Good afternoon everyone,
Welcome back after the half term break. We hope you are all rested and well. Here is a round up of our week in Year 6! English/History We have been using our English lessons this week to write an essay about the civil rights movement in America in the 1950s (our history topic from last half term). We began with a debate on the question: “Civil disobedience was more important than legal decisions during the civil rights movement.” Do you agree? Quite a lofty and challenging essay title but the children have really risen to the challenge and have been really enthusiastic about writing their essays. Maths We have made a great start to our new unit focusing on decimals. This week the children have learnt how to order and compare decimals within 1, order and compare decimals with integers (whole numbers), round decimals and add and subtract decimals. They have had a great week with this, using resources such as place value charts, counters and part whole models to support their workings. Their resilience is definitely improving and they are becoming more confident when solving problems. We have all been really impressed with their attitudes to maths this week. Geography Our new unit this half term is 'Globalisation'. Within this topic we will be looking at the definition of globalisation, how globalisation has changed the way we communicate, how globalisation has affected trade, what globalisation has to do with fashion and food and where globalisation could lead us. This week, we began by discovering that globalisation is the increasing connections between places and people across the planet, established through trade, politics and cultural exchanges, and helped by technology and transport. The children really got into learning about when globalisation began (different views from historians, see if the children can tell you the three keys times in history this could have been), what it looks like now and identifying famous companies/logos that have had a huge impact on economy and trade. Computing Our new unit of learning is about using Spreadsheets. Our first lesson was an introduction to spreadsheets. At school we use Google Sheets but this is very similar to Excel which some children said their parents use in their work. If you do, why not show/explain to your child how it assists you in your work? Science We started a new unit of science which this half term is all about Energy. We were very surprised to learn that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred. We were able to see energy transformation when we transformed elastic potential energy in a rubber band to kinetic energy by launching rubber bands across the classroom. We will be investigating this a little more next week. Life Skills We discussed a story about a child who wrote something in the steam on a bus window which kept coming back even when he rubbed it off. We made a connection to how when something is posted on the internet it is there forever and cannot be removed again. We also spoke about the exponential nature of the way posts on the internet can spread. PE Friday mornings will now be tag rugby. Please make sure the children come in with spare kit/uniform to change into if necessary as we will be playing on the field regardless of the weather and conditions underfoot! French This half term we will continue with our theme of food, but progressing to look at what we have for breakfast. Today we learnt and asked the question, "Qu-est-ce que tu manges au petit dejeuner? " ... see if the children can tell you what this means! We played games with the globe and ordering sentences as part of the lesson. A great start to the second half of the Spring term! Well done Sycamore class! Enjoy your weekend. Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby. Good afternoon everyone, we hope this weekly blog finds you well. Here is a round up of our week in Sycamore class.
Maths This week we completed our unit focusing on ratio and concluded with lessons about proportion and recipes. We then completed our end of unit assessment to look at how much progress we have made within this area. the children have made great progress! We are now moving onto a unit all about decimals, which in turn will lead onto learning about percentages. The children are working hard in their mathematics and getting to grips with lots of new information. Well done Year 6! Science This week we completed our science unit about heat with an investigation. the children had to find out which material would prevent an ice-cube from melting the longest. So that this was a 'fair test', the children had to consider variables: Independent variable (the thing they changed) dependent variable(the thing they measured) and control variables(the things they had to keep the same. After completing their investigation and writing it up, some of them considered what application in real life this investigation would be relevant for. They suggested clothes manufacturers, lunch box materials and even fridges! English The children have produced some superb writing this half term. They have worked really hard to plan and write a chronological report about a mountain environment using some very powerful vocabulary, as well making sure their writing has cohesion (flow). They spent a lot of time proof-reading, editing and improving and redrafting their work before writing their final draft. Computing We had our final lesson on creating our websites. This week we learnt how to create a navigation path by creating links between pages on our website. This is something that children can complete at home if they have access to a device which has Google Chrome. French This week we learn about the Island of Martinique in the Caribbean. As a French speaking country, we looked at some of their traditions involving carnivals. The children