The children in Sycamore class have been working hard on end of year assessments this week. Considering the amount of time they have spent out of school and the lack of practice for doing tests such as these, they did very well. I will use their scores to inform my teacher assessments on the reports which will be sent out at the end of term. They applied themselves really well and have worked very hard this week.
As well as that, the children have: been singing, used variables in football themed coding games(It's coming home), made models of microbes in science, learnt some French verbs, competed for house points in sports events and this afternoon, have learnt about positive relationships in RSE. I don't know how we fit it all in!! As you know, the taster days at Okehampton college have been cancelled due to ongoing Covid restrictions - I hope you were able to attend the virtual meeting on Thursday evening. There will be online assemblies on the taster days which we will hold in class, the first being on Wednesday next week. Children might want to think about questions they would like to ask the Year 7 children who will be part of the assembly. This week, we have also been practising a leavers' song as well as a song to say farewell to Mrs Mathews. Sadly we will not be able to invite parents to leavers' assembly but we will record the bits we would have performed live. The plan is to livestream the awards part of the assembly. This will be on the last day of term - time to be confirmed. Today, during assembly, Miss Penny announced that for the first time in the history of North Tawton Primary school, we will be holding a Graduation Ball. This will happen on Wednesday 21st July from 6pm to 8pm in the school hall. The children have today come home with their invitations. This event is for our Year Sixes only and will be an exciting and memorable occasion. Have a lovely weekend. This week, the children have been reflecting on their time here at North Tawton Primary School in order to write a piece for the leavers' book that they will all receive at the end of term. This book is once again being paid for by the FONTS so thank you once again to the small team of volunteers that raise money to make things like this possible.
We are now in the last few weeks of term and we are starting to look forward to our transition to secondary school. We had a visit from Mrs Hachipuka, the current head of Year 7, who answered the children's questions which were mostly food and playtime related!! She encouraged them to look at their website, particularly the transition information: https://www.okehamptoncollege.devon.sch.uk/year-6-transition-information.html In our RSE lesson today, we thought a bit more about the changes ahead and the responsibilities that children will soon have and the increased independence they will have. We have been looking back on our learning over the last year, and indeed the whole of primary school, in preparation for the end of year assessments we will do next week. I have set revision homework on fractions and reading comprehension using the end of section questions in the study guide. Miss Ruby has really enjoyed teaching Sycamore Class this week. She was impressed with their behaviour at swimming and impressed with their maturity during their DT lesson using tools to make their playground models. (See the pictures in the gallery) The class shared our new Team Points song which was written by Kenzie and performed brilliantly after only one day's practice. The video and words are attached below. Until next week... Good afternoon everyone. It has been an active week for year 6 this week. They went swimming on Tuesday - they all really enjoyed this and were really well behaved and a credit to the school. Miss Penny was impressed with their confidence in the water. Thank you to Miss Ruby and Mrs Robins for taking them. We also had Quad Kids on Thursday (an inter-schools athletics activity run by OCRA) and then our normal PE lesson today with Saints. We also managed to fit in: finishing our story chapters, maths lessons on angles + an arithmetic test, investigating living things in science, guided reading, spelling, French, RSE(puberty) and RE!!!! They really are working hard. Our RSE lesson today was about puberty. If children want to use websites to find out more encourage them to use the websites recommended below as searching randomly may bring up inappropriate or just incorrect information. I will post the website links below.
On Monday, we will be having a visit from the head of Year 7 from Okehampton college to talk to them all about transition. Next week, we will spend more time preparing for our leavers' assembly and leavers' book as well as preparing for assessments in the following week. For homework, I have asked children to use their revision books to go over any areas that they feel less confident in, in maths and reading. This might include fractions, as well as prime numbers, square numbers, cube numbers, multiples and factors as it has been a while since we covered those things. In reading they might like to look at inference and language choice as these are sometimes the sort of questions they find more difficult. They also have 10 spellings to learn for next Friday. I would like children to bring their revision books every day next week and then if we have any time we can do a bit of revision in class. "Have we only been back for a week?" one of the children asked me today! I know exactly how they feel. We have crammed so much learning into one week that it feels like we've already been back much longer.
