Whoop whoop! Below is the link to our leaver's videos saved in a google drive file (I didn't fully understand what that was until a few days ago). I hope you enjoy them (despite the odd bit of jumpy music and some clear evidence that I'm not familiar with the alphabet). PLEASE DO NOT SHARE ANY OF THE CONTENTS OF THESE VIDEOS ON SOCIAL MEDIA/OTHER WEBSITES, FOR SAFEGUARDING REASONS. 

Monday 20th July- You task today is to watch these, be really really proud of yourselves and be excited about next year!

MISS CARTER'S MUSINGS RE LEAVER'S ARRANGEMENTS

Hello everyone. As we reach the 'two and a bit weeks to go' mark, our thoughts turn to marking the children leaving primary school, in what is a very unusual year! My plans are as follows:

1) A leavers 'assembly' comprising at the very least photos and hopefully also video/sound clips. This will be available via the class webpage when finished and I hope to be able to give it to you on CD for permanence in September. Unfortunately current guidance does not allow us to hold even an outdoor 'live' assembly at the moment so this is the next best thing. Next week's work in English will focus on this.

2) A leavers tea party in September, government guidance permitting. 

3) Hoodies will arrive by the end of term for those who have ordered them. We will be in touch about arrangements for delivery/collection as soon as we can.

4) Yearbooks. These are scheduled for delivery on 17th July (This date was booked with the company months ago before we realised the year in school would end earlier than this). I will be in touch about arrangements for collection/delivery as with the hoodies.

5) I will make sure I am in (well outside in some cases!) school to say goodbye to each school group on their last day.

Thank you for all of your help with all things Yearbook. 

Miss C

Hello Everyone. 

As I write, I realise there are only 3 weeks remaining of your time with us. Some of you will be returning to school at the end of this week, or the start of the following week, expanding our 'bubbles' still further. It will be so lovely to see you. We have lots to do in terms of helping you to reflect on your time at Dormansland, get used to being back in school and prepare for the transition to secondary school, plus have some end of term fun in a socially-distanced manner. I'm still thinking, but we will do what we can! This week may well be the last 'proper' week of English and maths lessons, as the list of things to do is ever-growing. Today, I have managed to finish the yearbook and had it checked by members of staff before sending it off to be printed. It looks great and reflects the incredible journey you've had over the last 7 years. Lots to do. Any ideas/requests etc please email me- this time is about YOU and I'm keen to get it right for you. 

Miss Carter

P.S. You reception photos are sooooooo cute!

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all ok and prepared for some very hot weather this week. It has been great to hear how those of you both at home and in school have been getting on with our Smart Movers lessons. Please do try to complete these sessions- if possible by talking to another child from the class or with an adult- as they will really help you to prepare for the BIG MOVE in September. Thank you for sending in your yearbook contributions- the yearbook is almost complete and off for final checks. Your hoodies are also on their way and I'll be in touch soon about ideas for a final video assembly. Keep on with your learning at home as this is another way to prepare for September. If you've read the newsletter, you'll see the incredible news that Year 6 are (were on Thursday anyway) 25th in the ENTIRE WORLD for spelling shed scores. Please make the most of this resource and keep the massive scores coming. You'll only have access for a few more weeks. But a big well done and a thank you to Zahir for letting me know about the league- I don't have access to the world league so it's really helpful to be kept in the loop! Have a great week everyone. Miss C x

Summer 2 week 3

Hello everyone! I hope you are all well and have enjoyed the sun over the weekend. This week, I'm quite excited about our learning. I've found the BEST film for us to use in our English lessons and the maths really pushes us on into the world of percentages. I'm also going to start providing information/lessons for you to start working on your Smart Movers book- these are focused on the transition to secondary school and will really help you to prepare. You should have received on either hand-delivered or in the post (Those in school have one in your trays). Please try to do these lessons as they will be really helpful.

Keep doing some learning every day and please keep sending me what you've been up to-I love to see it and I hope you will find the encouragement you get back helpful.

There are still a few of you who have not returned the 4 photos (2 if your child is in school) and questionnaire answer.

You should have sent me:

1) an individual photo from reception

2) A photo of a lockdown activity- for our 'lockdown lunacy' page

3) A headshot in school uniform

4) a relaxed pose in school uniform

5) The answers to 2 yearbook profile questions- the document is saved on Monday 1st June

Without these items, I simply cannot put the year book together. It is a long, slow process, which can be sped up by having the right photos at the right time. Please help! 