learnt about Fat Sunday, Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday and how this festival is celebrated very differently to how might expect. History This week we concluded our learning about 'Civil Rights in America during the 1950s and 1960s' by learning about the Black Lives Matter Movement and what it is. The Civil Rights movement in America is usually understood to have ended in 1968, when another Civil Rights Act law was passed, guaranteeing equal opportunity to housing. However, attitudes did not change overnight in the US, and African-Americans regularly faced discrimination. This discrimination continues today, and has led to the Black Lives Matter movement. Dress To Express/Children's Mental Health Week/Art Each of these three things combined today (Friday) and resulted in a collaborative piece of artwork on the theme of 'well being'. The children worked on creating a 'top 10 tips for wellbeing poster' - each child picked and wrote one wellbeing 'tip' and drew a matching illustration - e.g, eat fresh fruit everyday, take a walk. The best ones were compiled onto an A3 poster. Please see our gallery of photos for some exciting P.E. photos and some examples of the children's writing. We wish you a restful half term and will see you all on Monday 20th February for the second half of the Spring term, where I hope we will start to see some signs of Spring coming! Thank you again, for your continued support. Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby Good afternoon everyone,
We hope this blog finds you well, here is a brief round up of our week! English We have begun writing our first draft of our report about a day in a mountain environment. The children have made a great start using some superb vocabulary in their expanded noun phrases and creating cohesion in their report with adverbials and good use of pronouns and synonyms. We will be spending time to carefully proofread edit, improve and redraft our writing until it is the best we can make it! Science Our science lesson this week was all about conductors and insulators. We learnt what these are, the materials that are good conductors or insulators and everyday uses of them such as metal saucepans for cooking with plastic handles to stop us burning our hands. We observed the difference between a metal spoon and a wooden spoon in a hot pan. We carried out a class investigation into conductors and insulators. We wanted to know in which bowl an ice cube would melt the quickest, metal or plastic. The children made a prediction and considered the variables in a fair test. Next we will be doing more investigating of conductors and insulators. Maths The children have continued learning about scale factor, ratio, similar shapes and solving problems involving ratio. They built on previous steps to enlarge shapes and describe enlargements, to explore similar shapes (defined as shapes where corresponding sides are in the same proportion and the corresponding angles are equal, so if one shape is an enlargement of the other, the two shapes are similar) and the children used representations from earlier steps to help them see the multiplicative relationships between ratios. They recognised that when they multiply or divide from one amount to another, they do the same for the other value to keep the ratios equivalent. They were able to see that this method is similar to finding equivalent fractions. Life Skills We began thinking about the meaning of identity and prejudice this week. We will be using our oracy skills next week to further discuss prejudice within a community. History-Civil Rights in 1950s and 1960s America. This week, the children's learning took them to Montgomery in Alabama, America, where we learnt about the reasons behind the famous Selma to Montgomery march. During this lesson, they learnt about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and how, even though this meant a change in the law, it actually proved that people's attitudes had not changed. They were horrified to learn about a 'literacy test' you had to pass to vote (to pass you could only get 1 question wrong) and how this lead to people trying to protest peacefully in Alabama. However, the peaceful protest ended up being named, 'bloody Sunday' due to the violence that occurred there as a result of police behaviour towards the activists and the world media. As a class they listened with intent and asked questions to deepen their understanding and explained their opinions and reasons very well. French We undertook a listening activity this week that involved many of the skills we have learnt over the past year including, the French alphabet, counting, opinions on food and animals, nationalities, likes and dislikes and meal times. PE Coach Edwards took the children for a gymnastic lesson where they worked in small groups to perform sequences using apparatus and a focus group at a time, worked with her to practise jumping from a high bench onto a crash mat. Art This week the children focused on 'street art' and the different styles this can be represented as, such as graffiti, murals and guerrilla art. They looked at the similarities and difference between the different types, forming their own opinions and justifying their ideas. They created a '9 choice diamond' where they places statements about art in order of importance, according to their own opinions. This then led onto discussions about their next peace of art work. The children have had a wonderful week, hard working, focused and very productive. We have both been so pleased with everyone's attitude to learning. . Well done Sycamore class. Good afternoon everyone. We hope this blog finds you well! Here is a round up of our learning from this week. English - We have continued looking at chronological reports and have started to find facts and information about different