Science This week's science lesson was a load of rubbish!!! What I mean by that was we learnt about the three Rs in regard to waste - Reduce Reuse Recycle. I was surprised that many of the children didn't really know about what was recycled at home so I told them that they should offer to help sort the recycling next week at home. I'm afraid they weren't too keen on that idea. It would be really good though if they could see what you recycle at your house. Geography We are learning about global population and population changes. We learnt about the factors that affect population such as a change in the birth rate, the death rate and the reasons for these such as improved healthcare. Computing The children are enjoying using Tinkercad to manipulate 3d models. This week they manipulated and combined 3d shapes to create a model of a house. Drama We have used drama and role play in a few lessons this week which we have really enjoyed. In English we used hot-seating where children took on the roles of characters from a traditional tale. This was to try and infer more about characters from their actions. We also used drama in our life skills lesson which was all about peer pressure and how to behave when 'friends' are trying to make you do something you know is wrong or you don't want to. It was great to see the performers in the class coming out of their shell! Maths This week in maths we have ended our unit on the four operations. We have completed learning using mental calculations and estimations and reasoning from known number facts. This has included using strategies taught over the last few weeks to support children with their calculation skills. On Wednesday the children completed the end of unit assessment, which we use to identify areas of strength and areas to improve in the class. We can celebrate success, no matter how big or small. On Friday we began our next unit which will be ’Fractions A’. this unit will take us almost to Christmas. French In French this week Madame Jordan came into teach us. For this half term she will be into teach us every Friday, supporting us in our learning. As today is Remembrance Day, our learning focused on how this is marked in France and in the UK, with specific focus on French traditions around Armistice Day. Did you know the French wear blue cornflowers as a mark of respect? This is because of the blue in their French flag, which represents liberty (freedom). We talked about difference and similarities between our two countries and how we commemorate this important day. PE Coach Edwards took the children for P.E. today and they started hockey! Children were in pairs, using the hockey sticks to pass a ball to each other and stop it. They had to use the sticks to guide a ball around a maze of cones, manoeuvring it in a controlled manner. Cross Country Congratulations to those children who took part in the Cross Country at Castle Drogo. Mrs Ahmad said it was a privilege to take them and represent our school. She also said the children were amazing with the Reception class, who they spent a couple of hours with when they returned. She said they naturally gravitated to the children they walked to the Harvest festival with and were all amazing role models, playing games, dancing, reading, puppet shows to name just a few. Well done Year 6! D.T. Our D.T. focus this week was very festive! We used toilet roll tubes and wool to create hanging decorations for the Christmas tree. The children had to really concentrate and focus on their fine motor skills to complete this task to a high standard. It was lovely to see all the children engaged in this activity, especially when they stated how hard it was at the beginning, but by the end it was good! Look out for their creations at the Christmas fair on Friday 2nd December! Remembrance The whole school took part in the two minutes silence in the hall together, paying our respects to all those who have lost their lives or have had their lives impacted by various wars. It was a very respectful occasion and I was very proud of our children. Monday 14th November Anti Bullying week Monday 14th November Bikeability Friday 18th November – Children in Need/odd socks day/non uniform Tuesday 22nd and Thursday 24th November parents evening. Friday 2 December Father Christmas visiting and FONTS Christmas Market Monday 12th December 2pm Magic Martin treat from FONTS for whole school in hall Wednesday 7th Dec –Christmas Jumpers and Christmas dinner (changed from Thursday 8th) Friday 9th December – 2pm Carol Service at the church Tuesday 13th December 2pm – Christingle at church Nativity performances: Wednesday 14th December at 2pm and 4pm and Thursday 15th Dec at 5pm Maths
This week in maths we have continued with our unit on the four operations, looking at the order of operations (brackets, powers, multiplication/division and addition and subtraction), solving multi step- problems using division and multiplication and understanding division using factors. Next week we will finish this unit, undertake a short assessment to see how much progress the children have made and then move onto our new unit which will be fractions A. French In French this week we welcomed Madame Jordan back to see how we have been getting on. For this half term she will be into teach us every Friday, supporting us in our learning. Today we began to learn some basic French for forming opinions about food, using our knowledge of opinions (I like/I love/I dislike because) and then adding a food and a reason on to the end. This will form most of our learning for this half term. The children are really beginning to develop their confidence to speak out in class. P.E. We had our fourth swimming session, and it was a lovely lesson where all the adults involved could really see the progress being made. Even David, the swimming instructor, was really impressed with how all the children have been doing. Well done Year 6. Netball took place for