SMART MOVERS transition to secondary school  work will start this week. See the daily outline for details.

Have a great week. Miss Carter

Summer 2 Week 2

I hope you are all well and have had a good weekend despite the rain. It has been great hearing about and seeing what you've been up to and I was delighted that we are again CHAMPIONS in spelling shed this week (and maths shed!). Keep going- you're doing really well and it's really important that you keep doing some learning to keep your brain active. There will be a few more tasks related to the Yearbook over the next couple of weeks. Those in school, we'll do them in school. Those at home, I will send clear instructions.Please try to get these done by the deadline set.

The first task for those of you at home is to take 2 pictures of you in uniform (or as close to uniform as you can get in these I've-grown-but-the-shops-are-shut times!)- one HEADSHOT and one RELAXED but sensible pose (e.g. on a bench, sitting in garden etc). Please send these to me by Monday 15th June. 

Have a great week. Miss Carter

Monday 1st June

Welcome back to you final half term at Dormansland. This term, we'll be carrying on with our learning in a similar way to last half term, with daily English and maths and weekly topics. But we will also be putting our minds to preparing you for secondary school, the yearbook, some kind of digital end of year celebration and thinking back over your time at Primary School. This is a really special time for pupils in Year 6 and I could never have dreamt the year would change in the way it has. We feel it's really important to recognise the 'moment' and help you to leave us well (if that makes sense). If any parents are particularly skilful in the land of making videos (especially editing skills- putting bits of videos together) I'd love to hear from you. I'm a little technologically-challenged but am willing to try. 

Thank you all so much for your help with all things yearbook. Please can I have any outstanding photos (reception and lockdown lunacy) and answers to two of the selection of questions for your yearbook profile page (see document below) by Monday 8th June. 

With best wishes,

Miss Carter (and Luna, who is currently trying to sit on the keyboard)

Monday 18th May

Welcome to a new week. I'm told it's Monday- although I'm never quite sure at the moment! Thank you so much for sending in photos for the yearbook. We are making excellent progress with this, thanks to so many of you sending in photos, and Mrs Higginson! I have managed to collect quite a few photos of you all over the years from a lengthy search on the school computer system. So cute! You haven't changed a bit! (actually you have!) Keep the photos coming (instructions in purple lettering further down this page) and watch out for information this week about how to pay for your hoodies. If the school computer system is working tomorrow, I will send you the questionnaire for the profile pages of the yearbook. Choose 2 questions and answer them in a sentence or just a few words.

In today's section, there's a sneak preview to Friday's maths, which has a cooking focus. I'm hoping this will give you time to gather ingredients. You can do a bitesize lesson instead on Friday, or choose a different recipe, but I thought it best to warn you...

Take care, Miss Carter

STOP PRESS

Mrs Higginson and I are starting to think about the Yearbook for you guys. We are going to get started on this next week. So we have 2 requests: 

1) Please can you email me a picture of you around reception age- if possible a 'first day of school' photo (regardless of what school you went to) or a photo of you around this age or as near to this as you can. The cuter the better!

2) We wanted to recognise the lockdown as part of your school experience, so we come up with the 'Lockdown Lunacy' photo challenge. Please take a photo of yourself (and just you) doing/wearing something silly, or perhaps normal but something you've done quite a bit during lockdown. Anything goes really- it's your yearbook!

We plan on having all the usual pages in the yearbook but please let us know if you have any brilliant ideas for the pages.

Have fun- any questions, please ask.

my email: jcarter@dormansland.surrey.sch.uk

Wednesday 29th April

Hello everyone! I've uploaded the daily sheet and resources for the next 2 days, as I'm in school for the rest of the week, so wanted to get ahead. I hope you're all OK. I hope to ring many of you over the next 2 days. This is absolutely NOT to check how much work you've done (although if I can help with any of that in any way, I'll do my best) but purely to check how you are doing and offer support. Remember that we're all doing something here that was/is totally unexpected and it's really hard. We are all having good days and bad days. So it's perfectly fine and normal to have days when it's harder to focus and we don't feel motivated. I am a fully paid-up member of the 'do what you can' club! It's been lovely seeing what you've been up to. Thursday's English is a little bit 'off piste' but topical and uplifting I hope. 

Miss Carter

P.S. Today's Luna-related battles have been: her stealing my lunch, her bashing me with her paws cos she wants more food, her yelling at me by the cat flap (I think wanting me to stop it raining) but also her being such a good lockdown companion! 