mountain ranges in preparation for our final write next week. We have been using the Chromebooks to research lots of information and interesting vocabulary to describe their chosen mountain range. Maybe you could ask them their favourite fact they have learnt about their mountain range and their favourite descriptive phrase? Maths - We have started our new unit on ratio, which the children have really grasped and enjoyed so far. We have been looking at different ratio sentences and using the ratio symbol to show this as well. We have also been comparing ratio to fractions too! On Wednesday, some children had chance to write their own ratio questions which were great and we even worked one out as a class! Science - In science this week, we have been looking at how heat is transferred through particles. We watched and took part in demonstrations, observing how heat is transferred through a meal knife. The children were able to touch the handle of the knife every minute to feel how warm it was. The children were able to explain what they felt and observed and why they think this was happening. History - This week we have been focusing on Martin Luther King Jr and his 'I have a dream' speech. The children learnt parts of the speech and performed sections to the class. You could ask them to see if they can remember a section of the speech. We also discusses as to whether we think Martin Luther King's dreams have come true. The children also began to write their own ' I have a dream speech' based on their dreams and wishes for the future. French- We continued with our learning about mealtimes in French. The children were using language/words such as, ' le petit dejeuner, le dejeuner, le diner, demi, quart, moins le quart, and heures'. They played games such as sentence bingo and noughts and crosses. Life skills -The focus of our life skills lesson this week was celebrating diversity. First we noticed the similarities and differences between us in our class community and then began to focus on the diversity in our wider community. We came up with a long list which included: race, gender, sexual orientation, different abilities, the way we speak, what we wear, age, beliefs, hobbies, skin colour... We agreed that diversity and difference is something to be celebrated not to be teased or bullied about. We then had a go at role-playing how we would support a friend who was being picked on because they were different in one of these ways. Computing- As we prepare to create our own web pages, this week we learnt about copyright. Copyright law protects the control you have over the things that you create. It also protects the work of others. Children learnt how they can use images from the internet without infringing copyright laws. Next lesson, we will begin creating our own web pages using the plans they have now completed Dogs Trust Visit- On Thursday morning we had a visit from Emily, at the Dog's Trust. She spent an hour with us, teaching us about how to stay safe around our own dogs and others. The morning was full of great ideas and strategies around making the right choices around dogs. The children were presented with a scenario involving a young boy who had been bitten by a dog. They then had six suspects (different dogs) and a small case study about each one with information that may have led to this happening. As the children discussed each suspect, it transpired that any dog could have been the perpetrator due to the events that happened, but ultimately the person responsible was the young boy, as there were certain factors he should have taken into account beforehand. All the children said they had learnt something new and would now use this in future. Maybe you could ask them about what they had learnt? Emily was very impressed with the class's listening skills and oracy skills. Well done Year 6. Please see photos in the gallery and maybe ask your children what was happening in each photo? Thank you for your continued support. The children are working hard in class and it is paying off by looking at their progress. I have offered the children a short homework club on a Friday lunchtime for any one who might need a little extra support or time with their revision. This is not compulsory, but there as a support for anyone who might need it. Finally- today we said goodbye to Miss Collins, our final year student teacher. Miss Collins has played a huge part of Sycamore class's life over the past 12 weeks and the children have developed a great relationship with her. We wish her well and send her lots of luck for her future teaching career! Thank you Miss Collins. Enjoy your weekend! Thank you. Good afternoon Year Six,
We hope this blog finds you well? Here is a round up of our week in Year 6! This week has been an assessment week for us so focusing on maths, reading, spelling, punctuation and grammar. The children have tried hard with these and are growing in maturity with their approach. In science, the children have started a new unit of work, this week looking at heat and the effect it has on solids, liquids and gases when heated up and cooled down. The children acted this out in small groups, pretending to be particles and showing how they behave. In maths, in between our assessments, the children have been converting units of measure, such as millilitres to litres, centimetres to metres, and kilogrammes to tonnes. This is real life, useful knowledge the children could be using at home when cooking/baking, shopping, building/measuring and travelling. In English, the children have continued to gather ideas for their writing by taking notes about the things they could see or the things they could hear outside in the school grounds. The weather put a bit of a dampener on things, but we got there in the end! It was a rather soggy activity! In history, we continued with our learning