a few members of the class on Friday morning as part of OCRA. Due to this our usual Friday morning P.E. lesson took place on Tuesday with Mrs Ware and I taught PSHE. Congratulations to our netball teams who took part today! One team proudly came 1st out of all the schools and most importantly both teams showed great sportsmanship and team spirit! Well done. English We completed and published our poems entitled, "I am....". The children put a huge amount of effort into creating books that they are very proud of. Some of the children have decided they want to finish their illustrations and have taken them home to complete to return on Monday. Art As we were missing half the class due to netball, we decided that as it's Bonfire Night tomorrow, we would learn about a French artist (Middleton Manigault) who loved to paint fireworks using only the primary colours. We then recreated our own firework paintings using his techniques. Hopefully they will be displayed in our cloakroom/library area so you will get to see them when you pop up at parents evening. Parents Evenings Our parents evening will be held on Tuesday 22nd November and Thursday 24th November. From Monday we will have a sign-up sheet outside our room for you to book an appointment with one of us. Appointments will start at 3:50pm each day and will run to 6:30 on Tuesday and 6pm on Thursday. They are scheduled for 10 minutes per child. If you can't get to school to book an appointment, please let us know via dojo/the office/or your child and we can book your appointment. If you have multiple children on one night, please leave a gap between appointments so that we can all keep to time as much as possible. If you can't come into school on one of those nights due to childcare or work commitments, we can offer you a telephone call instead. Please let us know as we would like to see as many of you as possible to discuss your child's progress and the year ahead. Sign-up sheets will be available from MONDAY. Have a great weekend, stay safe around any fireworks and we will see you all next week. Thank you! Friday 11th November – Remembrance . Monday 14th November Anti Bullying week Friday 18th November – Children in Need/odd socks day/non uniform Tuesday 22nd and Thursday 24th November parents evening. Friday 2 December Father Christmas visiting and FONTS Christmas Market Monday 12th December 2pm Magic Martin treat from FONTS for whole school in hall Wednesday 7th Dec –Christmas Jumpers and Christmas dinner (changed from Thursday 8th) Friday 9th December – 2pm Carol Service at the church Tuesday 13th December 2pm – Christingle at church Nativity performances: Wednesday 14th December at 2pm and 4pm and Thursday 15th Dec at 5pm Happy Half Term everyone! Here is a roundup of the children's learning this week. Computing The children enjoyed our Kahoot! online quiz that we did at the end of our computing unit about using the internet to communicate. They have learnt how to use search engines effectively; how to communicate using the internet safely and appropriately; which methods of communication are public or private and they were all surprised to learn that some of the applications they regularly use, like WhatsApp, actually have an age limit of 13! Science We completed our science unit by planning an investigation into dissolving. The children learnt about variables (independent, dependent and control variables) and identified how they would use them in a fair test. They also completed an end of unit quiz which showed their knowledge and understanding about chemical reactions and particles has greatly increased. We were treated to a volcanic eruption using the chemical reaction that takes place when bicarbonate of soda is mixed with vinegar. Sophie created a great homework project and brought it in to show the class. We were really impressed with Sophie's homework and I was impressed that the class could say how they knew they had observed a chemical reaction referring to the 5 indicators they learnt about in previous weeks. English We hope you enjoyed hearing some snippets of the fantastic writing the children have been doing this half term. We have been really impressed with some of the creative writing produced using metaphors, similes, hyphenated adjectives, expanded noun phrases, effective synonyms, the power of three. The children have shown real awareness of their reader and have tried and succeeded to create powerful imagery through their use of figurative language. Their composition skills are very good but we will need to work on their transcriptional skills of spelling, handwriting and punctuation over the coming weeks. As we have alluded to in our letter about home learning, regular reading, practising spellings and practising joined handwriting at home will accelerate the progress they can make in this area and we appreciate your support in this. History We have also finished learning about the Industrial Revolution; this week we learnt about the political changes that took place at this time. We learnt one peculiar fact about voting: at the time the right to vote could depend on the size of the fireplace in your home! It had to be big enough to fit a large cooking pot, this being a sign of how wealthy you were!! When we return from the half term holiday we will plan and the children will write an essay to demonstrate their learning about this topic. Maths This week in maths we have continued with our unit on the four operations, really focusing on multiplication methods learnt last week but also refining their short division skills too. We have made sure to spend sufficient time on this to ensure all the children have been given the chance to use the skills independently and when problem solving. As per our homework letter this week, knowing the times tables up to 12x 12 is incredibly beneficial to this as calculation accuracy is key to getting this method correct. If anyone would like to see the method the