The children completed their work on ancient civilisations with an interesting debate on which civilisation was the best and why. This was an opportunity for them to, not only develop their critical thinking, perspective and judgement about historical events, but also to practise their oracy skills which are getting stronger all the time. We have used drama this week to plan the next chapter in The Story of Antigone and started our practice writing stage of the sequence. Earlier in the week, the children had a go at writing a 'crow's eye view' of a battle in Ancient Greece. These were very effective descriptions - children are making good progress in their writing. We have begun our final science unit (Living things and their habitats) and children have already been exploring the orchard for living things. This afternoon, they found a toad making one of the huge tractor tyres its home! Today we had the first in a series of Relationship and Sex Education lessons which covered ground rules for our sessions and the anatomically correct names for boys' and girls' body parts. I intend to deliver the next four lessons over the next four Fridays which cover puberty, relationships and human reproduction. You may find the following websites useful if your child has questions: www.childline.org.uk www.nspcc.org.uk www.nhs.uk/Livewell/puberty/Pages/Pubertyinfoforchildren.aspx www.kidshealth.org/kid/ www.bbc.co.uk/education/topics/z3xxsbk www.thinkuknow.co.uk The children enjoyed their PE lesson with Mr Stronge today which will be athletics this half term. Additional to this, Mr Foreman has organised an afternoon of athletic activity for us next Thursday called Quad Kids. They will need to wear PE kits to school, therefore on Thursday and Friday next week. As you know we will be starting swimming lessons next Tuesday as well - I have attached a copy of the letter sent home this week. Please return the slip by Monday. It's going to be an active week! Children have been set revision homework on division in maths and retrieval in reading as well as spellings. I have also given them a new homework topic web today and I will also post a copy on this website. I will set revision homework for the next few weeks until we complete our assessments week commencing 28th June. I have encouraged children to use the revision books to go over areas of maths or reading that they need to as well as the revision I have set. Have a great week - the weather looks set to be sunny- please remember to send children to school wearing sun protection and with a hat next week. Hi everyone and happy half term. It has been so nice to see a bit of sunshine this week and see the children enjoying our amazing grounds for both play and learning. We used the orchard for some great drama activities this week linked to our English text The Story of Antigone. We will be carrying on with this text after half term. After half term, I will be taking the class to Parklands Leisure Centre for swimming lessons with their trained swimming coaches. There will be more information about this the first week back and this won't start until the second week after half term. They will need a one-piece swimming costume or swimming shorts(preferably not board shorts), a swimming hat and they may use goggles if they want to.
Miss Ruby has shared some of the work that she has been doing with the class in this message: This week the children completed their RE unit: 'For Christians, what kind of King was Jesus?' Through this unit, the children have explored Noble Prize Winners, their hopes for the future, leadership styles, the 'Kingdom of God' and ideas about a better world. They have explored what Christians believe around this and the difference this makes to how they live. After half term, the children will explore the unit 'How does faith help people when life gets hard?'. This week in Art, the children completed the Unit 'Photography'. Throughout this unit, the children have created photomontages, truisms and self portraits based on specific artist styles. After half term, we move onto a DT project called playgrounds which will see the children busy with glue guns, tools and wood! Watch this space! It was lovely to see all the children sharing their learning in our whole school assembly today. I hope some of you were able to join us virtually and enjoyed hearing about the great learning that's happening across the school. I hope you have a happy and restful half term - I haven't set any homework or spellings to learn so that children can have a proper break. I hope that they will be reading for pleasure as much as possible and if they do get bored they could use their revision guides or Times Table Rockstars or Nessy to brush up on their knowledge and skills. Enjoy the sunshine 🌞🌞🌞 Good afternoon everyone and happy Friday - the weekend is here!
Sycamore Class have been working hard to complete Science and English projects this week about the circulatory system. Some children bravely took the role of a doctor to explain orally and then they produced some really interesting information pages in English. Their Science knowledge has been consolidated with this cross curricular approach. We have now finished learning about line graphs, pie charts and the mean in our statistics unit in maths and will have an end of unit quiz on Monday before beginning our new unit about the properties of shape. In history, the children raised lots of historical enquiry questions ready to research the ancient civilisation they have been given. We will be debating which civilisation was the best!! In art this week, the children turned their selfies into self portraits using continuous line drawings and today we used formulas in spreadsheets after talking about being SMART on the internet. Perhaps they can talk to you about what the acronym SMART stands for. As you know, we have one more week before half term - I hope we will have some better weather next week so we can get out and enjoy using the field for PE and playtimes. We will have PE on Monday and Friday next week. Some children still need to complete wider curriculum homework before the end of next week. There is no revision homework set this week but, as usual, they have ten spellings which they have chosen themselves from their personal spelling list to learn - Please could you check that they have copied them down correctly as I ran out of time to check them today. Hope you all have a great weekend despite the weather. It was very funny seeing all the staff and children today arriving in their pyjamas for Pyjamarama Day. We have had lots of fun sharing stories throughout the day (we're definitely not too old for them) and carrying out story related activities this afternoon. Even Miss C made a surprise appearance reading a story. We did PE in our pyjamas too! I believe we raised around £100 for the Book Trust whose aim is to ensure every child has the good start in life that reading brings.
