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 Miss Bridges or Mrs Smith and are unable to catch us on the playground, please email us 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 PE days are on a Monday and Wednesday. Please ensure children come to school in their PE kits on these days. 
• Oak PE days are on a Wednesday and Friday. 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. 

Are you isolating due to Covid 19?

Please click here to find your work. 

Our Weekly News

Summer term 2- Week 6: W/C 11/7/2022

Well done to our Gala winners, for their wonderful Jubilee artwork!

1st, 2nd and 3rd places awarded to our Year 5 and 6's!

Summer term 2- Week 5: W/C 4/7/2022

Wow! How brilliant were Fir and Oak's performances this week? What fantastic performances of Puss in Boots and Pinocchio!

We couldn't be more proud. Well done, everyone!

Summer term 2- Week 4: W/C 27/6/2022

We have had yet another busy week this week- with lots of preparations taking place for our upcoming production. We have had our dress rehearsal, all ready for next week. Please see a little sneak peak below... we look forward to performing for you all next week!

Summer term 2- Week 3: W/C 20/6/2022

We have had yet another busy week this week- with lots of preparations taking place for our upcoming production. 

Year six ended the week with a fantastic trip to play2day to celebrate all of their hard work this year. They took part in bowling and lazer tag and were certainly very competitive!

Summer term 2- Week 2: W/C 13/6/2022

What another busy week; we really enjoyed our Sports Day on Wednesday. The children have incredibly hard to practice and take part in all of the different activities. A big well done to all of them and a special well done to the winning team: green!

The activities that all of the children took part in were:

- Long jump

- Shot put

- Hockey dribble

- Nerf throwing Hurdles

Followed by the track races:

- Long distance

- Short distance

- Relay

- Hurdles

- Football dribble

Thank you to all the parents and carers who were able to come and watch the children!

Summer term 2- Week 1: W/C 6/6/2022

We have had a busy first week back in Year 5/6! In Literacy, we have kick-started our new topic, which is discussion texts (balanced arguments). We have started the week by planning and holding a debate with the following question: Would you like to live in London? We began our learning journey by finding out all about London. We used articles, websites and further resources to answer questions about the city. We then were put into groups for our debate. Half of us were debating 'for' living in London and the other half of us were debating 'against' living in London. Each group used the information we had learnt about London, to give details to prove our arguments for or against. 

Please see images below of our work from this week! Next week, we will be using everything we have learnt from debates, to write discussion texts (a balanced argument).

Summer term - Week 5: W/C 16/5/2022

What a fun-filled week for Year 5/6! This week has been Science week and Miss Bridges has planned some great experiments for us, all focused around scientific enquiry! We have been learning about diverse scientists throughout the week, such as: Dr Temple Grandin, Raye Montague and Isaac Newton. 

On Monday, we made film canister rockets, which we launched to kick-start the week. On Tuesday, we started learning all about Sir Isaac Newton and his theory of how gravity works. Our enquiry question was: Does the height you drop something, effect the splat as it lands? We used water balloons to complete this enquiry. On Wednesday, we started to learn all about air resistance, which led to us start planning our next enquiry: Does the size of a parachute effect the amount of air resistance?

Year 6's also had a zoom session with Cromwell linked to Science week and Year 5's went to Cromwell for a CSI investigation!

As I'm sure you can tell, it's been a fantastic week; the children have really enjoyed themselves! Please see the images below, sharing our wonderful experiments!

Summer term - Week 4: W/C 9/5/2022

This week has been a busy one for Years 5 and 6. Year 6 have finally finished their SATs tests and really made us proud! Their perserverance, determination and resilience really shone through in all of their tests - well done!

As a treat, we had a fantastic Friday celebrating with Year 5 (who have also had a busy week). We completed some beautiful Banksy artwork, played sports on the field with doughnuts and watched a good movie with popcorn in the afternoon.

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend - rest up ready for Monday!

Summer term - Week 3: W/C 2/5/2022

What an exciting week we've had in Years 5 and 6. 