Hi all,

It has come to my attention that I wrote a lot of numerically bizarre nonsense on today's outline for English. I do really know the difference between 99 and 100, and which day it is. Honest. Sorry everyone xxx

HOME LEARNING MONDAY 20TH APRIL

From now on I will be uploading learning daily on the website for you to do. Please try to do something every day, but remember to take time to spend with others at home, time to be outdoors and to take time to relax. Feel free to send me anything you have completed, particularly English and Topic learning.

We have decided to have a different whole school topic each week and this week's topic is 'Food Glorious Food'. Open the word document below for today's learning and under that, you'll find some helpful resources.

Hello everyone! I hope you've managed to enjoy the beautiful weather over the Easter holidays and are coping OK with this strange. I live near some beautiful lakes and have been there most days and I've noticed that the river/lakes look cleaner than ever. Nature seems to be thriving! Luna is also loving having me around every day and is insisting on sunbathing- I've told her it's the shade or suncream (True) but she's not listening. Those of you with cats- please ask them to tell her! Putting suncream on a cat single-handedly is not in my skill set!

On Monday (20th), you'll find some English/maths lessons for you plus links to whole family topics and a few other bits and bobs. In reality, these will probably be uploaded the night before. Use your green book wherever possible to record your learning and please send it to me- I love to see what you've been doing and it helps me to plan ahead for us.I will also let you know which days/times I'll be available for online help. 

Next term, my plan was to read you an amazing book called 'The Wind Singer' by William Nicholson. It's such a brilliant book! I propose that as many of us as would like to still read this. It's£2.99 on kindle. If you're interested in reading this with me, as a class book group,  please let me know via email and we can aim to start next term. It's not going to be lots of work. Just enjoying a book together. My plan is to set you a bit to read, share our ideas about a couple of discussion questions and then I'll share everyone's ideas within the group via email or class page- without using your names or sharing your email addresses, of course!. If you'd like to join in, please let me know my Friday 24th April at the latest and find a copy of the book.

Dear All,

In relation to the above, I’ve got 2 suggestions. Actually, make that 3.

1. We need to finish reading the explorer. My copy is at school but I will retrieve next week when I'm in (if allowed in the classroom) and then share by some techy method. 

      2. The Arrival. Unfinished, but this is easy to sort out. We were part way through part 3. Below this message is the youtube link to the entire book flipthrough. We're at about 10:30. Alternatively you can use the videos we were using in class- link is belwo. You might want to turn the sound down.

activities to try:

- Write the story of one of the people the man met in the city. You could do this as a diary, cartoon strip, story, newspaper article.

- Write the story of one of the other people emigrating to the city- why did they leave their home? What happened on the jounrey? What ha it been like in the city?

- On the sheet I sent home, I suggested writing the 'end' story of the man and his wife and child reuniting. This would be a fantastic feel-good story to write now. 

With everything you write/draw, feel free to send to me via email.

3. Next term, my plan was to read you an amazing book called 'The Wind Singer' by William Nicholson. It's such a brilliant book! I propose that as many of us as would like to still read this. It's£2.99 on kindle. If you're interested in reading this with me, as a class book group or similar, please let me know via email and we can aim to start next term.

Finally, I know SATs are cancelled  BUT the things in your revision books are still great learning and will help you to prepare for September. Please try to do something every day. If anyone logs on to spelling/maths shed, let me know- I haven't managed to get to grips with it yet myself but I will.

Stay safe, observe social distancing but keep in touch with those you love. Someone said to me the other day- socially distant but not emotionally distant. JC 

February 2020

Another new half term! This one is quite an exciting one, with our racecourse trip, World Book Day and our PGL trip to Bawdsey Manor, alongside all of our normal lessons.

Revision club continues on a Wednesday and this week, we will turn our attention back to maths. 

In our maths lessons in class, we will be working on decimals before returning to percentages and looking at equivalence between fractions, decimals and percentages. In English, alongside some focused grammar work in preparation for SATs, we are starting to use this amazing book as a focus for our learning.

Monday 13th January

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Despite the shock to the system and some lingering tiredness from New Year, the children have begun the term well and are eager to learn. This term's topic is another new one and a Carter invention: THE GREATEST. The majority of our time will focus on great civilisations- The Maya,  great inventions and inventors; Evolution and adaptation in science and fictional civilisations in our English lessons. The topic web is below this message as well as a homework sheet. The homework grid provides a variety of activities across the subjects, but in addition to this, the children will be encouraged to regularly use their revision books. Additionally, with SATs in mind, revision club starts from February on a Wednesday afternoon.

