A HUGE welcome to the Red Kites Class!

​​You will find 28 resilient learners, Mr Gale, Mrs Doran and Mr Murton (TA).

We will update the class page once a week - usually on a Friday. Please check regularly as we will often share key information here.

Please feel free to contact us via the class email: 

redkites@watlington.oxon.sch.uk

Our PE days are Tuesdays and Thursdays. Please come to school in your PE kit.

Useful Web Links for Home Learning

Friday 26th April 

Another exciting week in Red Kites. 

You should receive a parentmail this afternoon about ATOM, our new home learning platform. The children will be sent home with a login. Spelling shed and ATOM will be set Friday-Friday. Daily reading is also expected to happen at home. 

Some of our highlights this week include:

English: innovating a persuasive letter. Lots of us magpied Mr Gale's idea of banning mobile phones for under 16s. Mrs Doran taught us how to expand our points.

Maths: We started the week looking at 3D shapes and ended the week exploring co-ordinates. Some of us had the challenge of working in all 4 quadrants. We loved playing battle ships!

French: Learning the language for the first 5 rooms in a house. Can your child tell you about the following phrases: 

Une salle à manger

Une chambre 

Une cuisine

Une salle de bains

Une buanderie

PE: Enjoying our athletics and cricket sessions on Tuesday and Thursday.

Topic: We have been enjoying finding out more on biomes and their climates.

See photos of the week below.

Friday 19th April 

Welcome back! We hope you had a lovely Easter break.

We have been off to a busy start.. here are some highlights:

- In science we looked at the movement of the moon relative to the Earth. We created a model and Mrs Doran set us the challenge of using a word bank to explain our understanding. Here is the scientific vocab: rotate, moon, axis, Earth, orbit, night, day, heat, Sun, light, reflect.
- In maths we have started exploring angles. We have been using protractors to measure and draw given angles. We also worked out missing angles around a point and on straight line.
- In english, we have started a unit of work on persuasive letters. Mr Gale and Mrs Doran were very impressed with our cold writes but Mr Gale did indeed tell a white lie! Ask us about this! We also read a range of letters and then created a word bank with useful features.

- Our topic is Extreme Earth and we explored biomes this week.

- Our class reader is The Boy At The Back of The Class.

See the photos below.

Friday 28th March

Wow, what a busy week we have had. We have thoroughly enjoyed STEM week.

Some highlights include:

- Our open afternoon. Thank you parents for coming. We loved sharing our Big Science posters, DT toys and the micro it’s.

- A visit from Mr Smith, who is a GP. His talk was very knowledgable and we all had lots of questions to ask.

- Card game morning on Friday. We were lucky enough to be bought a deck of cards each and Mrs Doran showed us how to play a few games. A popular one was ‘Go Fish’. Over the holidays, perhaps you could ask your child to teach you a game. 
 

Have a wonderful Easter break and enjoy those chocolate eggs!

Friday 22nd March

We have had lots of fun this week.

Here are a few highlights:

Our technology day ahead of STEM week next week was a great success. See photos below.

We have finished (or almost finished) our ‘Big Science Event’ posters, following on from our rocket investigation last week.

On Tuesday after school we thoroughly enjoyed the performance of Billy and the workshop today was fantastic. We learnt a song and had a go at part of the script. It was tricky to keep a Northern accent. The ICC students were very inspiring and brilliant role models during the performance and workshop.
 

Friday 15th March

The highlight of our week has been planning and carrying out our investigation for ‘The Big Science Event’. Mrs Doran asked us to choose our independent and control variables. Most of us came to the conclusion that baking soda and vinegar was the best combination.

In English we have been learning about the Highway Man. We have the explored language in the poem and started to use a thesaurus to expand our language.

In maths, we have continued our work on perimeter and area. We loved the carpet investigation we did with Mr Gale.

In RE we have been thinking about what makes a good leader and who the positive leaders are in our own lives.

Friday 1st March 2024

Another busy week in Red Kites!

We are well on our way with biographies in English: we have been innovating this week. We boxed up the model text about Jim Jarvis and lots of us chose to innovate by changing it to a wealthy character. One example is the title changing from Jim Jarvis: A Tale of Resilience and Inspiration to Noah Jones: A Tale of a Wealthy Victorian Boy

In maths, we have been learning about percentages and their fraction/decimal equivalents. Click here if you'd like to revisit any key concepts.

