some illustrations. Look how beautiful our presentation is!
Thursday 2nd March 2023
World Book Day!
As a school, we focused on the author, Abi Elphinstone's books.
In Willow Class, we looked at one of her books in particular - The Dream Snatcher.
To begin with, we spent time writing a biography all about the author. We then read a chapter of the book, where a hidden figure was discovered in the forest wearing a mask. It was only right that we created our own!
This afternoon, we worked with Mrs Bradley McKay and copied the style of the book cover and printed (using ink) our own covers!
An exciting day!
*We also had lots of entries for our class Extreme Reading competition. Check these out below!*
Wednesday 18th January 2023
STEMWorks: K’Nex Workshop
Today, we had a visit from Clare at STEMWorks.
We were challenged to build a ‘Recycling Sorter’ using only K’Nex!
Wednesday 4th - Friday 6th January 2023
Art Week!
On Wednesday, we had a visit from Kev Sutherland, who has written and illustrated pieces for both Beano and Marvel comics.
He taught us how to draw our own comic characters which will be published into our very own class comic!
https://www.kevfcomicartist.com/
Throughout the week, we also did lots of collaging! Our theme this year was illustrators and each class looked at Oliver Jeffers' work.
We recreated our own version of Oliver Jeffers illustrated cover of The Boy in Striped Pyjamas! Afterwards, we had a go at collaging a selection of endangered animals to go up on display in our classroom.
Tuesday 13th December 2022
Snow Fun!
Willow Class headed out for some extra fun in the snow this afternoon!
Check out our gallery!
Thursday 8th December 2022
Autumn Term Homework Showcase!
(A huge thank you to Darcy, one of our Year 5 Digital Leaders, for helping to put our Homework Showcase together!)
Tuesday 6th September 2022
World War 2 Topic Day!
We started the year off by spending the entire day exploring our brand-new topic!
We made our own spitfire planes, evacuation labels and even made some carrot cookies - a great wartime recipe!
As well as this, we planted our own herbs that will be able to be used to add flavouring to some winter dishes later on in the year when they have sprouted!
For those who are interested, below is a link to the recipe we followed in school to make our delicious treats!
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/castle-ward/recipes/carrot-cookies
