Welcome to our class page. This page will be updated each Friday and will share the children's learning and achievements with those at home. 

Important information: 

• If you need to contact Mrs Shields and are unable to catch her on the playground, please email her at firclass@manea.cambs.sch.uk. 
• If you need to contact Miss Gascoigne and are unable to catch her on the playground, please email her at oakclass@manea.cambs.sch.uk.
• We aim to reply as soon as we can but will always reply within 72 hours. 
• Fir and Oak PE days are on a Tuesday and Thursday. Please ensure children come to school in their PE kits on these days. 
• Homework is set on a Friday which may include Literacy, Maths and Topic. They will bring their homework home in their homework books. It is due in the following Wednesday. 

Our Weekly News  

WC 10/7/23

We have had such a busy couple of weeks! Last week, year 5 performed their play 'Pirates vs Mermaids' to two amazing audiences. They were so grateful for the parents that were able to come and support them!

Year 6 then went on their trip to Play2Day, where they had a good run around the soft play, had a game of bowling and then played laser tag! They really did have a wonderful day!

Year 5 then went on their trip! They went to the Ely Museum and Prickwillow Engine Museum. The day was really good fun but they also learned a lot about our local area, which was perfect for our history topic! 

This week has been made up of a LOT of play practice for the year 6s and lots of maths for year 5! They are now all whizzes at reading timetables! You'll never miss a bus again!

Have a look at the photos from our trips!

WC 26.06.23

What another fun and busy week! Our D.T project linked with our Art topic. We have been learning about different types of famous bridges around Cambridgeshire. In D.T, we were tasked with building our own bridges, with only newspaper, sticky tape and cardboard. The children thoroughly enjoyed this task and took the brief very seriously! 

WC 19.06.23

This week has been fun! In Literacy, we have learnt all about the Day of The Dead. We started the week off by watching non-fiction and fiction clips, linked to the theme. We then completed research all about it and ended the week off with writing non-chronological reports about it. How lovely are these? 

Summer term 

Week 8 - WC 12.06.23

This week has been an incredibly busy one in Year 5/6. We have all enjoyed our trip on the life bus, learning all about relationships and how best to look after our bodies. Of course, we had a visit from Gerald the Giraffe too! As well as this, we have kick-started our D.T project, where we have been building bridges and towers out of only newspaper and sticky tape - the children's competitive sides really shone through! Then on Friday, we had a visit from a local artist, completing an art deco project! Let's hope we all get some rest this weekend, I think the children need it! 

Week 7 - WC 05.06.23

What a busy first week back! Year 5 and 6 have been learning all about Sex and Relationships Education within their year groups. In Literacy, we have been learning about different types of poems. We have been writing Cinquain poems, all about powerful image stimuli, as well as taking a learning walk outside, linking to our senses. Ask your child, how many lines there are in a Cinquain? 

Week 6 - WC 22.05.23

We have continued our Science topic this week, but have built that within our Literacy lessons! Following our learning about classifying, we decided to write a biography all about the scientist who first thought of the idea of classifying animals into vertebrates and invertebrates. This scientist name was: Carl Linnaeus. The children worked hard to research this scientist and then went off to write their own biographies. Please see images below. We hope you all have a great half term! 

Week 5 - WC 15.05.23

This week has been fun-filled with all things Science (as it's National Science Week). Our Science topic is: Living Things and their Habitats, with a focus of classification keys. We started the week off by dissecting a flower and labelling the key features. We then learnt about classification keys by using sweets and also learnt about life cycles of different living things (plants, animals, insects, etc.). Finally, we completed an experiment about micro-organisms and yeast. 

The whole school completed the Science enquiry challenge: Do larger hands hold more cubes? Please see images of our experiment - which we loved!

Week 4 - WC 08.05.23

What a week!!! This week has all been about SATS for our year 6s. They have had a really tough week sitting SATs tests everyday, but they have been amazing and have taken it all in their stride. They have shown great resilience and have all aimed high - our PARTY values have really been effective this week! Our year 5s have been equally wonderful and respectful to the Year 6s. They have had some really fun lessons outside, measuring different items around the playground amongst other things. They have also shown our PARTY value of Team work this week and shown we are all a great year 5/6 team. At the end of the week, we all had doughnuts and a movie to say well done!

The year 6 team would like to also say a huge thank you to the parents of our wonderful year 6s for their support this week!

