Welcome back to the new half-term.  Well done Kingfishers for learning and working hard throughout a difficult week.  It has been both a blessing and a challenge to open our lessons  to children physically present in the classroom and to those who joined us virtually from home - thank you all for your patience and perseverance.

We have started work on our next key text, "Mill Girl" by Sue Reid.  Our writing journey is all about diary writing; so far we have looked at verbs in the first person, first person pronouns and we have begun to explore how an author develops the diarist's "voice" through informal language, including dialect words.

This text supports our learning in history, as we find out more about the impact of Victorian industry, innovation and values on Manchester.  The children enjoyed taking a close look at George Cruikshank's Victorian Society Beehive cartoon and they made lots of interesting suggestions about how a similar cartoon might look in 2020.

In geography we are learning about transport development in Manchester and around the UK. This week we found out how Manchester played an important role in the development of our railway system.

Our focus for RE work this half term is the Christian concept, Kingdom of God.  We will work out the teaching from some parables and learn about their influence on believers and the way they behave towards one another.  This week we mind-mapped different talents and how they are used by individuals for the good of our school community.  We found out how some famous footballers attribute and dedicate their talents to their Christian belief.

In PSHE, the Jigsaw puzzle is "Celebrating Difference", which helps the children to consider our unique talents and characteristics.  We will also examine issues of discrimination and fairness.

Remember, you can review learning in maths by visiting the White Rose website and watching the videos.  This week in Kingfisher maths group, we have learned about equivalent fractions, simplifying fractions and converting between mixed number and improper fractions.  We will be continuing to work on ordering and locating fractions on number lines next week.

I will post homework from the CGP books as an assignment on the children's Seesaw accounts.  Use the maths book QR or letter code to find it.  I will also post answers so that you work can be checked at home.  The children can then ask me in class about any difficulties they are having - we will review homework each week on Fridays.  The children will not need to bring their books into school.