Autumn has arrived...

Hello and welcome back to the Year Five Blog

Well, Autumn has certainly arrived hasn't it? We have had a few of the dreaded 'Wet Plays' and coats have been making an appearance on the usually weather-hardy Year Five children. 

Lots to report so I'll crack on...

Football girls

On Monday, the Year Five Girl's Footballers played an impromptu match against St Mary's, Puddletown at DMS.

The girls won 4 - 0 and, according to Miss Bacon, played brilliantly.

The girls who were involved were: Teagan, Amelia, Isobel, Cerys, Jameila, Jasmine, Phoebe , Isla, Jessica and Phoebe. (Yes, there were two Phoebes in the team!)

Well done girls and thank you for being such a credit to our school. 

Harvest Festival contributions

Mr Chadwick has been on a personal crusade to get as many Harvest Contributions into school as possible. Judging by this photograph, he has led a very successful campaign!

A huge thank to all of you who have contributed, your generosity is overwhelming!

Damers and Prince of Wales trips

In our recent English lessons, the children have been writing their own stories based on Jill Murphy's classic children's book, 'On the Way Home'.

Instead of making up reasons why the character Claire had hurt her knee (some of them are spectacular!), the children wrote excuses as to why Claire had forgotten her homework.

As the stories were written with the younger reader in mind, we asked Damers and Prince of Wales First Schools if we could read them to their young children. They were very excited about welcoming our Year Fives into school so, on Thursday (in between torrential rain showers) we set off to the two schools.

Three classes (5AD, 5KD and 5CW) visited the Year One children at Damers and two classes (5GR and 5PC) headed off to read to the children in Reception and Year One. 

It was an incredibly successful morning and the first school children loved the stories. One child at Prince of Wales asked if we could come back when we had written another story! 

I would like to thank all the adults from DMS who helped make this happen, the parents who accompanied us and the first schools for being so accommodating and welcoming.  

Photographic evidence to be provided in next week's Blog!

Year Five's Poetree

At the beginning of the Year Five corridor sits a tree. It is no ordinary tree, it is a Poetree!

Every week it has a new poet and poem of the week - please do have a look!

Year Five Parent Consultation Evenings

Hopefully, you would have received a letter inviting you to attend your child's first Dorchester Middle School Parent's Evening.

These will be held on:

Monday 20th October 4 - 6pm

Wednesday 22nd October 5 - 7pm

Please complete the reply slip as soon as possible and return to your child's Homebase Tutor.

We do hope that you will be able to attend. 

Before School

Please could we remind the Year Five children to stay in the lower playground in the mornings. This will enable children to be able to line up quickly when the bell goes and to be supervised by the adults on duty.

So, that's it for another week. I hope you all have a good week and I look forward to seeing you back here next week.

Please don't forget to comment on the Blog - I had NO comments last week which made me spiral back into sadness!!!

Mrs Ray

(who has reluctantly turned on the heating in her house!)

A hive of activity!

Hello and welcome back to the Year Five Blog

I hope you have all had a good week. We certainly have in Year Five - our corridor has been a hive of activity since I last posted a blog!

I also wanted to say a huge 'Thank You' to the brave souls who have left a comment at the bottom of the posts - it is greatly appreciated. I am so sorry if I haven't signed all the credits that are due to various people, please remind me and I will endeavour to sign them for you.

So, what am I going to share with you this week?

Football Success

 Mr Roberts was a very proud Head of Department when over 170 children took part in various sporting activities in school on Wednesday.

The Year Five team beat St Osmund's Middle School 1 - 0. The goal was scored by Bailey Lovell.

Well done boys, what a tremendous achievement!

Buddens Animal Study Homework

Well what can I say? What an incredible number of original, creative and beautifully presented homeworks.

I decided to go out and about and take photographs of a few of them so I could show them off to you!

As you will see below, the quality of some of this work is outstanding - a huge thank you to the parents and carers who helped the children access such terrific resources.