In French we have been working on our ‘Café’ topic, creating menus with lots of delicious French items. Une limonade et une part de gâteau au chocolat, anyone?

Don't forget, there is a Residential meeting after school on Wednesday 6th March.

Friday 23rd February 2024

It's been a busy first week back.

We have started our work on biographies in English. We have looked at the features of biographies and particularly enjoyed answering questions in role as Jim Jarvis (see videos below.)

Maths has involved converting equivalent fractions and decimals.

During science, we discussed reversible and irreversible changes. Ask us for some examples and what happened when Mrs Doran mixed bicarb and vinegar together in a bottle with a balloon on top!

We have been discussing active listening as a journalling task. Ask us about what it is, how do do it and why it is important.

A reminder to not bring in toys from home please. 

Friday 9th February 2024

The end of term is here, but that hasn't stopped us in the Red Kites this week. 

In English, we wrote our 'hot write' portal stories, including all the features of this genre, as well as developing our use of semi-colons, commas and apostrophes. It has been wonderful to see how engaged the class have been on this unit of work, and as a reward we took them to Year 2 to share their stories with the younger children, who turned out to be great critical friends!

Our other main focus this week has been marking Children's Mental Health Week, on the theme of 'My Voice Matters'. We discussed the range of ways we can communicate how we feel (using our voices, writing, drawing, creating art, using sign language...) and the importance of sharing our emotions and thoughts with others. The children have created art work showing all of the things that matter to them, and we also played a mental health game in class. We re-designed our class worry box, and also enjoyed a visit to the 'mental health photo booth' on Thursday, where we could 'dress to express' ourselves.

We hope you all have a great half term, and look forward to seeing you after the holidays.

2nd February 2024

Science

We have continued our materials topic in science, carrying out an investigation to find out about the solubility of different materials. Here is some terminology we have learnt:

Soluble: When a solid will dissolve in a liquid.

Insoluble: A substance that cannot dissolve.

Solvent: The liquid that does the dissolving.

Solute: The substance being dissolved.

Solution: the is formed when the solute and solvent mix.

Art

We spent all day on Monday learning about William Morris, the Victorian artist. We discussed what we liked about his work and what inspired him, then designed our own motifs to use for printing. Once our designs were complete, we replicated them on styrofoam and used them to make a repeating pattern. We think you will agree that the results are pretty impressive!

Dance

A reminder about our dance performance at Icknield on Monday after school (3.45pm and 5pm). This is a great opportunity for the children to work with their peers from the secondary school.

25th January 2024

The Red Kites has continued to be a hive of activity this week.

English:

We have been innovating on our model text, The Time Slip Scarab, thinking about how we can make changes to the model text and start to make it ‘our own’. The children have been particularly creative, thinking about all sorts of weird and wonderful portals to transport their characters back to the Victorian era. Next week, we move in to our ‘invent’ stage, where the children can apply all their learning about portal stories to create our own texts.

Maths:

We have been so impressed with how quickly the children have got to grips with using short division, including remainders. Using Numicon as a tool was very helpful for us to visualise what happens when you have to ‘exchange’ and also to see what we really mean when we talk about 'remainders'. Some of us even took the next step and converted our remainders in to decimals.

Art:

We started our topic all about the famous Victorian artist, William Morris this week. The children enjoyed looking at his work, exploring the patterns he used. We plan on doing our own block printing next week.

Computing:

We applied our knowledge of algorithms this week, to program the Micro:Bits to become pedometers, measuring how many footsteps we take. See the video below.

19th January 2024

Update written by Harriet and Margot

This week we’ve been doing:

In Maths we learned about long multiplication, this is when we times a two digit number by a two digit number. Towards the end of the week we used our knowledge on long multiplication to complete word problems.

In English, on Monday and Tuesday we learned about commas and apostrophes, we learnt where to correctly place them in a sentence.

Towards the end of the week we looked at portal stories and the features of them.

In Computing we’ve learnt how to code a microbit (a microbit is a small computer with 25 LED lights which light up when you send messages to it saying what you would like it to do eg: happy face) this week we learnt how to code the microbit so when you press:

• Button A a happy face will appear on the LED
• Button B a sad face will appear on the LED
• Button A+B a ok face will appear on the LED

12th January 2024

Welcome back and Happy New Year! We hope you had an enjoyable break over the festive period. It has been a short but very busy week here in the Red Kites class.

