Oak Class 2026-27
Welcome to the Oak Class pages where you can find out all about our Year 5 children and their learning journey.
Oak Class 2025-26
Oak Class Newsletter Summer 2026
Oak Class Newsletter Spring 2026
Oak Class Newsletter Autumn 2025
Summer 2026Yet another busy couple of terms but Oak Class have truly shown themselves to be shining their lights brightly.
We have had so many things that we have been getting ready for: preparing our artwork for the Art Gallery, weeding and planting in the garden beds outside the classroom to create a wonderful environment for the bees and butterflies as part of our courageous advocacy project and getting ready for our dance show at Brockhill Performing Arts College with Phil. We had Sports Day where the weather shone on us and Science Day where we became adventurous scientists investigating different questions.
On top of all of this, as part of our geography lessons around oceans, corals and pollution, we carried out some fieldwork during our Beach School at Hythe Beach. We had a great time burying each other in the sand and stones, creating sand sculptures, making messages to leave for a plastic free future with stone painting and of course have a paddle in the water. This was all topped off with a beach picnic and ice creams from the café – delicious.
In term 5 we looked at 'The Viewer' and discovered the mysterious worlds held within the disks of the View Master. We had our own View Master and looked through the disks of this 1970s toy. In term 6 to support our Geography unit on climate change and pollution, we looked at the book Flotsam and were able to investigate a real ‘box brownie’ camera. We created great setting descriptions around the pages of this book.
In history we discovered the wonders of Ancient Greece and all the legacies that have been left to us by this incredible time period: democracy, philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and Hippocrates, all of which still impact our world today. We ended this unit with a fun Ancient Greek day where we were able to immerse ourselves in Greek myths and tried to find our way out of the labyrinth after defeating the vicious minotaur. We created our own mythical creatures; held our own Greek Olympics and finished with a feast.
Oak Class showed themselves to be amazing ambassadors for the school on our trip to Kench Hill where they showed their love of nature through their pond dipping, bird watching and spending time with the rabbits, guinea pigs and chickens, their great skill at archery and the ability to work as a team in orienteering and shelter building. They tried their hand at culinary skills and made their own pizzas which they then had for lunch. They were so respectful and got on well as a team. This is something that they carried into their DT open lesson in term 6 showing their adults how to use a bridge and claw cutting techniques and made their own Bolognese sauce.
We were lucky enough to have Phil from Brockhill Performing Arts come in all year round to teach us the most amazing dance routines which culminated in performing on their stage.
Oak class have been learning about Holi in our music and how different colours can represent feelings. We used this unit to team up with Willow class and celebrate with our own colourful rangoli patterns using chalks and coloured rice, created bracelets and finished off with an amazing colour run.
This year has flown by with Oak Class and that is down to their hard work, positive attitudes and resilience. They are a truly wonderful class.
>Spring Term 2026
What another fantastic two terms Oak Class have had – they have all worked hard and played hard too.We continued with the whole class reading of 'Night Bus Hero' and used this as a stimuli for creating comic strips of the story so far picking out the key events, writing poetry from the point of view of the main character and writing character descriptions amongst other things.
We delved into the strange world of Shaun Tan and his selection of books from ‘Outer Suburbia’ and 'The Lost Thing' looking closely at his illustrations and how these add a different element to his stories. From here they created their own settings and sets of illustrations in the style of Shaun Tan.
History has included looking at the Tudors and learning about primary and secondary sources and propaganda through various sources - was Henry a Tyrant or a great leader? A murder mystery around a victim who turned out to be Anne Boleyn and why had Henry had her beheaded. We learnt about Elizabeth I and her royal progresses as well as looking at inventories that all Tudor households had to have in order to deduce their wealth. This all ended in a Tudor day full of dancing, writing with quill pen and ink and finishing with a banquet.
Geography has included looking at deserts and learning about our local area and desert (Dungeness) and comparing this to the Mojave desert. We used Google Earth and Maps to be able to obtain a real feel for the climate and landscape and compare this to our local area.
