Let's Celebrate!

Hello and welcome back to the Year Five Blog!

Well, we have yet another eventful week and can't wait to tell you about it so grab yourself a comfy seat, a cup of tea and maybe a cheeky slice of cake - sit back and enjoy!

School at Work morning

On Wednesday, the school threw it's doors open to parents of children who are currently in Year Four. It was lovely to see faces new and old and there was a lovely, positive vibe to the morning.

The Year Five corridor was looking particularly lovely as the display boards were packed full of the children's work. I can't believe that we have done so much in such a short space of time!

Celebration Assembly

Hopefully you have received an invitation via email to Monday's Celebration Assembly. If your child is due to receive a certificate then there should be a label in your child's Home/School diary to let you know.

The assembly will start as near to 1.10pm as possible but please be patient as we need to clear the Hall before we can set up the chairs. I warn you now, there will be a distinct aroma of 'lunch' as you enter!

We hope to see you there!

5CW Seed Dispersal homework

You may remember a couple of weeks ago that I put on the blog a picture of Mrs White showing her class how seeds are dispersed from the parents plant.

Well, the children were set a homework where they had to design their own plant, give it a name and explain how the seeds would leave the parents plant.

I think you will agree that the results are spectacular...

What a cracking homework - well done 5CW!

Helping Hands

On Monday we are going to relaunch our 'Helping Hands' appeal to support this term's Year Five Charity - 'Save the Children's Ebola Campaign'.

Mrs White will be introducing what we are intending to do in the Celebration Assembly and letters will come home on Monday. 

DMS Bake Off

Are there any budding Mary Berry's out there? Do you think you could give Paul Hollywood a run for his money? Then maybe you should enter 'The Great DMS Bake Off'?

The Tech department have decided to celebrate National Baking Week by inviting you to home bake and decorate a Halloween themed cake. 

Judging will be this Monday at lunchtime in the Food Tech room. Your cake will be judged on the decoration alone. There will be small prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

So get ready, steady, bake!

Book Group

It has been lovely to welcome Year Five to our established Book Group. We meet fortnightly on a Thursday after school until 4.30pm.

Our authors to read are:

Michael Morpurgo

Eva Ibbotson

Our next Book Group meeting is Thursday 23rd October.

Parent Consultation Evenings

We are looking forward to meeting with you for our first formal Parent Consultations of the year next week. Our focus will be on how well your child has settled in to their new lives at Dorchester Middle School.

Appointments will be held in your child's Homebase classroom and you will need to initially come in through Reception.

Timing is always of the essence when it comes to these evenings so please help us by sticking to the designated times. If additional time is needed to discuss further matters then please arrange a date and time to see your child's teacher in the near future.

So, that's it for another week. I look forward to welcoming you into school next week.

Mrs Ray

(who is gearing herself up for a VERY busy week before half term!)

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?)