Week 3 - WC 01.05.23

We have had a great fun week this week in Year 5/6. We have spent the week thinking about newspaper reports and writing our own reports of the fire that occurred in the museum in our book 'The Invention of Hugo Cabret'. We really enjoyed writing these, and are looking forward to writing newspaper reports based on the Coronation next week! We have been celebrating the Coronation too, by collaging some beautiful pieces of art based on the King's life and crown.

Week 2 - WC 28.04.23

This week, we have started reading 'The Invention of Hugo Cabret.' It takes place in France as a young boy finds his purpose. We will be writing a newspaper report about this story next week, so please tune in again to take a look at them. So far, we have been identifying key features of newspapers and practising using key writing styles within newspapers (relative clauses, passive voice, pictures and captions). If you have any newspapers at home, please do read these with your children!  

Week 1 - WC 24.04.23

This week, we have started our R.E topic: Buddhism. We started off by looking at all of the different religions we have learnt about throughout our time at school and created fantastic timelines. We then went on to read the story: Under the Bhodi Tree by Deborah Hopkinson. The moral of this story all about being enlightened - which means to have knowledge, wisdom or understanding. We went on to write down things that we believed Buddha went on to teach others on our own Bodhi Tree leaf. 

Week 11

Continuing to think about our topic of Anglo-Saxons, this week we borrowed a box of artefacts from the Ely Museum. There were some amazing items in there, including a cursed brooch, some money and some clothes for us to try on! We learned that the Anglo-Saxons used wooden spoons, just like ours! They also had tweezers like ours too! However, to clean their ears, they used a scoop to scoop the wax out!!!

We had so much fun going through the box!

Week 10

This week we have started to think about our new history topic - The Anglo-Saxons and Scots! We were all really fascinated to learn about where the Anglo-Saxons came from, how they captured land and the troubles they faced - especially from the Picts and the Scots! We have been answering questions about the Picts and Scots using secondary sources to help us with our investigations. We can't wait to learn more next week, and maybe even see some real Anglo-Saxon artefacts!!!

Week 9

This week, we have started our Art topic: weaving. We started off by learning about Tartan and had a go at making our own tartan prints. Our focused practical task was weaving with paper, to get the hang of the 'under, over, under, over' pattern. Once we were happy with this, we then started following this pattern to make our own tartan weaves. 

Week 7

What an exciting week for us! Mrs Southby came to visit us and complete a very interesting Science experiment - all linked to our last weeks learning of the heart. 

1) We started off by looking at a lamb's heart. 

2) Next, we cut into the left side of the heart. We found out tat there are two chambers: Ventricles and Atrias. 

Atrias - receives incoming blood

Ventricles - gets blood from the atria and then pushes it out and around the body. 

3) After that, we cut the middle of the heart open to see the other side. We found that the right side of the heart was thicker than the left. This is because it has to pump blood around the body, whereas the left side just has to pump blood to the lungs. 

4) Our teacher then stuck their finger all the way through one end of the chambers up to the top of the heart. This showed us that all of the chambers cross over. 

5) We found out that if there was a hole in the heart (which would occur in the Septum), the oxygenated and deoxygenated blood would cross over, which could be detrimental to the heart's health.

We wrote up our experiment and used an app on the iPads to create a comic strip of the experiment - please see images below.

Week 6

This week, we have kick-started our Science topic, Animals Including Humans! We have started off learning about the circulatory system, where we have looked at blood vessels, the arteries, veins and oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. We have also been looking at blood and investigating our own heart rates! Please see our knowledge organiser, which tells you more about the circulatory system. Tune in next week for some very exciting images of our work and some of our experiments! 

Week 5

This week we have been focusing on our Geography of the UK. We have thought about the different features of our physical geography: our mountains, lakes, rivers, lowlands (Fens) and Highlands. We have also thought about how weather and climate effects our country and the effects it has on farming. It has been a really eye opening week! Did you know that only 6% of the UK has been built on?!

Week 4 - 03/02/2023

This week, we have designed our own characters, to go in our narrative story. On Tuesday, we spent time drawing and labelling our characters' personality and physical appearance, including key descriptive features.

We then went on to write a character description for them, to go in our narrative. 

Please see below some of our characters images and writing!

Week 3 - 27/01/2023

This week, we have continued our work based around the short film 'Francis.' We have focused on character descriptions, this time around. In order to write a good character description, we have been learning how to incorporate:

-SEAT (speech, emotions, actions, thoughts) when adding dialogue

-Expanded noun phrases

-Outside (Inside) Alan Peat Sentence types

-Show don't tell

Some of the writing we completed on Friday was wonderful. Next week, we will be designing our own characters to describe, to go in the stories we started writing last week.