Our Geography unit this term has focused around our local area - Manea. We have looked carefully at maps of Manea, learning all about identifying places on the maps using grid references and compass points. On Wednesday, we took a walk out around Manea village! We used the maps of Manea to write directions for how to get back to school. Please see our images below:

Summer term - Week 2: W/C 25/4/2022

What another busy week we have had! 

Within our writing, we have continued to look at the Lost Happy Endings story and have been practising applying our understanding of different sentence structures and grammatical features to retell the story. 

In the afternoons, we have been finishing our Geography unit on maps and our local area whilst also holding discussions about cyber-bullying. 

Summer term - Week 1: W/C 19/4/2022

We have had a busy first week back in Year 5 and 6, particularly in Maths!

In Year 5, we have been recapping how to use column addition; adding numbers with more than 5 digits. We then linked our applied this learning with finding the perimeter of objects and oblongs outside on the playground.

In Year 6, we have been learning about angles and practising how to measure angles with a protractor. In lessons, we have been drawing different angles on our tables: acute, obtuse, right angle, reflex and straight angles. We then measured the angles using our protractors. We had lots of fun drawing on our tables!

Spring term - Week 11: W/C 21/3/2022

We have had a busy week in Year 5 and 6! We have been learning about imperial measures in Maths and have watched a Literacy Shed video titled 'The Wishgranter', which has led to some lovely writing using different sentence types. 

We have also worked incredibly hard on our Mother's Day cards this week - please see below. 

Spring term - Week 10: W/C 14/3/2022

We are now coming to the end of our persuasion unit in Literacy. We have been looking at the Mayan folk tale- 'The Chocolate tree' and used this as inspiration for our writing. 

In the story, one of the Gods wanted to share the chocolate tree from Paradise with the Mayan people- whilst the other Gods said no. We held a debate arguing the points for and against sharing the chocolate tree. 

We then used these points, to plan and write our own persuasive letters to the Gods. We worked specifically hard to ensure we were using formal language. 

Spring term - Week 9: W/C 07/3/2022

Over the last two weeks, we have been learning all about Guatemala in Geography lessons - linked to our Mayan topic. 

We started off by using online maps and atlases to locate Guatemala and it's bordering countries. We then completed our own research to find out more: it's capital city, time zone, population, climate, language spoken. We found out all about the National Parks in Guatemala, such as the Tikal, which is one of the most important archeological Mayan sites still visited today. 

We then made our own topographic models of Guatemala - please see images below! 

To finish our Geography learning off, we worked incredibly hard to make our own information leaflets all about Guatemala. 

Spring term - Week 8: W/C 28/2/2022

World Book Day

On Thursday, we celebrated World Book Day and came to school dressed as a wide variety of book characters.

and of course- with it being World Book Day, we had a great time reading lots of books whilst enjoying a nice drink and biscuit! We then wrote persuasive paragraphs persuading others to read our favourite books. 

Following on from our chocolate tasting last week, in our Literacy session this week we have created some lovely persuasive adverts. 

Spring term - Week 7 W/C 21/2/2022

In Literacy this week, we have started learning how to write persuasively. We have looked at a variety of persuasive texts, identifying the key language features used to engage the reader (rhetorical questions, exaggeration and language of certainty). 

We really particularly enjoyed Thursday and Friday's lessons, where we tasted different chocolates to use as inspiration for writing our own persuasive adverts.

Please see the images below! 

Spring term - Week 6 W/C 7/2/2022

This week it has been Children's Mental Health Week. We have thought about mindfulness and practiced this outside whilst taking in the sounds, smells and sights. 

We also thought about the theme of 'Growth' and thought about how we have grown physically, emotionally and intellectually. We created a growth tree- and added branches that showed us who or what had helped us to grow. 

We also thought about our targets for the future and wrote our own Growth poems. 

In other news, year 5 had a great Maths lesson outside this week. They practised working out the area of irregular shapes by drawing around leaves on squared paper. 