We launched our new Victorians topic, by starting to read our class text called Street Boy, by Berlie Doherty. This is a story about a young boy called Jim who gets sent to the workhouse. We spent all of Friday morning learning about the workhouse and writing diary entries from Jim's point of view.

In topic, we are learning about Victorian inventions and innovations. See if your child can explain the difference between these two words. If you have any books on the topic that you would like to share with us, please feel free to send them in.

Finally, our computing topic this term is all about coding and we have been lucky enough to get some Micro:Bits, which we can use the iPads to send code to. The children have really enjoyed these lessons.

Please see our class newsletter by clicking on this link here.

Updated home learning grids and spellings will be sent out early next week.

15th December 2023

WOW! What a busy week. It has been non-stop across the school this week, not least in the Red Kites. Here are some of our highlights:

• We did an acapella version of Aussie Jingle Bells in the church carol service, as well as all the children sharing a reading of 'Twas The Night Before Christmas'. Well done to all the children for projecting your voices so clearly, and for representing the school so well.

• The children are continuing to make super progress with their swimming skills, with one group using flippers, another group working really hard on  refining their breathing techniques and another group getting to grips with swimming without floats. Children will need a pair of pyjamas next week for our lifesaving lesson.

• Our theatre trip to see A Christmas Carol at the North Wall Theatre was enjoyed by all. It was a great production, very dark and a bit scary in places, but it was great to see everyone fully engrossed. One child said it was the best thing they had ever seen on stage! Once back at school the children responded to the performance in their own way e.g. a review, retelling etc.

• Today's Christmas lunch was very tasty - thank you to the kitchen for this. Christmas crowns were made for the occasion and you all looked brilliant! Christmas cards are also underway!

Have a great weekend, only 2.5 days to go until the holidays now!!

Friday 1st December 2023

Well done Red Kites on another productive week!

In English, we have been working on our instruction writing, completing hot writes about our own mythical creatures we have created. We will share some of these in our class assembly next week.

Our Jigsaw PSHE lesson which focused on racism provided some interesting and informative discussions. We worked as a class to understand a definition of racism, and designed some eye-catching ribbons to show that we need to fight racism. See below!

In maths, we have stretched our brains with adding proper and mixed number fractions. Most of us have made great progress with this, but if your child has found this tricky, you may want to watch this video with them.

In our history lesson, we learnt about the Battle of Hastings and how this signified the end of Viking and Anglo Saxon rule. The children enjoyed listening to the story of how William the Conqueror invaded our shores and how we can use the Bayeux Tapestry as a primary source of historical information.

We are learning Aussie Jingle Bells for the carol concert in two weeks’ time, and are also busy learning the Vikings song for our class assembly. Videos of both songs are below for you to use when learning at home!

23rd November 2023

Although this week has been assessment week in school, we have still managed to squeeze lots of new learning in each day in the Red Kites class.

We launched our new Design and Technology project on Monday morning, where we are learning about different types of bread. At the end of this unit, we are hoping to bake our own Anglo Saxon or Viking loaves. Monday’s first task was a very tasty taste test, where we tried a range of different breads and evaluated their appearance, taste and texture. We also learnt about health and safety hazards in kitchen environments.

On Wednesday, we started our other project on all about weaving – you can see some of our brilliant work below. We will finish these over the next couple of weeks and hope to share them in our class assembly.

We also learnt about Alfred the Great and why he is referred to as the 'Great'. All of the children looked at key events within his life and we used our inference skills to discuss what this told us about what sort of king he was. Everyone agreed he was a forward thinking king and deserved the title of 'Great'.

We are really proud of the positive attitude the children have shown towards their assessments – well done all.

17th November 2023

Our highlights in the Red Kites class this week have been:

- Starting swimming on Tuesday: all the children really impressed us with their swimming skills, and now they have all done their initial assessments, we can go full steam ahead with our lessons next week. Please remember to send your child in with coats when we go swimming - the rain and cold weather means we had a couple of "coatless" children feeling quite chilly after being in the pool...!

- We continue to enjoy our French lessons with Madame Fox, and are making good progress with learning all about the weather.