children have been taught this week, I will attach the PowerPoint to this blog as well! French In French this week which took place on a Friday afternoon due to the Sharing assembly we focused on the learning question, “I can understand others introducing themselves” and “I can recognise and understand introductory questions,” and we assessed where the children are by listening to them having conversations with each other, using the knowledge they have been learning, P.E. We had our third swimming session, and it was a much smaller session due to having so many absent children today! The children who swim independently in the deeper end of the pool, where given the opportunity to learn some lifesaving skills with their instructor. Some of the children were able to ‘rescue a human dummy’ from the bottom of the pool and were shown how to administer CPR. We also continued to build up some miles towards our ‘mini marathon’ inspired by the London marathon. We have signed up to complete this challenge and will total up our mile shortly! Netball took place on Friday morning and we are excited to learn that we will be hosting the OCRA netball tournament on Friday 4th November: which is a tradition here at North Tawton. It will be great to see our teams competing on ‘home soil’. Assemblies On Friday we had our first ‘live’ parents sharing assembly since pre-covid days! Year 6 shared examples of their wonderful poetry (referred to earlier on) and also took part in our weekly in-house team competition to announce the team point winners: Taw, Creedy, Dart or Okement. We look forwards to sharing more of our learning with you as the year progresses. Dates to take note of: Wednesday 2nd November – School photos Friday 4 November netball tournament here Friday 4th November-FONTS Fireworks Sparkler & Sweet Sale Friday 11th November – Remembrance . Monday 14th November Anti Bullying week Friday 18th November – odd socks day! Week of November 21st – Parent meetings Friday 2 December Father Christmas visiting and FONTS Christmas Market Monday 12th December 2pm Magic Martin treat from FONTS for whole school in hall Wednesday 7th Dec –Christmas Jumpers and Christmas dinner (changed from Thursday 8th) Friday 9th December – 2pm Carol Service at the church Tuesday 13th December 2pm – Christingle at church Nativity performances: Wednesday 14th December at 2pm and 4pm and Thursday 15th Dec at 5pm
Maths
This week in maths we have continued with our unit on the four operations, focusing on the rules of divisibility, prime numbers to 100, identifying and investigating square and cubed numbers and multiplication of a 3- or 4-digit number by a 2- or 3-digit number (we did recap multiplying a 3- or 4-digit number by a 1-digit number first!) For this the children need to be secure with their times tables but also how to lay out a multiplication calculation in columns. Again, it is beneficial if the children can be secure with their times tables before they get to Year 6 in order to be able to understand this. As a result, maths homework this week will be putting these skills into practise. French In French this week (which took place on a Friday afternoon due to the Harvest festival) we focused on the learning question, “I can understand others introducing themselves” and “I can recognise and understand introductory questions.” For this they had to recap much of the previous language taught with regards to introductions/feelings and nationalities. P.E. We had our second swimming session, and it was great to have all the children in the pool together in two groups. Again, they have almost an hour in the pool with their instructors and as per the first session this was full of smiles. We also began to build up some miles towards our ‘mini marathon’ inspired by the London marathon. We have signed up to complete this challenge over the next few weeks and will be totalling the miles as we go! Harvest Festival Our Harvest festival and Dingle Dangle Scarecrow day took place today and it was a poignant occasion, thinking it will be the children’s last harvest in primary School. The children joined in with singing and carefully and maturely helped our Reception children walking to church. they were each paired up and held hands together so they felt safe. It was a very touching moment. Well done Year 6. The children also looked brilliant, dressed up in their outfits! We had scarecrows, farmers, farm cats and cows! Thank you for your kind donation which will be distributed to families in our town. English: We have begun our 'practice writing' and we are writing poetry about hares in the style of Jackie Morris 'I am cat'. The children have written creatively and with quite some flair using hyphenated adjectives, similes and metaphors as well as the power of three. We hope to share some of their writing with you in our parents assembly next week. Science We had fun investigating chemical changes this week in science. We found that when you mix bicarbonate of soda with vinegar the results are quite explosive. The children learnt that this is because a chemical reaction is taking place in which new substances are formed and a gas is produced (hence all the bubbles). History We turned to our local area this week to think about the impact of the Industrial Revolution on Devon. We learnt how the mining and export of copper and tin increased the economy of the area. We also realised that it was around this time that Okehampton railway station opened and created a link between London and Okehampton and Plymouth changing the lives of people in the South West. Life Skills Miss Penny led the class in an exploration of friendship this week. The children thought about what makes a 'good friend' and the children then used drama to create a video about friendship. Thank you all for your continued support. Have a wonderful weekend and we will see you next week. Welcome to our Year 6 blog. Please find a roundup of our week here.
