Welcome to Red Kites class

We are a class of curious, confident and engaged Year 5 pupils who enjoy learning.

We are taught by Ms. Parks, Mrs Taylor (Mon-Thurs) and Miss Whittington (Friday).

You can follow our adventures in learning, and find lots of helpful information, below.

Kilvrough - Day 5

What glorious weather to have our last day on the beach. Oodles of fun was had exploring rock pools, making sand sculptures and splashing in the sea. The perfect end to a perfect residential. See you soon family and friends! 

Kilvrough - Day 4

Below are photos of last night’s walk and today’s climbing and canoeing. Glorious weather too! 

Kilvrough - Day 3

Another brilliant day! Some of us were rock climbing, some of us were canoeing. Lots of challenge, teamwork and fun for everyone. We were extra proud of our climbers who had to abseil over the edge before being able to climb. Look how steep it was and at the sea below! We are swapping activities tomorrow. 

Kilvrough - Day 2

After an incredibly peaceful first night, the children woke ready for their first full day in the Welsh sunshine. Our first challenge was putting on wetsuits...it was exceptionally hard work! We then headed off to the beach for a day of body boarding. You will see from the photos that we all had an amazing time. For some of the children, it was their first time in the sea or they were not confident swimmers so it was wonderful for staff to see all the children having such fun. This was helped but some wonderful examples of friendship and kindness where the children supported each other. Special times.

Kilvrough - Day 1

The Red Kites have had a fantastic first day at Kilvrough. We arrived just in time for a picnic then started the afternoon with a tour of the site and a chance to set up bedrooms and unpack. After that, we worked in teams to tackle some problem solving challenges which had everyone working together then followed it up with free play around the grounds. This evening the children are orienteering before they settle down for their first night.

16th March

Panto Time! After lots of hard work, creativity and practise the Red Kites were ready to perform 'Snow White and the 8 dwarves'. They wrote several acts and the setting descriptions (for the narrators) themselves as well as helping Ms Parks with extra jokes based on current affairs and our year so far. It made everyone proud that the production was something we had created ourselves. Everybody practised their lines and the children worked together to bring the characters to life through exaggerated acting which we had witnessed when we visited the Panto in January.

Best of all, we were able to perform in front of our families and friends. This was the first time the school has put on a live production since the start of the pandemic so the atmosphere was magical. 

Look at our wonderful classroom door. Designed by Mya for to celebrate World Book Day.

Geography and current affairs

In Geography, the Red Kites have been learning about migration. This has been a fascinating unit that has allowed us to draw our the experiences of our families as we have classmates from Hong Kong, Cuba, Afghanistan, Poland, Russia and a teacher who lived and worked in France for four years. We have learnt about different types of migrants (economic and refugees), about push and pull factors that cause migration and the impact that climate change is likely to have on migration in the future.

Sadly, during our learning the war in Ukraine broke out. We have been able to draw on our learning about migration and have used the wonderful 'Prisoners of Geography: Our world explained in 12 simple maps' to help us understand the situation and the role that physical and human geography could play in its cause.

Follow this link to hear us explain our learning: The war in Ukraine

Design and Technology

Today, the Red Kites had a special Design and Technology focused day. We learnt all about marble runs investigating how to create structures, bridges, joins, bends then we worked in teams to design and build supersized marble runs using junk materials and a lot of toilet rolls!

We tested each others designs against a range of criteria and reflected on changes we would make if we were to make them again. Take a look at the photos to see the construction and testing process.

Science

In Science this term we have been learning about Properties and Changes of Materials. Below are some photos showing our investigations into changes in properties and heat insulators and conductors.

Christmas excitement is in the air! Sprout the elf has been up to his usual mischief, especially when he set up poor Derek the Dinosaur to make it look like he was eating him!!! Our teachers look fabulous in their matching Christmas jumpers and we look fantastic in our home made Christmas hats. Party Time 

We also visited Church for a Christmas Experience with Reverend Helen and Alison. We learnt how God created the World and why he sent his only son to bring people back to God. This helped us to understand the nativity story and the impact Jesus's birth had on the world. We feel lucky to have such a wonderful team at our Church who bring learning about Christianity to life for us.

Over the course of this term, the Red Kites have been learning sewing skills in our Design and Technology lessons. We have researched different designs, investigated materials and clasps, learnt how to measure and create templates, improved our sewing skills and learnt different types of stitches and how to sew on buttons. Take a look at the photos to see our final creations. They will make fabulous Christmas gifts for our families and friends.

24th November,

What a wonderful time we had at the fabulous Oxford Science Centre today! Everyone was so excited to be going in a school trip that even the coach journey was a joy. 
We spent the first part of the day in the exploration zone, testing, predicting, reasoning and discussing as well as having a huge amount of fun with hands-on science. Then, we entered the magical world of the planetarium dome and took a trip through Space. We even went to the Moon! At the end of the day, we did a workshop about changing materials which built on our current learning on states of matter. We tested what happens when we heated different materials, making predictions and observations throughout the process. 
Needless to say, the Red Kites were a credit to the school. 