- In our RE lessons this term, we are learning about different festivals, such as Diwali, Ramadan and Easter, making comparisons between how different religions mark special occasions.

- We had an interesting discussion in our Jigsaw lesson about how cultural differences can sometimes cause conflict. The children worked in small groups to look at such scenarios and brainstormed ways that these moments could be changed from a negative event in to a learning opportunity. We all agreed that it is much more positive to find out more about each other, rather than highlighting our differences.

Next week we are going to be weaving in our DT lesson - if any of you have any balls of wool you can donate, please send them in with your child - we would be very grateful!

A heads up that it is our class assembly on Friday 8th December at 2.30pm: all parents invited!

11th November 2023

It has been a busy week in Red Kites, with a new English unit on instruction writing launched and a continuing focus on fractions in maths.

A group of us worked with Mr Murton to find pairs of equivalent fractions, completing a rather complicated jigsaw. Ask your child if they can explain how to find equivalent fractions...

In English, we have started to become familiar with our model text and its story map (see below). We will immerse ourselves in the text over the next week or so and then start writing our own instructions. 

We were very lucky to participate in a smoothie making workshop run by Caterlink on Wednesday, where the children learnt about healthy foods and tried some unusual combinations of smoothies.

A reminder that all children have their Spelling Shed website login details in the back of their homework books, and have all been assigned spelling activities to complete at home, linked to our current patterns. If your child's logins aren't in their books, it is because they haven't handed their homework in for a while - please can you send books in next week! Thank you.

Finally, remember that we start swimming next Tuesday: children need to come to school with their swimming costumes underneath their clothes, so that they can get in the pool as quickly as possible! The class continue to have PE on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons - we will be getting very fit this term!

Chiltern Open Air Museum trip

We had a super time at the  Chiltern Open Air Museum on Wednesday. The rain didn’t dampen out spirits as we set off on the coach journey (which thankfully was shorter than the swimming coach journey 2 years ago!) and we arrived at the museum to start our first workshop about Anglo Saxon craft and culture. 

All of the children had a go at introducing ourselves in old English, then they completed a carousel of activities including:

• Weaving using a traditional Anglo Saxon technique
• Writing runes in clay
• Making brooches (these should have made their way home!)
• Playing traditional Anglo Saxon games
• Looking at replica artefacts

After lunch we took part in an archaeological dig, thinking about what historical finds can tell us about the past. Did you know that an object left on the ground in the Anglo Saxon times would have possibly sunk underground by 1 metre by 2023?!

The children absolutely loved the day out and we are very proud of how well they represented our school.

See some photos of our day below.

Friday 20th October 

We loved the Cinderella theatre performance on Wednesday - particularly when Mr Gale and Miss Harman had to go up and dance!

Maths: We have be focusing on multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000. Can you tell your adults some rules and give some examples. We also had a go at maths journalling to explain our learning.

English: We finished our unit on poetry. We wrote our own kennings and then finished the week by rapping a poem to Stormzy.

Science: We tested our boats and discussed the words streamline, water resistance, curved and surface area.

Dance: Our sessions at ICC came to an end this week. We have enjoyed learning the routine and look forward to performing it with other year groups in the future. Watch this space!

See photos and videos below.

HAVE A HAPPY HALF TERM!

Friday 13th October 

A huge thank you to everyone who attended open afternoon yesterday. It was lovely to see so many faces.

Thank you for bringing in money today for the 'My Vision' charity. A few members of the charity came to speak to us in assembly today. It was very interesting and it was also lovely to meet the dogs!

Parents' evening slips have gone our too so please keep an eye out for these.

Our highlights this week:

Maths: We've been consolidating lots of terminology in maths, including: factors, highest common factors, multiples, prime numbers, square numbers and cube numbers. You could create a poster to help consolidate all of these terms. Or perhaps devise a game to help you remember.

English: We have loved rehearsing and performing Kennings this week! Our model text is all about Kevin!! Click here! In addition, we have appraised some of the features of Kennings too.

Science: Thank you for all your support with bringing in junk modelling. Today we designed our own boats and next week, we will test our designs. 

PE: We have enjoyed getting to know our new sports coach. He has helped to develop our skills in dance and football.

See photos below.

Friday 6th October

Another busy week in Red Kites! 

