It has been another busy week in Wonderful Wensley.

In Maths, Year 5 have started a Battle of the Bands against those most competitive of opponents, Year 6! We are using Chromebooks for some of our soft start time, partly for the battle, but more importantly because so much of our learning in Year 5, such as our new fractions unit, is underpinned by times tables knowledge. It is vital that we all build and maintain our fluency in them, so please use some of your home learning time to keep practising.

The class have made a great start to multiplying unit fractions (a numerator of one) and non-unit fractions (a numerator greater than one) by integers. There was a real buzz in the classroom as the children enjoyed a flush of success!

In English, I have had the pleasure of reading some brilliant, descriptive pieces that brought together last week’s writing to form the opening of a ‘defeating the monster’ story. The class have worked hard to master speech punctuation as well as various descriptive devices.

In Learning Means the World, we have moved to Sydney and enjoyed locating Australia’s nearest neighbours using atlases. We were surprised to see how isolated the country is to the west and south. We then moved on to comparing Sydney with New York.

Finally, in Science, the children have been thinking scientifically to design their own group experiments to test the absorbency of cotton wool. They needed to create their own enquiry question, identify variables, and consider how to ensure a fair test. This has also involved practising the skills of cooperation, teamwork, and managing any differences of opinion with kindness and understanding. We will start the practical side of these experiments next week. Well done to all!

Have a great weekend!