Maple Class
In Maple class, we are Topcliffe’s Year 5 and 6 learners! Our teacher this year is Miss Howard, with the support of Mrs Parsons and Mrs Raddon, who is undertaking her own teacher training this year.
We have some extra special responsibilities in Year 5/6 that help to build us as good citizens. We get to be ‘spiritual leaders’ where we get to take over weekly collective worships, bringing Bible stories to life and exploring how they link to our core Christian values. Our Year 6 children also get the extra special responsibility of being buddies to our new Reception starters, which is such an important role in helping them to settle into our school and have a 'big friend' they can turn to, who can help to guide them.
We approach our learning through a variety of interesting curriculum units, that follow the National Curriculum – we have really thrown ourselves into this already, starting with 'The Romans - the good, the bad and the ugly', looking at their different influences, as well as the legacy they have left that still impacts our lives today ! We focus on embedding our new-found knowledge through a range of different writing opportunities and regular knowledge quizzes to keep us on our toes! We really enjoy using a range of high quality texts to gain even more in-depth insight into our topics. We spend a lot of time learning new vocabulary and practising features of grammar, before creating our own writing based on what we have learnt. We love to publish our work and share it with everyone. Every half term we also have an RE week, where we immerse ourselves in an RE unit and do all of our learning for that week through it! This is so useful in helping us to gain more depth and understanding of Christianity, as well as other religions, which helps us to appreciate the similarities and differences between them.
In Maths, we enjoy choosing our chilli challenges to ensure that we practise the different maths skills, as well as always having a go at reasoning and problem-solving questions. We are able to choose the level of challenge we would like, depending on the task – we do love to challenge ourselves and try our hardest! Every morning, we have a dedicated 'Maths Blast' session – here, we get to practise the full range of maths skills we have been taught, in order to keep them sharp throughout the year, then our main lessons are more focused on individual areas of maths.
In the afternoons, we get to focus on our wider curriculum subjects. Miss Howard loves to get us all speaking French, as well as letting our creative juices flow through Art and Music lessons. We have weekly time for PSHCE lessons alongside philosophy (P4C), as we explore our emotions, discuss bigger concepts and start to learn more about each other and the world around us. We are lucky enough to also have a range of PE specialists working with us, to help to develop our skills and keep us in top shape, alongside half-termly blocks of forest school sessions, led by our specialist, Mr Walkington.
Then, when all is said and done, we end the day catching up with Newsround and discussing the events happening in the world, before enjoying a few chapters of a class novel that we love to just sit back, listen to and enjoy!
We are so lucky to be enjoying all of these learning opportunities and are constantly striving to be the best that we can be!
Click here for a copy of Maple Class Welcome Letter.