Spring term - Week 5 W/C 31/1/2022

What a fun week celebrating the beginning of the 2022 Winter Olympics! We have been assigned our own countries that take part in the Winter Olympics:

Fir- Japan

Oak - Canada

In our classes, we have been busy finding out about our countries. We used this information to create fact files! In Literacy, we have also written biographies about a famous key figures from our countries. 

As well as this, in Art, we have been planning, designing and creating our own masks linked to traditional tales from Japan and Canada. Fir read the story of Kintaro and Oak read Ermine and the Hunter. We've also used our artistic skills to draw lines, making shapes, around a maple leaf (Canada) and a cherry blossom (Japan). We then coloured and shaded these in different colours. 

Spring term - Week 4 W/C 24/1/2022

We have had a busy week this week and have completed lots of work linked to our Space topic! In Literacy, we have started our biographies unit and have written our own biographies about Neil Armstrong.

On Friday afternoon, we looked at the artist Peter Thorpe. He created abstracted rocket paintings like this: 

We then used some paint and pastels to create our own.

Spring term - Week 3 W/C 17/1/2022

Space

We have really delved into our Science topic of Space this week. We started by learning about past theories that the Earth was flat. We then moved onto recognising the different planets and even used modrock to build our own. 

As the week progressed, we focused on one planet each, researching lots of facts about that planet- and of course we got to paint our models. 

We concluded our week by considering the solar system and learnt about the Geocentric and Heliocentric models. 

Spring term - Week 2 W/C 10/1/2022

What a fantastic week we have had in Year 5 and 6! We have continued looking at our text in Literacy - The Journey. This week, we planned our own versions of the story, where they were the child in the story travelling around the world with a magical crayon! We drew the setting that they would travel to and then coloured it with pastels. Later on in the week, we then wrote our stories, using lots of descriptive language. Below are some pieces of work:

Spring term - Week 1 W/C 3/1/2022

We have had a fantastic first week back after the Christmas break. We have engaged with a new text in Literacy, - The journey. The children were surprised to find it had no words, but inferred a lot of information from the pictures and have some created some beautiful pieces of writing to go alongside the pictures. 

Within our Science lessons, we finished up our unit on materials and completed an investigation to find out which materials were soluble. We are looking forward to starting our Space topic next week. 

Autumn 3 - Week 7  W/C 13/12/2021 

This week, we have been very busy getting into the Christmas spirit! We have made our Christmas cards, a Christmas decoration and a calendar for 2022. Please see our images below. We would like to say a big well done to the children for all of their hard work this term, we are very proud of all of them! Enjoy the Christmas break and we look forward to welcoming the children back in the New Year. 

Autumn 2 - Week 6  W/C 6/12/2021 

We have been continuing our Science unit, materials this week. We have been thinking about thermal isolators and were set the challenge of testing materials to see which would be best to use within a lunch box to keep it cool. 

Autumn 2 - Week 5 W/C 29/11/2021 

This week, we have started our Science topic - Materials! 

We have been thinking about the properties of materials and discussing what these are good for. We have also been learning some key vocabulary to support us with our topic: durable, absorbent, permeable, flexible, waterproof, conductive, transparent, stretchy and magnetic. 

We then tested properties of several materials, testing for:

-magnetism;

-hardness;

-transparency;

-flexibility;

-permeability.

Please see some images of our experiment below!

Autumn 2 - Week 3 W/C 15/11/2021 

On Thursday, we had our enrichment WWII Day! 

We dressed up as either evacuees or soldiers from WWII - please pictures below!

We started the day off by receiving our own evacuee tag labels, which grouped us into carriages A, B, C and D. We then split off into our groups and completed some really fun activities throughout the day. These included:

-Singing and dancing along to WWII songs 

-Making Woolten pies 

-Designing and constructing our own gas mask boxes

-Writing and presenting our own 'Home Service' broadcasts

Autumn 2 - Week 2 W/C 8/11/2021 

This week is MATHS WEEK! 