12 November - Progression in Computing

This week, the Red Kites have been studying vector drawings in our computing lessons. They were taught how to use different drawing tools to create an image of a house including how to adapt shapes, add colour and resize. They have then completed a Christmas challenge (we know it's early be we are feeling festive already with the dark days) and produced a Christmas scene with the following criteria:

• It must contain a decorated Christmas tree, a gift and snow.
• As additional challenge, it could contain a fireplace, window and a cat.

The children's progression is evident when you look at the detail and use of vector shapes between the two images. Everyone is feeling rather proud!

How pride contributes to a Growth Mindset.

Having a positive attitude is just one step towards being a successful learner. Our mindset towards facing challenges, overcoming failure and being resilient is another. In Red Kites, we use our Growth Mindset board to help us identify the approaches that help us to have a positive mindset. When we feel frustrated or stuck we can take one of the yellow cards (see photos below) that help us to think about ways to overcome our problem and move forward. We find it easier to do this when we can see how what we are learning builds on what we have learnt before, when the vocabulary we need is clear and when our books become a resource for revisiting and revising. So, we take great pride in our books. We use: a highlighting system to help us easily find headings, key vocabulary and questions; familiar page structures for each lesson; drawings, tables, bullet points and mind-maps to show our learning and ideas and 'mostly' remember to use a ruler! Now, when we open our books, we can see our progress and find facts and concepts that we have learnt which, in turn, helps us to be positive about what we can achieve.

22nd October

Retrival practise has played a big part in our learning over the past term. In History, we have be learning about the Ancient Egyptian civilisation, in Science we have caught up on a topic that was disrupted due to Covid - The Digestive System - and in RE we have been investigating worship with a focus on comparing Sikhism and Christianity. In all these subjects (and everything else we study), we are gaining a huge amout of knowledge alongside developing new skills and vocabulary but knowledge can be hard to retain with such a jam-packed curriculum so at the start of each lesson we revise previous learning, we review what we have learnt at the end of every lesson and we have a weekly quiz as homework that helps ensure we have embedded learning in our long term memory. The best part is...we love that we can remember what we have learnt!

Here are some of the overheard quotes from Red Kites this week:

"Every day is exciting in our class" - Imogen

"We know so much now" - Gabriella

"We learnt that weeks ago and I still remember" - Spencer

"It's weird systems in the body and in compters and bikes work the same" - Alex

In Science this week we started investigating the question: What causes tooth decay? The Red Kites had great fun looking at plaque on their own teeth - pink smiles all round!

We ended the term with an Art Day that built on the sketchbook exploration we have been studying in Art and the twitcher handbooks that we have been writing in English. We studied form, colour and texture then created wire sculptures of the birds we have learnt about in Lost Words. See if you can spot kingfishers, wrens, herons, magpies, starlings and larks hanging from our classroom ceiling.

15th October

The Red Kites have had a fantastic few weeks. They have fully stepped up to the expectations of Year 5 with a determined focus on learning, pride in the presentation of their work and enthusiasm for trying new challenges.They have also made us exceptionally proud of the way in which they have welcomed our two new pupils into the class with kindness and warmth. 

Below you can see just a small number of the different types of learning we have being doing from making Egyptian shudufs when learning about the River Nile and irregation, making music in Beatbox workshop, drawing and labelling life-sized digestive systems, playing respectfully and inclusively in the playground and taking good care of Cessy!

25th September

This week was all about music. We have been lucky enough to have two music assemblies, a keyboard lesson and a beatbox lesson. Some of the class also went to choir, some had 1:1 music lessons and we all got to practise singing songs for the Harvest Festival. In the first assembly we heard Year 11-13 children play different instruments such as the harp, viola and saxophone. We could ask questions to find out more about the instruments. In the second assembly there was a jazz band! It wasn't long before everyone was singing and clapping along.

In English, we have been writing diamante poems about the Lost Words using different word classes (nouns, adjectives and verbs). Some of us even managed to write acrostic diamante poems and/or make effective use of alliteration.

We have become experts in describing systems in bikes, computers and the human body. Ask us about the digestive system and we will be able to tell you what it does (and why), name the parts and explain the process from food to waste. We have now started making life-sized drawings to see if we can draw and label each part. In drawing round our models, we discovered there are lots of very ticklish children in our class.

20th September

The glorious Autumn weather has inspired lots of art work in Red Kites class so we have used what we learnt last week to make ink and pen wildflower meadows.

Cessy made her first visit to class this week and settled in quickly. Everyone loves having a dog in the classroom and have been giving her lots of strokes and cuddles as well as taking responsibility for her walks, water and training. Cessy just loves the attention and sitting next to the feet of whoever is her favourite Red Kite of the day. She also loves our new reading corner as did our other unusual guest this week. Take a look at the photos to find out who the guest was.

9th September

The Red Kites have had a fantastic first week as Year 5 and demonstrated our school values of ready, respectful and responsible in all they have done. 

We are using the beautiful poetry book The Lost Words as a stimulus for our own nature poetry and art. The children used the book introduction to create a blackout poem (see photos for examples) and have been experimenting with different media in observational drawing of dried plants and seeds.

In Science, we have started to learn about the digestive system. We compared the roles of the different systems of the body and about the journey of food and water through the digestive system.

Lots of fun has been had with all the maths games we have been playing this week. We have used the games to practise our core skills and understanding of place value and number facts as well of the skills of reasoning and logic.