Wise Owls 2018 - 2019

Mr Peetoom

Welcome to Wise Owls

My name is Mr. Peetoom and I am the teacher of Years 5 and 6. In Wise Owls, we strive to achieve the balance of having high expectations for all children and managing to have a lot of fun along the way:

Fun activities outside the classroom to enhance the curriculum
Individual attention in a small-class setting
Positive learning environment for your child
Healthy lifestyles promoted through physical activity and sports
Age range - Years 5 and 6
Class Size - 27
Teacher - Mr. Peetoom
Teaching Assistants - Mrs. Showering & Mrs. Jones (& volunteer T.A. - Mrs. Hughes)

Class News

Our current topic in the 1st half of the Autumn Term is 'Survival!' One of the main themes is looking at how plants and animals adapt to survive in their environment and the processes which lead to the evolution of different species. We will learn about mapping and do an overview of basic facts of the world's physical geography. Our class novel is ‘Varjak Paw’ by S.F. Said and we will use the book as a theme for reading and writing. The children will also study some biographical writing later in the half-term. We are doing some extra sentence work during the Autumn term to equip the children with a broader repetoire of sentence types to use. In Religious Education, we are exploring the idea of 'Life as a Journey'. We have already visited St. James' Church to help to tidy up the churchyard. For Design & Technology, the children are exploring how to represent 'blocky' shapes as drawings that show front & side elevations and plans. They will be using an online 3D design programme soon to prepare for the arrival of a 3D printer in the Spring term. In the wider curriculum, our children continue to enjoy fantastic Forest Schools sessions every Tuesday. Our two sports coaches this half-term are teaching the children invasion games. The children are also having a 2-week swimming assessment to ascertain who will be having swimming lessons for the rest of the term. Wise Owls continue to do their daily 15-minutes exercise. We usually alternate between the Born To Move dance routines and skipping, and we sometimes run the Daily Mile if the weather is fine. Our Friday Health & Wellbeing sessions will start on September 21st with another coach from the partnership - these will be a mix of physical and classroom learning.

After-school sports club this half-term is netball on Wednesdays and tag-rugby club on Thursdays. I am also dedicating more lunch-times to training for football, netball & tag-rugby.

Homework

Every child is expected to read at home 4 times per week, with page numbers and a signature in their reading record EVERY TIME they read. As your child gets older, please encourage them to read for more sustained periods - a chapter/10 pages each night for example. Reading records are checked every Monday morning. Wise Owls Reading Challenge was a great success last year with the children reading a broad diet of some of the best children's fiction available. New books have been purchased again and the new Reading Challenge will launch later in September - watch this space!

The children have a short maths or grammar homework on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This should take about 10 minutes to complete. Weekend homework this term will usually be a writing or reading comprehension task.