In our assemblies, we have learnt all about famous mathmaticians and looked at how maths is used throughout a variety of jobs. We've also tried some tricky problems which have even challenged our teachers! 

Our main focus this week has been equivalent fractions. We have used the text 'The Lion's Share' as inspiration to create our own stories which explore the theme of equivalent fractions. 

On Thursday 11th November, we paid our respects to those who lost their lives in the wars. We had a two minute silence at 11 o'clock, and created a piece of artwork based around poppies. 

Autumn 2 - Week 1 W/C 1/11/2021 

This week, we have started our music topic. We have been listening to the different types of music that was played during WWII. 

We learnt about different musical terms:

Tempo - the speed at which a piece or section of music is played.

Dynamics - the loudness or softness at which musicians play a section or piece of music.

Pitch - how high or low a sound is.

Timbre - the character or sound quality of a note.

In Fir class, we sang along to a very famous Vera Lynn song - 'We'll meet again.' 

In Oak class, we had a go at performing a famous WWII song! 

It's been a very musical week in Year 5 and 6! 

Autumn 1 - Week 8 

Harvest Celebrations

his week, we have been learning about Harvest festival. We learnt why Harvest is celebrated, as well as learning how we harvest our food. We then read a poem all about the Harvest Moon. We used what we have learnt about figurative language (similes, metaphors, hyperbole and personification) in Literacy this week, to write our own poems about Harvest Festival. We also pained our own Harvest Moons! Please see images below...

On Friday, Fir and Oak Class had fun making pizzas, weighing out ingredients, decorating pizza boxes, playing games and they watched a film. Take a look at the photos below to see what they have been up to. 

While the rest of the year 5/6 are having fun on the residential trip, we have been having some fun of our own. We have researched board games and what makes them fun, played some and then designed and created our own. 

Autumn Week 6 W/C 4/10/2021 

This week has been an exciting week for many of us as we have been taking part in Bikeability. 

We have learnt all about how to stay safe whilst riding our bikes both within the school grounds and on the playground.

Autumn Week 5 W/C 27/9/2021

Year 5 and 6 have completed some fantastic work in Literacy and Guided Reading this week! In Literacy, we have been learning all about how to write a persuasive letter. We have been looking at some key features of persuasive letters, including: exaggeration, commands and warnings, rhetorical questions and opinions and reasons. We used all of these key letter writing features to plan and write a persuasive letter to Miss Froggatt. Our letters were written to persuade her to buy more play equipment for break and lunch times. They were very convincing! Please some of the children's letters below.

In Guided Reading, we have been looking at our new book, 'Letters from the Lighthouse'. We have been exploring the characters and inferring information based from the text. Here are some of the images we have drawn, based on what we have read! Aren't they fantastic?

Autumn Week 4 W/C 20/9/2021

Year 5 and 6 have really got into our World War II topic this week. We have continued to learn about the Blitz and have worked together to create some lovely Anderson shelters. 

We also created some lovely poppy artwork whilst developing our painting skills.  

On Wednesday, we really enjoyed taking part in some 'challenge yourself' activities.

Autumn Week 3 W/C 13/9/2021

What a fantastic  week we have had in both Fir and Oak class. 

We have really enjoyed our PE sessions this week, learning all about Tag Rugby! We have been practising our tagging skills. In Art, we also learnt all about the Blitz - linked to our World War 2 topic. We painted/used oil pastels for the backgrounds and then added silhouettes and light beams in the foreground. We worked incredibly hard on these and are very proud of them!

Autumn Week 2 W/C 6/9/2021

What a fantastic first full week we have had in both Fir and Oak class. 

We have spent lots of time getting to know each other in our new mixed classes. First we thought of our great qualities, and linked to the text mixed by Arree Chung, we thought about which colours represented us. 

We have also really embraced outdoor learning this week. We used the outdoor environment in Literacy to help us sort nouns into different groups and to write expanded noun phrases. 

In Maths, we have been finding different numbers around the playground. The year six children worked on different representations of these numbers, whilst the year five children practiced rounding to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000.