about Civil Rights in America during the 20th century. This week the children learnt about the 'Jim Crow laws and etiquette'. Perhaps, you could ask your children about these and what their views are on them after learning about them? They were horrified to learn how some people were treated and could not believe that these things happened in history. In art, we learnt about the artist Diego Rivera, who lived in Mexico and painted murals detailing Mayan art. The children used different objects to mark make and replicate his patterns in painting. Take a look at the photos below to see what the children have been up to! In gymnastics the children experimented with different balances and rolls and linked them in sequences on the mats. In French the children practised counting to 20 by singing songs and playing 'lotto' (bingo). They also learnt the word half (demi) and quarter (quart) in the lead up to learning about telling the time in French, linking in with mealtimes. Young Sports Leaders This week, Jackie Jarvis from OCRA came in to train up our children to be young sports leaders. She taught them lots of games and activities that they could lead with younger children as well as teaching them how to be safe when leading these activities. This is a great opportunity for year 6 children to be responsible and lead groups of younger children in playtime games and sports activities. I will be drawing up a timetable for all children in the class to try out leading at playtime or lunchtime and hope that many of them will volunteer to continue doing so for the rest of the year. Good afternoon everyone, Happy New Year to you all! We hope this blog finds you all well. Here is a very short blog for the first few days back at school. The children have all returned in a positive frame of mind, which has been great to see after so much illness. Maths As a result of this illness, we have finished the fractions unit which the children have done so well at. Next week, we start and finish a very short unit on equivalent measures. English- We have started a new core text 'Survival at 40 degrees and above'. This is a wonderful book about the Simpson Desert in Australia, the animals that live there and the landscape. We will be varying our writing styles as we look at non chronological reports and poetry. French The children have excelled themselves on their knowledge of French foods and opinions. Today we started recapping animals, opinions and French phonics (sounds in words). PE Today, the children took part in a fitness exercise where they had to run laps of the playground and count them within a time limit. From next week we will be starting Gymnastics. History In History we have started our learning about the Civil Rights Movement in America. This will be the focus for the half term. We will send home more about our units for you next week. Thank you for your continued support. Have an enjoyable weekend. Mrs Ware, Miss Ruby and Miss Collins Good afternoon everybody,
We hope this blogs finds you well after a very cold and bitter end to the week! We have had a high level of sickness in Sycamore this week, with what seems to be a nasty virus doing the rounds. We wish all those poorly a speedy recovery and we look forwards to seeing everyone fit and healthy as soon as possible. Please report any cases of Covid or scarlet fever to the admin team. Thank you. Maths - This week in maths we have continued our unit on fractions focusing on multiplying and dividing with integers and fractions. We have learnt some different methods to help us and then today we have been using these methods to solve multi step fraction problems. English - This week we have begun to plan and write our own twisted traditional tale. We have written our character introductions for our villains... who knew the three little pigs could be villainous??? and yesterday we began to write our stories. We will finish them next week. We are all really looking forward to reading these and believe we have lots of authors in the making! Geography - This week we have continued looking at population and have now finished this unit. We looked at ageing populations and discussed the challenges these have on the governments of different countries; particularly Japan as our case study. After Christmas we have a history focus, specifically looking at Civil Rights in America. Science- We have finished our unit on sustainability this week! Our focus this week was on global warming and climate change which the children were passionate about and very knowledgeable. During the lesson we discussed what a carbon footprint was and Miss Collins completed a questionnaire to see what hers was...turns out it was a little high!!The link for this is on our class dojo page! Have a look and see what yours as a family might be! PE- Our last swimming session and what a HUGE improvement by all the children. It has been a delight to watch the children whilst they swim and develop their confidence. Almost all of the class are able to swim 25 metres without support...a wonderful achievement! It was also our last Unihoc session today, so in the bitter cold we played a mini tournament in teams of 4. Lots of cold hands and fingers, meant the children had to pay special attention to what they were all doing! French- Today we assessed our reading skills in French. We had two short letters to read. The first, we had to a read and then answer questions about. The second, we had to read and then translate into English. The new French knowledge the children have acquired has been phenomenal with many of them knowing an entire paragraph. Next week- Monday- Magic Martin Show Tuesday- Year 6 Christingle Service in the church. Wednesday- Watching the dress rehearsal for the KS1and EYFS nativity. Thursday- nugget treat afternoon Friday- Christmas fun! Have a good weekend everyone. Stay