English We started the week by summarising the story of the Snow Leopard by Jackie Morris, this included identifying and summarising the story by pulling main ideas from the text. We then wrote our own stories using a variety of sentence openers and favourite ideas from the book to write the story of the raid on the village from the perspective of one of the villagers. After this we learnt and remembered the text by drawing a story map which we used to retell it. Then we looked at devices Jackie Morris uses in her writing such as hyphenated adjectives and nouns like: flame-cat of the forest, sharp-eyed running cat, resin-scented forests and sun-scorched. this led us onto metaphors, similes and the power of three. Science This week we used the processes of sieving, filtration and evaporation to separate sand, salt and nuggets and drew particle diagrams to represent the changes. History In history, we investigated the inventions and inventors that revolutionised factories, towns, cities and work life in Britain during the industrial revolution. As this is black history month, we recognised that all the inventors were white men and wondered if black people had been inventing too. Of course, they had - we found out a little about those inventions too. We decided that we don’t hear about those inventions so much as history was most probably written by white men too. Maths This week in maths we have started our new unit on the four operations, starting with addition and subtraction, factors, and multiples. For this the children need to be secure with their number bonds and their times table. There will be a big emphasis on this as the year goes on, to check the children can recall these things quickly, starting with our maths homework this week! Well done to all the children who have really persevered with their reasoning. Art This week in Art we continued with our focus on Monet and impressionism, by looking at a wider range of paintings and attempting to replicate them. French In French this week we continued with Nationalities asking the questions “what nationality are you?”, “what nationality is he?”, “what nationality is she?” and answering by saying “I am/he is/she is”. Our knowledge of flags also came in useful here! We played different games with the phrases including rock, paper, scissors, battle ships and the intruder! I have met with Mrs Jordan this week to discuss the French residential, so if there are any outstanding forms, please can we have them in. PE We had our first swimming session, and it was great to have all the children in the pool together in two groups. They children have almost an hour in the pool with their instructors and the first session was full of smiles. We also began to build up some miles towards our ‘mini marathon’ inspired by the London marathon. We have signed up to complete this challenge over the next few weeks and will be totalling the miles as we go! A group of children from Year 6 took part in the OCRA football tournament today! Both teams did amazingly well and came second and third place receiving medals as recognition of their achievements. We are so proud of them! Well done! Look out for more information on our Harvest festival next Friday 14th, that coincides with Dingle Dangle Scarecrow Day and also our sharing assembly that will take place at 2:30 on Friday 21st October. Thank you all for your continued support. Have a wonderful weekend and we will see you next week. Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby Good afternoon everyone,
We hope this blog finds everyone well, the end of the week has certainly turned more autumnal. Please make sure the children come with a coat and also a spare pair of clothes might be useful for those footballers who get a little wet and muddy playing football at lunchtime! It is great to see them all being so active whatever the weather. Here is a snippet of what we have been up to this week. Science We carried out an investigation this week to see how much sugar would dissolve in a small amount of water. The children used scientific skills of: raising questions that can be investigated, predicting, observing and recording. They also learnt and used some new scientific vocabulary: solute(the sugar), solvent(the water) and solution. I also asked them to consider what sandy beaches would be like if sand was soluble. History In history we continued our exploration of what life was like during the industrial revolution. This week, we focussed on the working conditions in factories and coal mines. The children considered the dangers in both work places and decided where they'd rather have worked if they had been alive during this period. Life skills This week I took the children to Okehampton where they took part in a number of workshops all focussed on learning the skills needed in 'real life'. These included beach and sea safety from RNLI, some CPR training from St John Ambulance, information from a Dartmoor Ranger, online safety from the Police and others. Maths This week in maths we have wrapped up our unit on place value. This included comparing and ordering numbers, understanding negative numbers, and