Author: Mr Freeman

I (Mr Freeman) had my first opportunity to experience forest school with the children today. The children told me I may be in for a good time, but I perhaps didn’t realise how much fun forest school can really be! First of all, Sarah (our forest school leader) is fantastic – all children respond really well to her words and her knowledge of the forest.

We began the session by exploring our surroundings. We are so lucky to have this space within our school grounds and the children are absolutely making the most of everything on offer. From playing in the mud kitchen to searching for unique mushrooms, it’s fair to say we are learning an awful lot every Friday. Ethan and Connor managed to find a new fungus that we were reading about in one of the books up in forest school – they concluded that we had found yellow brain fungus! Here are some brilliant photos of the children in action today.

Help at home:

Explore your outdoors with your child. They are extremely knowledgeable of their surroundings and might teach the adults something new (they definitely taught me lots today!).

Year 5 have been working hard on improving our fundamental movement skills, with football as a framework this half term. As we know, a huge part of lots of competitive sports is high fitness levels. So, Year 5 pushed themselves to their limits in our most recent fitness lesson! We had a circuit of activities in the hall and children had to spend 3 minutes taking on each one. Pupils worked hard, showed great teamwork and perseverance through tough skills and drills! We made sure to pause and drink plenty of water in the rest zone, too. Here are some pictures from our lesson!

With national poetry day coming up next week (02.10.25), Year 5 have been reading The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt. To summarise, this poem reveals a cunning spider’s evil plan to lure the fly into his trap by using flattering words. The fly at first is very wary of the spider, but, in time, the spider’s kind words are too enticing for the fly to ignore. The fly enters the spider’s trap and does not meet a happy end.

When reading aloud, the children have blown me away with their fantastic oracy skills, such as tonal variation and voice projection when pretending to be the spider and the fly. In our most recent retrieval lesson, children were tasked with drawing the spider’s parlour based on facts in the text. The accuracy of their illustrations and annotations was brilliant and the children managed to include everything!

Here are some brilliant examples:

Help at home:

Practise reading aloud with your child and focus on different ways to use voices. With national poetry day just around the corner, perhaps use a poem to read together?

Our first piece of writing is a diary entry, inspired by our class novel (Survivors by David Long). Our goal is to create a short recount of events happening in a made up survival scenario. The ideas from the children have blown me away! We have one child who took a dangerous short cut during a desert marathon, another who parachuted and landed inside a volcano, and some that have even ended up lost in space! The children are really into their writing so far and have just finished day one of their entries. Here are just two of 21 brilliant entries:

As week two draws to an end, I’d like to share some moments where the pupils have used our 8Rs for learning extremely well. As a reminder, the 8Rs are below:

• remembering
• risk taking
• resilience
• ready
• reflective
• responsible
• resourceful
• responsive

In reading, the children ended the week by performing extracts of Juliane Koepka’s diary – a survivor who beat the odds when lost in the Amazon Rainforest. For this, the children needed to remember the extracts when planning to perform, take risks when performing in front of others and reflect on feedback from peers at the end of their performances.

Lots of pupils have shown an interest in applying for school jobs. For the applications, children have had to show that they are responsible, responsive and ready for the role. I’m super proud of how many applications we have had back in Year 5!

Finally, in writing, the children are constantly remembering when to use capital letters – their books look fantastic so far as there’s lots of effort being put in.

This half-term, we are focussing on football to help develop our fundamental movement skills (below). Every sport/activity needs a variety of these skills. Our job is to develop them enough so that children can interchange across sports using the same learnt fundamental skills.

Year 5 have made a great start in the first few weeks. The children have followed instructions well and have kept the same high classroom standards outside. The first few sessions were all about passing accurately to a partner and keeping control of the ball. In groups of 2 or 3, children needed to pass with the inside of their foot (for the most control), to their partner. We linked this to the fundamental skill of throwing from last year. When you throw, you want your arm to end up following the direction of the ball. Kicking a football is the same – you want your foot to follow the ball through to keep the pass straight. Here are some pictures of the children in action:

Help at home: 

We’re learning about urban green spaces in geography. Perhaps explore some of these spaces where you live and practise those passing skills?

Hello and welcome! Mr Freeman here ready for a fantastic year with a brilliant Year 5 group. So far, the children have settled back into school, and their new classroom, extremely well. Their attitude to learning is exemplary and I’m already seeing progress in just a few days (particularly with writing).

In the first week back, we always focus on getting back into school routines and following school rules, which are below:

We keep our three rules short and sweet so that children can recall them easily. Adults always refer to school rules in lessons and Year 5 follow them well consistently. In our first living and learning session, we spoke about what being respectful, ready and safe looks like in our school – here are some of the comments made by pupils:

Being ready in class is a respectful choice. – Logan

We are respectful to the feelings of others so that we can do the best learning. – Emily G

Respect your friends and peers. – Ethan

We don’t leave things on our classroom floor otherwise it might be unsafe. – Emily M

We avoid bad choices to keep us safe. Physical contact might be hurtful and unsafe to others. – Shae

Having eyes on the speaker shows that your ready. – Elara

You need to be ready because if you’re not paying attention, you might miss something important. – Lottie

Not being ready might not be safe and might impact your future. – Kiara