In science we have explored physics involving Earth and Space, through practical activities, being able to see the size of the different planets in the solar system, how day and night occurs and some rather exciting (and yummy) Oreo phases of the moon. Who knew that science was so delicious. We even had our own Planetarium set up in the hall where we were able to star gaze and learn about the constellations.
Biology has involved learning about life cycles. In week one we began by placing a basil cutting in water with some growth hormone and over the term measured the root growth each week which we then plotted onto a line graph to use some of our scientific skills; also looked at the life cycle of mammals, birds and amphibians and compared these. In week 2 we dissected flowers in order to identify each section for ourselves using magnifying glasses to really see the minute details and how these are used for reproduction.
In art we have been learning about the Great Space Race and how this influenced futuristic art during this time period. We then created our own ‘moon’ surface by creating collagraph board for printing before drawing our own futuristic pictures on top in the style of Ties Albers (these will be on display in the end of year art show).
Our DT project of bridge structures started off by experimenting with different shapes/types of bridges using card and learning how to reinforce these before moving on to spaghetti structures and testing their effectiveness by placing weights on the top. This all built up to the final part of building bridges with wood looking at strengthening and reinforcing (and a lot of fun with hacksaws).
World Book Day was full of fun and great costumes with the children being read to by different adults throughout the school and a wonderful scavenger hunt for book titles, Kahoot World Book Day quizzes and a great game of ‘Who am I’ headbands around book characters.
As part of our Agents of Change project, we created Easter cards for the residence at St Margaret’s Nursing Home to continue our link with our local community and for our Linking Network school, Falcon class continuing looking at acts of kindness.
The children have worked extremely hard again this past term and have been a delight to teach and learn from as well as being keen to learn. Thank you to them and to you for all your continued support. Have a wonderful Easter break.
Autumn 2025Oak Class have all been working extremely hard this year and have settled back in to the school routine brilliantly. I am really enjoying teaching them as they are such enthusiastic learners with great empathy for each other, making them a pure pleasure to teach.
We have learnt lots already and had some fascinating topics covered. In 1erm 1, we read the wonderful story of Kensuke’s Kingdom where the children wrote from different perspectives and created some wonderful Haiku Japanese poetry which they loved. We spent lots of time covering the Vikings and had an exciting Viking forest school and Viking experience day, creating Kennings poetry, runes and a Viking board game (with some amazing outfits from all).
This term in geography, we have been learning about the Alps and comparing it to our local area including a private tour around Lympne Castle. We have looked at OS maps and symbols and tourist attractions in Hythe, Folkestone, Dymchurch and Lympne and comparting these to those in the Alps. We were lucky enough to have a private tour of Lympne Castle which is a great example of a tourist attraction.
In science, we have carried out lots of investigations around properties of materials and changing states of matter: melting chocolate for reversible changes, sieving for gold, filtering muddy water and testing lux levels for the transparency of materials.
In art, the children used mixed media to alter photographs and portraits of themselves and using Viking pictures. In DT the children worked hard on their gingerbread designs and making their gingerbread houses looking carefully at ways to reinforce their structures.
The children have particularly been enthused by our book ‘Tuesday’ by David Weisner from which they created reports and Newspaper articles and great prediction comic strips.
As part of their Agents of Change projects, the children organised Samaritans Operation Christmas Child Appeal. They collected much needed items for their shoeboxes and secured a local business donation to cover the postage of these as well as being able to buy some more items. They also raised their own funds through bake sales, making jewellery to sell and boot fairs to raise money for the postage. They then spent the day wrapping the boxes, filling them and creating Christmas cards and greetings to be sent to children in Russia. They worked as a wonderful team – so proud of you Oak Class. Secondly, we made Christmas cards with letters inside for the residents of St Margaret’s Nursing Home. They sang carols and decorated ornaments with the residents to hang on the lounge Christmas tree. They showed themselves to be real Agents of Change as the room was filled with smiling faces. 
The children have worked extremely hard this past term. They have learnt new things and revised past learning, as well as writing lots! I really noticed a difference in progress this term with such a positive attitude towards their learning and wonderful respect being shown. I cannot wait to see what the next term brings.
I hope you all have a super Christmas break and I can’t wait to see you all in January.
Merry Christmas