Reminder: We are making boats next week in science. Please bring materials in. E.g. plastic bottles.

English: We planned and wrote our own 'Overcoming the Monster' stories. We used our innovations, the model text and the toolkit to help us.

Maths: We have continued our work on addition and subtraction. We solved word problems and questions with missing numbers. If you would like to revisit this at home then pick a video from here to watch. 

Topic: We have been learning how to recognise Anglo Saxon place names and their meanings.

Science: Last Friday, we looked at the effects of air resistance by testing different sized parachutes. Ask us what we found out! Test us on what a control/independent/dependent variables are.

Music: We are really enjoying our sessions with Mrs Andrews. This week, we have been looking at the notes D minor, F, A, B, G.

We ended the week with outdoor learning day. It was so much fun!

See photos below.

Thursday 28th September

Another great week in Year 5, with the highlight definitely being languages morning where we got to try out some British Sign Language, Italian and German. Why not see if your child can introduce themselves in these languages! 

We are working hard in English, innovating on our How To Train Your Dragon texts. Next week we will be inventing our own overcoming the monster stories. We have also been working on our understanding of formal written and subtraction methods.

We are looking forward to our outdoor learning day next Friday, where we will be thinking about how best to use our new outdoor shelter space.

Keep your eye out for a ParentMail regarding trips that we will be having this year. We are sending this out so that families have time to budget for these exciting opportunities.

Friday 22nd September

Another fabulous week in Red Kites.
 

A huge congratulations to our new school councillor: Olivia. Remember, if you want to be considered for sports captain then you need to send a short video clip explaining why to the class email.
 

Here are our highlights:

Science: We carried out an investigation today which looked at explaining how the force of gravity acts upon objects falling. We created 'the moon' with flour and dropped objects so that we could measure the 'craters'. 

Maths: Our work on place value this week has included work on rounding, counting in powers of 10 and a problem solving task. Visit the link here and ask your child to explain their findings to you.

Topic: We started our new topic on Anglo Saxons with a discussion based activity on why the Anglo Saxons came to Britain in the first place. One of the main reasons was the land here was much better for growing food, and less likely to flood, although some of us did point out that the rain this week suggested otherwise! 

English: This week has involved looking at some of the features on our toolkit in a little more detail. We explored expanded noun phrases, similes and metaphors and developed our inference skills. We are really enjoying How To Train Your Dragon! 

PE: We continued our dance workshop at ICC on Wednesday where we looked at developing our dance routine which is choreographed to Holst’s “The Planets”. Football and gymnastics were also enjoyable with Miraj from WR sports.

French: This week we have continued to revise days of the week and months of the year. Ask your child which month we are in, and which month we will be in by next Friday! 

We have also been impressed with the level of effort that the children have been putting into their home learning. Keep up the good work!

It was lovely to see so many faces at the reading café after school - thank you for coming. Have a lovely weekend. 
 

See photos below.

Friday 15th September 

Another busy week in Red Kites! Here are our highlights:

PE: We went to ICC and participated in a dance lesson. We are looking forward to doing this every week.

English:  We have been boxing up the features of our Overcoming the Monster story type and have started to look at the features.

Maths: We have been continuing our work on place value. This week we have been interpreting, representing and comparing numbers to 1 million. In addition, we have been demonstrating how to work out 10/100/1000/10,000/100,000 more/less than aa number.

Science: We have been continuing our work on Forces. We have looked at what forces are, who Isaac Newton is and how forces impact our daily lives.

As part of our science topic, we will be making boats and testing their water resistance. Please can you start bringing in materials to use for this. 

Re: Our topic this term is Religion in the community. In our lesson this week, we thought about how we are part of different communities and the impact that religion has on different communities. 

See photos below.

Friday 8th September

We have had a brilliant first week back and survived the heat! Here are some of our highlights:

A mysterious box was found in our classroom on Wednesday. Once we opened it, some eggs were revealed. We thought about different answers to the questions in the box.

English: We created our own dragons and made ‘dragonologies’ on them. Can you spot some new species?

Maths: We have been learning about Roman numerals.

Art: We designed some dragon eyes and then a dragon egg. Afterwards, we stuck them together and made a rip in the egg to reveal the eye.
We have also looked at our tidy up routine. We thought about why it was important, what it looks like and how to achieve it.

See photos below.

Have a great weekend :)