Week 2 - 20/01/2023

This week we have been creating our own setting descriptions based on the short film 'Francis'. We have loved the film and have found it extremely inspirational! To add even more excitement to our learning, we visited the Forest School area thinking about our senses and nature. We closed our eyes and listened to the breeze, felt the earth and bark on the trees, looked at the sky above and the ground below and tasted the freezing cold air. It was a great experience and has really added to our creativity!

Here are some pictures of us out in the forest!

Week 2 - 13/1/2023

This week we have spent the week thinking about Judaism. We have discussed the Jewish community and how children are welcomed as an adult into the Jewish faith. We discussed Bar and Bat Mitzvah's and how important they are to Jewish children.

We ended our studies by designing an invitation to a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, detailing what would happen and the expectations there might be.

Spring Term - Week 1 - W.C 5/1/23

What a good start to the Spring term we have had. In Literacy. we have started learning about setting descriptions. We have watched a Literacy Shed video clip of a setting in a national park (please see link below if your child would like to show you). This clip has allowed the children to brainstorm ideas and put these into sentences, forming a setting description. They have used expanded noun phrases, powerful vocabulary and varied punctuation. In RE, we have started to learn about Judaism. We have learnt about Shabbat and the traditional prayers. Have a nice weekend - see you all on Monday!

Week 15

This week we have been completing many Christmas activities - well, it is nearly Christmas after all!!!

As well as this, we have completed our DT projects. We had to design and create an alarm system to alert someone to an expensive artefact being stolen from a museum. We had great fun creating not only the circuits (with complicated switches), but also the museum rooms for the circuits to go in!

Happy Christmas everyone!

Week 14

We have spent this week thinking about the book Holes again. This week we focused our thoughts on comparing the book to the film. We wrote discussion texts giving our opinion as to which we preferred.

We have also been doing a lot of singing to prepare for the Nativity at the church. We loved supporting the Year 1s and thought they did an amazing job this morning! It made us all think back to when WE were in year 1 singing about the little donkey!!!

We have also been thinking about and designing switches in DT. It was great fun as we had to get super creative in order to make our own switches!

Week 13 - W.C 5/12/22

This week, we have been completing E-Safety in our Topic lessons. We have been learning all about how to stay safe online - linking when it's appropriate/inappropriate to share videos and images. We have used this knowledge to make our own group presentations on Adobe Sparks. Please ask your children what they included within their presentations. 

Week 12 - W.C 28/11/22

In Literacy this week, we have started to learn about discussion texts based around Movie and Film comparisons. We have been reading chapters of the following books: A Bear Called Paddington and Harry Potter 1. After reading the chapters, we then watched these scenes from the films. We answered various questions, comparing and contrasting the book vs film. We have started planning our discussion texts about the book and film version of Harry Potter 1. 

We have ensured we are including: rhetorical questions, relative clauses, fronted adverbials and a variety of punctuation (to include parenthesis). 

Week 11 - W.C 21/11/22

In Science this week, we have been learning about Thomas Edison and the impact he had on peoples' use of electricity in their everyday lives. We created news reports to tell the world of his great inventions and some of us even interviewed Thomas Edison himself!

Week 10 - W.C 14/11/22

We have continued to immerse ourselves into our book - Holes. In Literacy, we have continued to write non-chronological reports. We started off by completing research in groups about either a rattlesnake or scorpion and then grouped the information into the following subheadings: habitat, diet, appearance and behaviour. After completing our research, we then planned our non-chronological reports, including key grammatical features we have been learning about, such as: relative clauses, subordinate clauses, expanded noun phrases and prepositional phrases. The children have worked incredibly hard on these!

Week 9 - W.C 7/11/22

We have immersed ourselves into our new book this week - Holes. In Literacy, we have been learning all about how to write non-chronological reports. We have linked this to our new class reader - Holes - by writing about a yellow-spotted lizard. We started off by completing research in groups about the incredible species and grouped the information into the following subheadings: habitat, diet, appearance and behaviour. After complelting our research, we then planned our non-chronological reports, including key grammatical features we have been learning about, such as: relative clauses, subordinate clauses, expanded noun phrases and prepositional phrases. The children have worked incredibly hard on these!