Also to note this term: Our outdoor PE session has moved from a Wednesday afternoon to a Friday. Please ensure that PE kit is in school every day.

All systems go! Miss Carter

This week is going to be an exciting one. We are off on our trip to Bough Beech on Wednesday and SES water are coming in tomorrow to prepare us for the trip and teach us about the amazing world of water. We continue our work in English based on the book 'The Explorer' by Katherine Rundell and write letters in role as one of the children. In maths, we are looking at long division, firstly by factorising using bar models, then using more traditional methods. We will continue looking at changing states in science and begin to find out about the dangers facing the rainforest in our topic lessons.

Under this email are this week's spellings. I will print them and distribute them tomorrow, but the internet issues we had today meant I couldn't do this today.

There has been some wonderful home learning completed by the children- please keep this coming! 

Have a great week, 

Miss C

Monday 7th October

Here we are in week 6! I can't quite believe how quickly this term is going. The class are doing extremely well. I've had lots of fantastic comments about how well they are doing their jobs around school and about what good role models they are being to others. They are also working very hard on their learning in class and I've been impressed by their approach to home learning and the new reading stars- the fruits of which are making me laugh a lot. Well done everyone!

We continue our work on Floodland in English. Last week, they wrote and delivered persuasive speeches in role as Dooby from the book. These were powerful, detailed and well-structured- the latter being the biggest challenge. This week, we turn our attention to poetry, thanks to the poetic utterances of William, the only adult in the story, who has some rather mad moments. (Our own William finds this quite amusing) The class have also written diary entries in role as Zoe, the main character. Their second diary entries were significantly better than their first and the class were very proud of this improvement. Rightly so. We really are loving this book and  not a day goes by without someone asking if we can read more. 

In maths, we have move on to looking at the  four operations. This week- addition and subtraction and related problem-solving activitie, including complex multi step problems. We will be taking our first times tables test on Wednesday using an updated, harder 'gruesome grid'. The idea is to complete as much as possible in 5 mins- in order to push them to become really fluent in this core area.

Our topic work continues with a look at materials in science and some introductory work on the water-based paintings of Monet. We will also be thinking about how people use rivers.

See below for photos of our recent exploits!

Friday 13th September

We did it! Our first full week back. There was genuine tiredness from both children and adults today, but it's been a great week. We've begun work on our fabulous new book in English- Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick. We love it! In maths, we've been working on a variety of puzzles and problems in order to think about our Maths Mindset. We've been considering ideas like:

Mistakes are powerful

Maths is creative

Everyone can learn maths to a high level

It's been a fantastic way to start the maths year.

We've also begun our topic- Water, Water everywhere, by looking at the journey of a river, world rivers and a piece of music based on a river- Vltava by Smetana.

Next week, the children will receive their new reading records and spellings, alongside the new spelling bee words and accompanying letter. They will each week be given a subset of the spelling bee words to learn, so that they've all been worked on before the spelling bee itself. We will also be revising key spelling rules previously learnt in lesson time each week. 

I've been so impressed with the class this week and was especially delighted to see how many of them ran for the role of house captain/vice captain. They're also doing brilliantly with their new jobs around the school.

Welcome back Sapphire Class! It was great to see you back in school today. Well done for working hard and really thinking today. I'm very much looking forward to teaching you again and am excited about how you will take on the extra challenges, responsibilities and rewards that will come your way this year. 

Please make sure that you have the following items in school every day: ONE fully stocked pencil case- the most important item being a whiteboard pen (or two) , LABELLED P.E. kit, full school uniform including appropriate footwear, a reading book if you'd like to bring one from home, water bottle etc. Our cloakroom space is quite limited, so please only bring what you actually need. Being organised is important for a number of reasons but will also help to prepare you for the move to secondary school!

On Monday I will distribute the Welcome Letter, with essential information for the year ahead. I will also outline expectations regarding reading/spellings/times tables. Alongside this, I will send out the Home Learning grid, with suggestions for additional learning you can undertake at home.

One of the first 'Year sixy' things I would like you to think about is whether or not you would like to apply for the role of House Captain. This role is open to all of you,irrespective of whether you are already a member of the Junior Leadership Team or plan on being a behaviour ambassador. Elections will be held in house groups on Friday, 13th September.  If you would like to take on this role, you need to prepare a short speech to present to the school. I will talk this through with you, but you'll need to write the speeches in your own time. I do hope many of you will make the effort to take part.

Excited  about the year ahead!!

Miss Carter