We have had another busy week. We have finished our 'practise writing stage' or 'innovate stage' in English and have produced some very informative and eye-catching information pages about the heart. We are now going on to research and write independently on the circulatory system which we have also been learning about in Science. We have begun a new unit of work in history in which we will be finding out about and comparing different ancient civilisations - we want to know which one was the best - or perhaps which one contributed the most to modern society. (I can feel another dressing up day coming on at the end of that work!!) I have now received some high quality homework which I shared with the class today - thank you for supporting them with this. For revision homework this week, they have chosen an area of maths and English which they feel they need extra work on rather than me setting them all the same thing. They also have 10 new spellings. I hope you all have a great weekend - enjoy the photos in the galary. We have crammed a lot into this shorter than normal week. We have been making many links across the curriculum in science, English, maths and computing. In English, we are writing information texts about the heart and circulatory system, drawing on what we have learnt in science lessons. In maths, we have been interpreting and constructing line graphs and, next week, we will use line graphs in our science lesson to record the results of an investigation about heart rate and recovery rate which we will do as part of our PE lesson on Monday. In science, we learnt how nutrients and water are transported around the body in the bloodstream. This involved a messy demonstration of how food is digested and broken down and then how the nutrients are absorbed into the blood. We finished the week with a mile and a half cross country race. Bill was our first boy home and Flo was our first girl. Well done to everybody who completed the 6 laps of the field - nobody gave up. Our final activity today, also linked to healthy life-styles, was a discussion about the pros and cons of social media and how it can impact our wellbeing. In this oracy session the children took on a role in groups of 3 and then volunteers summarised the discussion at the end. The class's oracy skills are really improving. I have started to receive some topic homework - I am expecting 3 completed pieces from the homework web by the end of this half term. I have not set any revision homework this week but please can you help children to find the four books that the school bought for them ready for next Friday. They do all have 10 spellings to learn this week and they should be reading regularly. I am concerned that children who don't complete homework will find the transition to secondary school and the homework expectations there a bit of a shock if they don't get into good habits now. It was great meeting with some of you on Wednesday and chatting about your children's progress. Please contact me if you would like an appointment to meet online or if you prefer I can ring you. Have a very good weekend - shame it's going to be so wet! Enjoy the pictures of our messy science, homework and cross country.
Today we have taken part in a number of challenges to celebrate the memory of Captain Tom Moore who raised so much money for charity. As a school, we were hoping to raise £100 for the Captain Tom Foundation which helps to combat loneliness, champions education and equality, and continues to support the NHS. I'm pleased to say that we have already surpassed that target, but please keep giving to this worthwhile cause. https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/north-tawton-primary-schools-captain-tom-100
The children have completed various challenges today including a spelling bee, maths challenge, French numbers challenge a version of the just a minute game called just 100 seconds (we discovered how hard it is to speak without saying em or errr!!) and a story writing challenge where they had to finish a story in 100 words exactly. Matthew's writing, which is attached, shows what you can do with 100 words when you make every word count. Well done Matthew. Bill was our 'oracy' star speaking so articulately about the question: "Are clever people born clever?" I was really pleased that most children felt you aren't born clever and that you have to learn and work hard to become 'clever' although Bill did make links to our science topic last term and suggested that some traits to do with intelligence are inherited. Imogen and Tobey got us through the 100 word spelling bee with a little help from the rest of the class! Earlier in the week we finished our maths unit on ratio, proportion and scaling and are continuing to learn how to write a good information page. This is linked to our Science topic, which is all about the circulatory system. We turned the classroom into a giant 'body' and the children raced around the classroom delivering oxygenated blood from the heart to the organs and bringing deoxygenated blood back to the heart. Today the children enjoyed a mini-olympics in cricket with our Saints coach, Mr Stronge. I have set the children revision homework from the revision guides and question books which were given to all children in the Autumn Term. Some weren't sure where theirs were so I have asked them to have a thorough look for them. In the meantime, I have given them photocopies of the relevant pages. Although there are no official SATs this year, we will still be assessing all children formally before the end of the year as this will be used to inform our end of year levels to send on to their secondary school. This learning is still very important because it reflects what the children need to know in order to be ready for their secondary education. I have reminded children that we will have a spelling test every Friday and that they must bring their homework folders and reading folders in every week on a Friday. We have agreed to reset our expectations for reading and homework - reading every day logged in reading diary, spellings practised regularly, revision completed and topic homework completed to a high standard. I look forward to meeting with you over the next couple of weeks albeit virtually. Have a great long weekend. '
Welcome back everyone! This week we all returned from a lovely Easter break and we also welcomed our new Principal, Miss Penny. As you know, this is Year 6's last term at Primary school and, even though we aren't doing official SATs, it is still a really important one. I want all of the children to feel that they have achieved a great deal at North Tawton Primary School and are ready for their secondary education. I certainly want the children to enjoy this half term and I am looking in to what extra-curricular activities we can organise for them. At the same time, I still have very high expectations of their learning, behaviour and attitude at school. I want them to fulfil their roles as responsible Year 6 students and to achieve as highly as possible now and in the future. This week we have been learning about ratio in maths, analysing an information text for models for our writing in English, begun to think about the circulatory system in science and used some French grammar(conjugating verbs) to talk about places where people live in France. We have also enjoyed 2 PE lessons in the sunshine and practised our oracy skills to discuss healthy lifestyles. We have completed our first lesson on spreadsheets in computing. During my non-teaching time this half term, Miss Ruby will be teaching the class RE and art. I have attached this term's curriculum web as well as a homework web for this half term. I hope you and your children will enjoy getting involved in some of the interesting things the children will be researching and presenting in creative ways. The children have brought a paper copy of this home with them today as well as their ten personal spellings to learn. I am expecting them to read regularly at home and hope you will help me to foster a love of reading - I will be checking their reading diary on a weekly basis to see what wonderful choices they are making. Have a great weekend everybody. |
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July 2024
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