safe and well and enjoy the run up to the festivities! Mrs Ware, Miss Ruby and Miss Collins Hello everyone! We hope this weekly blog finds you all well. Here is a round up of our week in Year 6! English We have been looking at twisted fairy tales in English. This week we have planned and written an alternative version of Hansel and Gretel in which the 'villains' are actually the children who terrorise a poor little old lady - eating her out of house and home and eventually pushing her in the oven! Next week, they will be choosing their own villain and story to 'twist'. Energy from waste We had a great day on Tuesday at the Energy from Waste facility in Plymouth. It was great to be able to take the children out for the day for them to be able to make connections with our science topic of sustainability. The tour of the site was really interesting, and the children really enjoyed it. Hopefully they learnt a lot too - see if they can remember any of the fascinating facts on the fact sheet below. So that we were able to offer this trip at no cost to parents, we went with a class from Chagford School. Although this meant a longer journey, it was good for the children to meet some of their peers from another school in the Trust. We were also supported by one of our Governors, Mel Holyoak who had this to say about our pupils: I just wanted to drop you a line to say how lovely my day has been, and how much I enjoyed the company of your Year 6 pupils. Without exception, they were delightful to be around: polite, charming, engaging, interesting and friendly...and honestly, they were just the greatest bunch of kids to be around. I hope they enjoyed the day as much as I did! Al the children behaved impeccably and were a credit to the school Maths This week in maths we have been looking at fractions, learning how to add and subtract mixed numbers using different methods. These methods used fraction strips, number lines and finding a common denominator. We have also looked at how we can use these methods in multi-step word problems to solve different word problems. Geography This week we have been continuing our unit of population. We have been looking at the challenges of a growing population and discussed this relating two different case studies. We discussed the challenges in Kiberia in Kenya and New Deli in India and wrote about the challenges these area face with growing population. In Kiberia the main challenge was that the Government could not keep up with the rapidly growing population to provide housing. In New Deli the main problem was the air pollution from the increase in traffic. French We practised our reading skills this week and were able to identify keep phrases and words that we have been learning about to answer questions about a famous French person. We were able to read what the person was called, where they lived, what their favourite foods were and also foods they did not like. We then learnt the French song, 'Oh, Holy night', which is sang to the tune of 'Silent night' and were able to identify cognates (see if the children can explain this word to you) and we also learnt some new words such as King, night, world, baby and love. Here is the song, if you'd like to see it! O Holy Night in French (Douce Nuit) - Christmas song for kids with lyrics ! - YouTube We are now on the countdown to the Christmas holidays, however life in Year 6 carries on as normal. We have been impressed with the children's attitude to their spelling and maths homework, with almost all of the class making sure they have completed the tasks set. Please keep this up! It makes a huge difference to them. Thank you. Tuesday 13th December at 2pm will be the Christingle service in St. Peter's Church. Year 6 will take the spotlight during this service and it's always very moving and festive. If you can come along, it would be wonderful to see you there. Enjoy the Christmas Fair tonight! Thank you for your continued support. Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby
Good afternoon, here's a brief round up of our week in Sycamore class! Bikeability The children have had a fantastic opportunity this week to improve their cycling competency and road safety. Despite the weather not always being kind to us, the children really enjoyed this experience and are hopefully now much safer when cycling on the roads. Big thanks go to Miss Penny and Mrs Shaw for supporting them out on the roads in all weathers! Sustainability While they were not cycling the children used the time to research and create double page spreads on our science topic of sustainability. Some great independent work was created. You will very soon be receiving a letter about an upcoming trip to a recycling centre which will enhance their understanding of this subject. Library I would like to thank our volunteer librarians who have been giving up their lunchtimes to make our reading area a success. Their jobs are: creating posters and making displays; re-shelving returned books; keeping the area tidy and most importantly: watering the plant! I have also asked them to prepare a presentation to our class about using the library area and choosing books to read. We have had a recent audit of our books and we are confident that we have a good stock of books for all interests and abilities for children to choose from. DT We have continued where possible to complete our 'goods' for the Christmas fair. The children have really enjoyed doing this and they look great! Thank you for any wool donations, we are very grateful! French We have continued with learning about French foods and how to hold a short conversation about our likes and dislikes. We hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Miss Ruby and Mrs Ware |
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July 2024
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