I haven't been able to include every single one but will put a few more pictures on here next week.

So, what am I waiting for?!

I have to say that 5GR did particularly well on the home baking front! Thanks to this homework, we have consumed Butterfly Biscuits, Dragonfly Cakes and a delicious Coffee and Walnut Cake with a huge squirrel on top! Yummy!

Well done Year Five - you must be very proud of yourselves!

Follow up work - the sequel

Now that we have been to Buddens, as mentioned last week, we have been doing a lot of follow up work.

One of our tasks has been to research our chosen 'Hot Spots' (things of particular interest) so that we can include them on our maps.

We have been lucky enough to use the ipads for our research...

It's all starting to take shape!

Seed Dispersal

One of the areas we cover in our Ecology Topic is seed dispersal. Mrs White went for a beautiful walk one afternoon and picked up lots of fantastic examples of how seeds are dispersed from the parent plant.

Here she is showing her class her finds...

Homework

We had quite a few children miss their Golden Time this week because their homework (predominantly Maths) was not handed in on time.

A lot of children are simply forgetting to take their homework home! Please could we do a 'united nag' on that one?! Thank you!

So, that's it for this week. I hope that you all have a good week. Year Five are particularly excited as we are out and about again but this time with an English focus.

More on that next week!

Mrs Ray

(who is practising reading 'On the Way Home' by Jill Murphy to her six year old daughter, I wonder why?) 

If you go down to the woods today...

Hello and welcome back to the Year Five Blog!

What a fantastic week! I can't begin to tell you how much we enjoyed our trips to Buddens this week - the blog is full of pictures to give you an idea of what we got up to when we were there.

I believe that a few people have been experiencing problems when trying to leave a comment at the end of the Blog. According to ICT Support, you need to have a Google Account in order to do this. Please don't let that put you off - it's really easy to do. Well, let's put it this way, if I can do, you can definitely do it!

Right, now that's out of the way, let's get cracking!

Buddens

To say that we enjoyed this trip would be the understatement of the year! The sun shone (well, for the majority of Year Five!) and Buddens was as beautiful as ever. We are so lucky to have access to such a stunning part of Dorset and to have it all to ourselves is such a treat!

5KD, 5CW and 5PC went on the Monday:

Thank you to Mrs Lister, Ms Seymour and Miss Enever for the fabulous photographs!

5GR and 5AD went on the Wednesday:

It really was a glorious day! Thank you to all the parents who gave up their time to come along with us - your help is greatly appreciated as without you, these trips could not happen.

Here's a question for you...

Mrs Daniel wears a pedometer to school every day. Do you know what that is?

Basically, it is a little device that tells you how many steps you take in a day.

How many steps do you think Mrs Daniel took on Wednesday?

Write your answers in the Comments section below. The person who guesses the nearest number of steps gets a prize...!!!

Buddens - the follow up

So, we've been to Buddens - what now?

Well, the amount of work that we will do now based on that trip is impressive to say the least.

The day after all the classes returned, a recount of our trip was written.

In 5GR we wrote our recount surrounded by all our Buddens goodies.

There is so much more to do! We have maps to create, pictures to draw and research on our Hot Spots to conduct - fantastic! The display boards in the Year Five corridor will soon be packed with lots of goodies for you to feast your eyes upon - why not come and have a look on one of the Drop In Sessions held on Mondays after school. I'll let you know via the Blog when the displays are ready for viewing.

Golden Time

Please remember that to receive Golden Time the children need to make sure:

1. They have had their Home School Diary signed from the previous week

2. There is at least one weekly entry in their Reading Record and signed by an adult

3. All Homework is handed in on time

4. They have not had any detentions.

We are getting there - slowly but surely!

So, that's it for another week. I will look forward to reporting back on the wonderful world of Year Five next weekend!

Have a good week everyone!

Mrs Ray

(who was so tired on Wednesday that she fell asleep before the end of the Great British Bake Off - unheard of!)