Week 8 - W.C 31/10/22

This week has been fun-filled with all things Science! We have kick-started our electricity topic off with a BANG (balloon pun intended).

Our first experiment was all about testing static electricity - we were given multiple investigation cards, testing static electricity with balloons. The children thoroughly enjoyed this! 

Our second experiment involved making electrical circuits. We made series and paraell circuits. I wonder if your children will remember the difference between the two?

Week 7 - W.C 17/10/22

Wow - what a fun-filled week this week has been in Years 5 and 6! We started the week by making Gingerbread Scarecrows, for our Harvest themed work. We then wrote instructions for what we did! We enjoyed sharing our instructions during our Harvest Assembly on Thursday.

Then on Wednesday, it was our Egyptian day! We made our own Egyptian collars, canopic jars and decorated our names in hieroglyph writing. The most exciting activity of all though was... mummifying a tomato! Please ask your child how we did this!

Please see images below. We hope you have a lovely half term.

Week 6 - W.C 10/10/22

At the start of this week, we were planning writing brochures all about visiting Egypt, linked to our History topic. The children were split off into groups, to research one of Egypt's top attractions. They used iPads to find out all key facts and then added some extra detail, incorporating 'AFOREST' features - alliteration, facts, opinions, rhetorical questions, emotive language, statistics and the rule of three. They then used this research to support them with their plans for their brochures.

For the rest of the week, the children going on the residential will be off to Grafham and the non-residential children will be designing their own board games and making pizzas!

Week 5 - W.C 3/10/22

This week has been fun-filled with Art, all based around our Egyptian topic. We started off by finding out about a famous Egyptian artist - Alaa Award. We looked carefully at the different types of art he has worked on, such as: drawings, paintings, murals and mosaics. We discussed his different work and linked back to our History learning. The children were given a section of one of his pieces and were tasked with completing it. Don't they look fantastic?  

Week 4 - W.C 26/9/22

We have fully immersed ourselves in reading this week! In Guided Reading, have been continuing to read Secrets of a Sun King, linked to our Egyptian topic. We have been working hard to write summaries about the chapters, by mind-mapping key themes from the chapter and then putting this into a short summary (using two post-it-notes). 

In Literacy, we have tailored our writing, in line with our Secrets of a Sun King text, by writing in the past (1920's). We have discussed what settings would have been like during the 1920's and had a go at writing our own stories set in the past. We have used so many fantastic writing techniques -which we have learnt over the last few weeks - to build tension and engage the reader. Here's a few: If, if, if, then sentences, the power of 3, rhetorical questions, short sentences, dialogue and varied punctuation. 

Week 3 - W.C 19/9/22

This week has been filled with lots of Historical fun, all linked to our Ancient Egypt topic! We have been learning all about the famous Pharaoh - Tutankhamun. We've spent the week researching key information about him, to create a fact file (please see images below!). As well as this, we have been looking at Egyptian dwellings, comparing and contrasting them to modern day homes. Did you know... Egyptians used to paint the outside of their houses white and also build them 4 feet off the ground? Ask your child if they remember why they did this! To end our History topic, we tasked the children with making a poster about everything they have learned over the last three weeks. Don't you think they look great? 

Week 2 - W.C 12/9/22

This week, we have been mourning and remembering our Queen. We wanted to celebrate her life and reign. In Literacy, we researched and made biographies about her; we wrote poems too! In Art, we were very busy cutting out images linked to her Majesty and created a collage on silhouette.   

Week 1 - W.C 5/9/22

Wow! What a fun-filled first week we have had in Fir and Oak class! 

In Maths, both year 5 and 6 have been focusing on their place value topics. Year 6 went outside for a practical activity, finding hidden numbers and representing them in different ways.

In Guided Reading, we have started reading our topic-themed book: Secrets of the Sun King. This book is set in 1922, when Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered by Egyptologist: Howard Carter. In lessons, we have been reading extracts from the book, about canopic jars, and had a go at drawing our own ones and labelling descriptions from the books. 

In Literacy lessons, we have been working hard to recap writing techniques to engage the reader, as well as learning some new techniques. We were given an extract, linked to our topic, to narrate and perform; this was a lot of fun!

In topic lessons, we have started learning about the Ancient Egyptians. The children have LOVED this topic so far. We have learnt all about the mummification process (some were sickened by this!), Pharaohs, canopic jars and the gods. There's still lot's more to come...  

Please see some images below: