Rowan Class 2023 - 2024

Welcome to the Rowan Class page. We are made up of Year 5 and 6 children. Mr Greenham is our Class teacher and is supported by Miss Harris, our TA.

Week Beginning 4th September 2023

Welcome back to Rowan class for a new school year! This week was creative week. KPA have all been examining ‘In our hands’ by Lucy Farfort. Rowan class closely observes the illustrations and structure of the text, as well as examining themes of taking action to spark change in our communities. We explored the role of parliament and how school council can represent the children in school. The children also looked for opportunities to improve the school environment, leading to a session of hard work on Friday morning weeding the area outside Rowan class! Well done to all.

Furthermore, Rowan class have tried their hands at creating illustrations in the pencil and watercolour style of Lucy Farfort, and writing their original illustrated story based on ‘In our hands’.

In our topic learning this term, Rowan will be studying English history between 1066 and 1901. We began by photographing and sketching Kimbolton high street, before imagining what it would look like in the Medieval, Tudor, Stuart, Georgian and Victorian eras. We also worked on our chronology skills, attempting to order famous figures and events in British history. Next week we will be looking at the Medieval period; I can recommend the ‘Secrets of the castle’ documentaries from BBC2 to help get a feel for life in Norman Britain!

WB 11.09.2023

Thank goodness the weather has cooled down a bit this week, as Year 6 have been completing some baseline SATs assessments in Maths, Reading and Spelling and Grammar this week.  These will be used to give the children a sense of that the assessments in May will be like and to identify areas we will focus on in Year 6.

Year 5 Pupils have been completing work on place value, showing numbers in different representations up to 1 million. In English, all pupils have been learning about writing persuasively. Next week we will be building towards writing a persuasive letter to Mrs Whiting to apply for roles of responsibility around the school.

In Science this week, Rowan began work on their unit on light. The children have many questions on this topic, such as ‘What is the best way to create rainbows?’ ‘How would people manage if there was no light?’ ‘How can light create heat?’ and ‘What is the most reflective material?’.  They then proposed experiments we could carry out during class time to answer some of these questions.

In Topic, the children were learning lots about the Medieval period. We compared the lives of the rich and the poor under the feudal system and investigated what everyday life would be like. Finally the children produced a comical (but factual) piece of work called ‘You wouldn’t want to be a medieval knight!’ or ‘You wouldn’t want to be a medieval peasant!’

WB 18.09.23

Another busy week in Rowan class! Year 6 have been working hard in Maths going through their baseline assessment papers and identifying areas to focus on this year. This will help them to understand what markers are looking for and to revise affectively before May. Year 5 have been continuing their work on place value by counting in powers of 10, calculating powers of 10 more and less than a given number and ordering and sequencing numbers up to 1,000,000.

In English this week Rowan have been planning and writing a letter of application to Mrs Whiting for the roles of House Captain, Science Ambassador, Digital leader or Librarian. The children structured their arguments using Point- Evidence- Explanation and included the persuasive devices we learned about last week.

In Science learning the children attempted to devise a test to prove that light travels in straight lines, and demonstrated their understanding of how light reflecting off of objects allows us to see through drama and concept cartoons.

Finally, on Wednesday Rowan had an amazing trip organised by Miss Chhibber visiting the Mosque and the Gurdwara. The children learned so much and had a brilliant time (I’m not jealous at all).

WB 25.09.2023 and WB 02.10.2023

It’s been a busy two weeks!

In our maths learning, Year 5 have been working on ordering, comparing and rounding numbers before moving on to adding using mental and written methods. Year 6 have been working with powers of 10, ordering and comparing numbers, rounding numbers to the nearest 100, 1000, 10 000 and 100 000, and finally moving on to negative numbers.

In English, the children completed their persuasive letters applying for their roles of responsibility, before editing carefully and publishing them neatly for Mrs Whiting. They then began to read our new class text, The boy at the back of the class. Rowan class worked in groups to make inferences about the characters introduced so far in the story. They then wrote an emotive diary entry in role as Ahmet, the new boy in school.

In science, Rowan class have studied how light reflects from mirrors at equal angles and how this can help us to see using reflections. We used this knowledge to build periscopes. In the next lesson, We examined how the angle and distance from a light source can change the size and appearance of a shadow. We then created shadow puppets to demonstrate how shadows will always have the same shape as the object that cast them.

In topic learning, Rowan landed in the Stuart period and looked at the English Civil War with help from our visitors from the Cromwell Museum. The children learned about how soldiers were equipped and fought in the battles and examined paintings and letters to learn about the life of Oliver Cromwell.

In art, Rowan class have begun a unit on animation by performing an artist study on Nick Park (creator of Wallace and Gromit) and by experimenting with stop motion animation using the school iPads. The children showed off their homework flipbooks and discussed the challenges of creating moving images.