also rounding. These lessons have included solving word problems and reasoning as well as using fluency in our understanding. Next week, we will move onto the four operations or addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and this unit will take us up to half term and beyond. Art This week in Art we designed our school Christmas cards as part of our school fundraising initiatives. The children used their fingers and hands to create a picture of Father Christmas and his reindeers! I think it’s safe to say they look great, and the children had fun making them. Let’s hope you are just as pleased and would like to buy a pack as a memento of their time in Year 6! French In French this week we began to look at Nationalities asking the questions “what nationality are you?”, “what nationality is he?”, “what nationality is she?” and answering by saying “I am/he is/she is”. Our knowledge of flags also came in useful here! PE In our P.E. sessions with Coach Edwards the children played some small team games where they practised some of the skills needed for netball such as passing and moving to find a space for the ball and then we all got chance to play a game to recap the actual game itself. The children were split onto teams of 5 and played high fives netball. They then rotated in and and out and when they weren't involved in the match they were practising ball skills in small groups. We hope everyone has a great weekend and look forwards to seeing the children next week. Please return French residential consent forms by next Friday so we have an idea of numbers. Once this information is in we can confirm staff members and dates! If you have any queries at all about this, please come and see us. We want to be able to help everyone as much as possible to enable all the children to come. We both fully appreciate how daunting it might be to send your child off on a residential abroad and how much effort it might take to get things organised with regards to passports etc. If we can be of any help or reassurance or answer any questions you may have, please, please let us know. We can help with anything, honestly! It would be lovely to have as many of the class together as possible making some amazing memories! Thank you so much! Gina and Jo Hello and welcome to this week's round up of fun in Year 6...I don't know about you but due to the bank holiday the extra day at home has really put me out of sync and I keep getting the days muddled up! Anyway, please read on to see what the children have been doing this week.
History We used a role play strategy called 'hot-seating' in history this week to share what we learnt about living conditions in the crowded cities of Britain during the industrial revolution. We had children in character as one of Robert Peel's first 'Bobbies' of the newly formed Metropolitan Police; A nurse working with patients suffering from cholera; a working class Victorian child living in terrible conditions and a middle class factory owner making money from the mass production the industrial revolution enabled. The children then wrote in role as one of these characters. Science We had a refreshing glass of squash in our science lesson so we could see how liquids mix to form new substances. We learnt also that these substances can be call impure substances and drew particle diagrams to show how an impure substance is one where there are at least two types of particles. In English, we continued our cat themed text exploration by reading the classic poem The Tyger by William Blake. See if your child can recite the first verse. Maths This week in maths we have begun to look at making numbers to 1 million and 10 million. We then looked at how we write these numbers in words and numbers. We learnt about the power of 10 and how we can make numbers 10/100/1000 times bigger or smaller using a Gattegno chart to help us and finally we looked at using number lines to 1,000,000. Lots to take in this week! Art This week in Art we continued to look at ‘Impressionism’ after the children practised mixing watercolours to recreate Claude Monet’s famous ‘Japanese Footbridge’ painting. They focused on replicating a small section of the painting using these colours. French/MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) In our French lesson are learning question was “Can you say how you are feeling and why ?” and “Can you say what you need in the classroom and understand others making requests ?” PE In our P.E. sessions with Coach Edwards the children will be focusing on netball (as mentioned before) and the skills associated with it. This week we played some small team games where we practised some of the skills needed for netball such as passing and moving to find a space for the ball and then we all got chance to play a game to recap the actual game itself. Thank you if you managed to attend tonight's meetings, we will make sure we share with you all, the information from them. Have a lovely weekend. Miss Ruby and Mrs Ware. Welcome Welcome back to the children's first full week back after the Summer holidays. They have a had a very busy week in class and have continued to