Pupils: Years 5 & 6
Teachers: Mrs Rebecca Buckland and Mrs Jane Collard
Long Term Topic Plan 2022 – 2023
Class blog
Teachers & Teaching Assistants
The Mountains Classroom contains the Year 5 and Year 6 children and is taught by Mrs Collard on a Monday and Tuesday afternoon, and Mrs Buckland teaches the class the rest of the week. The class has a full-time teaching assistant, Mrs Clements, attached to it. She is able to run various support groups and provide individual support wherever it is required. Mr Jones also works in Mountains Class and support children with interventions.
General Information
The week is timetabled to provide maths and English every morning with other subjects in the afternoons. There is a two year cycle of different topics in place. The children are very fortunate in that they are taught to play a brass instrument as part of the class band. Children in this class go swimming during the year if they still need to work on meeting the national standard.
Homework is seen as a critical part of the learning in the Mountains Class. Homework is project based, and clearly linked to classroom learning. Children have a weekly times table recall homework using Timestables Rockstars – immediate recall of times tables is important for many areas of learning, so maintaining fluent recall of these facts is important. Children have a weekly padlet homework where they record the book they are reading that week and answer 3 questions about it. Finally, children have a weekly homework to support their procedural fluency in maths – so bring home a set of questions based on their arithmetic learning for that week. In addition, children have a termly project based homework which links to the terms topic work e.g. make a model for a class museum, write some information pages, create a display for an art gallery etc.
The children’s last two years in school is seen as a very important time for developing as individuals and children are encouraged to develop socially, personally and academically as important preparation for their future success. As part of this, children may be given parental permission to walk to and from school/the bus stop alone.
As a church school we place a strong focus on the development of knowledge of the Christian faith and the appreciation and understanding of other religions. The children take turns to say a prayer from the class prayer book before lunch and say another prayer together at the end of the school day.
The Mountains Class follows the whole school behaviour policy; children are rewarded for excellent work or effort with house points, value stars, maths or writing awards (written by Miss Hastings) or Gold Book awards. Day to day, children might receive positive postcards to highlight particular moments of achievement in school whether academic or personal.
The children in the Mountains Class know that they are expected to work very hard to achieve their best and must also provide excellent role models to the rest of the school. They are encouraged to lead and support in areas such as the School Council, peer mediation duties and the Eco-School Committee. Children from Year 6 also lead the school House System.
The children are fortunate enough to go on many trips throughout the year and are expected to represent the school with the highest standards of behaviour. We run a residential visit to Dorset on alternate years provides exciting opportunities to develop topic work in outdoor settings.
Mountains Class children are given many responsibilities throughout the school. Jobs they do include answering the office telephone, administrative roles and organising and helping to run assemblies. The children enjoy these responsibilities and the active role they play in supporting the school community
