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Holy Family Catholic Primary School

Year 5 – Saint Josephine Bakhita

 

Our Class Saint is: Saint Josephine Bakhita.

We have made a separate page to share our knowledge of our class Saint.

Prayer for the feast of St Josephine of Bakhita: International day of  awareness and prayer against human trafficking 8th February - Diocese of  Plymouth

WELCOME TO YEAR 5 - SAINT JOSEPHINE BAKHITA CLASS

Dear Parents/Carers,
Welcome to this new academic year. We hope that you have enjoyed your summer break and are ready to resume your learning! Ms. Cullimore will be teaching the class on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the remainder of the week she will be elsewhere in the school. Mrs. Ives will be teaching the class on Thursdays and Fridays. Dojo has been adjusted to enable Ms. Cullimore and Mrs Ives to have access to our class Dojo. Therefore, please make a note of the days each of us will be in class teaching so that if you want to contact one of us in particular, on Class Dojo, having this information will ensure that messages are not going to be missed or delayed.

By way of an introduction please find below some important points to help you and your child settle into Year 5.

 

Spellings

The children will continue to use ‘Spelling Shed’ for their spelling homework each week. Each child should already have a login, but we will resend all of the children’s login details home so that the programme can be accessed from the beginning of the year. Every week, each child will be expected to play 10 games in order to practise the spelling rule introduced in the classroom previously. This will be checked every week, as spellings are incredibly important. Together with this there are educational games set to support your child’s learning of the spelling rules at home.

 

Reading books

All pupils are given two school books to read from the reading scheme. The children are expected to read at least five times each week with an adult and record this onto the reading app, ‘BoomReader’. As mentioned above, login details will be sent home to all children so that recording reading can begin straight away. In addition, the app will also record their feedback about the books they read.

It is vital that a record is made each time they read. Each week their reading record will be checked, and their reading books will be changed, but only if it is clear that they have read five times that week. Please make sure that your child’s books are handed in on a THURSDAY so that they can be changed ready to go home the following day.

You can support your child by;

  • Listening to them read 10 minutes every day as this makes such a big impact to their understanding in reading but in turn, all subjects
  • Asking them questions about the text
  • Using a dictionary together to discover the meaning of any unknown vocabulary they encounter.

There will also be various opportunities for the children to read in school, either with one of us, a parent helper or as part of our ‘Drop everything and read’ sessions, so clearly it is important to note that: reading books must be in school every day.

 

Homework:

Each day the children will be given maths homework which consists of 8 arithmetic questions to complete and bring in the following day to discuss and mark. On some days, there are video links where explanations are given to support your child. Hopefully these should take no longer than 5 minutes. Please don’t worry if there are questions your child doesn’t understand yet as we will not have covered all the things that come up!

Your child will also be set a creative homework project every term, based on our history, geography or science units. Our first unit is history - The Anglo-Saxons and The Vikings for terms 1 and 2. Full details of these projects will be given at the appropriate time.

Thank you for your anticipated support in ensuring completion of homework activities.

 

P.E.

P.E. will be taught every Thursday and Friday. Children are to come to school wearing their full P.E. Kit to school on these days. PE Kit is black shorts or jogging bottoms; black daps or trainers and red t-shirts with a school jumper. Please note all PE lessons apart from dance and gymnastics will be conducted outside, weather permitting.

If your child wears earrings they must remove them for P.E. If for some reason they cannot remove their earrings, in the interest of safety, we ask that you please provide them with medical tape to cover them.

Later in the year, the children will attend swimming at the local swimming pool. Dates for these will be shared with you nearer the time.

For your information, on these days, the children will continue to wear their PE kits to school and bring their swimming kits in a separate bag.

The children will need:

  • Swimming costumes
  • Towel
  • Bag to carry items
  • Water bottle

We will send out details about swimming each week on Class Dojo as a reminder!

Just so you are aware, we will be walking to the swimming pool each time, no matter the weather, so please make sure the children are prepared for this on the Tuesday - including a coat!

As we will be walking, we are in need of an additional adult to come with us each week, we do not expect the same person to come every week but if you are able to join us at any point, we would really appreciate it. If we do not have the right ratio of adults to children, we cannot attend the lessons which would be awful for the children.

 

Forest Schools

Forest School takes place throughout the year on our school grounds. Your child will be told when they need to come into school wearing suitable clothing items for a Forest School day.

Children need to come into school wearing old, comfortable and waterproof clothing as they will be outside all day, no matter the weather!

On their Forest School day, children will need to wear:
- Old t-shirt
- Jogging trousers
- Fleece/jumper
- Socks
- Wellington boots – please bring these in a separate bag so they can change into them if needed during the day. This also means if they are muddy they can take them off and put them into the bag and wear trainers home - no mud anywhere!
- Old trainers - come into school wearing these, they can be worn all day if the weather is good or change into wellies.
- Waterproof trousers, useful but not essential
- Waterproof coat. (If children do not bring in an additional coat then they will need to wear the coat they arrived for school in. Please be aware this may get muddy or damaged if it rains

Forest school is part of our school curriculum. All children need to take part. If children do not have forest school clothing in school they may get their school uniform muddy or a reminder phone call to bring it in! So please remember this!

 

Going home

To assist in safeguarding your children, it is very important that you please make sure that you inform the school by phone, as soon as possible, or inform us on Dojo of the following circumstances, should they be any different from usual:

If your child is:

  • Going home with someone other than yourself
  • Being picked up by another member of your family or by a friend.
  • If arrangements change during the day
  • Doing anything different from previously arranged.
  • If you are running late - please take time to make a call to school so we are able to reassure your child that you are coming.

Please tell us of any existing going home procedures that you have in place, even if they have been the same since reception! Again, this is in the interest of safeguarding your children.

 

Dates for this term:

Friday 8th September - Whole school Mass at Holy Family for the new school year 9.30am. If you are able to join us for this, please let us know, again we will be in need of people to walk with us!

Wednesday 13th September - Year 5 Forest School Day

Thursday 12th October - Bring in Donations towards the Foodbank, for Harvest. Thank you in advance.

Week beginning Monday 16th October - Rosary Week and Black History

Tuesday 17th October - Class photographs

Friday 20th October - End of term 1

Advanced information: Year 5 Residential to Kintbury - Tuesday 5th December to Thursday 7th December. More information to follow.

 

If you have any questions about anything in this letter, please feel free to come and see us at the end of the school day or message on Dojo. Class information is shared and updated regularly via our Class Dojo page. Please look out for messages and updates on this page.

Thanking you for your anticipated support.

Yours sincerely,

Miss Cullimore and Mrs. Ives

Year 5 Class Teachers