settle very well. Their attitude to reading at home is superb and almost all the class do this every night which is wonderful. Homework will commence soon and we will have more information about that in the next few days. Independence is already developing with them taking charge of resources and roles in the classroom. They love jobs such as putting out the benches in assembly, collecting the team points and tidying the pencil pots. The children have also been busy carrying out baseline assessments this week and have applied themselves very well. English We have begun our first writing sequence which is based on the core text I am Cat by Jackie Morris. This week, we read and responded to the book, which is actually a poem about a domestic cat dreaming of being various wild cats. The book has beautiful illustrations and the language used is poetic and wonderfully descriptive. We will be looking at other 'Cat' texts through this unit which will culminate with the children writing their own 'I am...' text about an animal of their choice. Maths We will begin our maths unit focusing on place value, numbers up to 10,000,000, comparing them, writing them, using number lines, powers of ten, rounding and negative numbers. This unit will last two weeks. History Our History unit this half term is all about the Industrial Revolution. In this first lesson, the children learnt a little bit about what it was like to live in Victorian Britain and the class system in place at the time. They also discovered that there was a huge boom in the population at this time and the effect that this had on people's lives. Next week, we will find out a bit more about the living conditions for working class people living in the cities at this time. Art This week in Art we completed our ‘All about Me Hoodies’ and this gave a great insight into who we are! They are on display in the classroom, and we hope you get chance to see them at our information evening next week. We also began to look at ‘Impressionism’ (totally different to the previous activity) and the children practised mixing watercolours to replicate a small section of Claude Monet’s famous ‘Japanese Footbridge’ painting. French In our French lesson we recapped phrases we had learnt last year and also discussed why we learn a foreign language and what makes a good linguist. We also began learning a new phrase “his name is and her name is…” and used it to play games. P.E. In our P.E. sessions with Coach Edwards the children will be focusing on netball and the skills associated with it. This session will be every Friday morning for the year. This week we played some small team games where we practised some of the skills needed for netball such as passing and moving to find a space for the ball and then we all got chance to play a game to recap the actual game itself. We will also begin swimming at Okehampton which will form one of our P.E. lessons. this will start on Thursday 29th September 2022. Remember next Friday 23rd at 3:35pm our Information Evening and the straight after at 4pm our French Residential Information evening. We hope we get as many of you as possible to attend this very important date and an incredible opportunity for your children! Wishing you all a peaceful bank holiday weekend. We will see the children next week on Tuesday. Thank you, Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby Welcome to the Academic Year 2022/2023, as parents/carers of a Year 6 child. This blog will be published weekly on a Friday to update you with what the children have been learning, including photographs, videos and more.
With the sad news today, this blog will be short as we have had a sombre end to the week as we felt this was appropriate. The children have taken part in a memorial assembly rather than a celebration assembly and today at 12pm, Year 6 walked to St. Peters Church to listen to the 'muffled peel' of the bells that happened across the country at the same time. We felt this was a fitting way for the children to mark the occasion today as a mark of respect. Over the course of the week the children have settled in with some games and activities. They have begun learning rules and responsibilities required in Year 6 and have agreed on our class charter. They have voted on our class councillors and also our House Team Captains. Next week the children will begin with our usual timetable (which we will share with you at the up and coming parents/carers welcome meeting on Friday 23rd September straight after school). We look forwards to adding more detail in our next blog at the end of next week. We wish you a reflective and peaceful weekend. Thank you. Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby. Thank you for coming to our leavers' assembly this morning - we hope you enjoyed it. Personally, I think they did brilliantly - not an easy thing to do for a class of just 12.
Well that's it Year 6 - it's time to say goodbye! Good luck on your journey to Year 7 and beyond - it's been emotional!! |
AuthorWelcome to the blog of Sycamore Class at North Tawton Primary School Archives
July 2024
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