Y6 News of the Week

These weeks are flying by, but in y6 we are making the most of every minute! We have dedicated time this week to completing our first KS2 SATs practice papers in reading and maths. We have sat one reading paper and three maths papers. I am very proud of you all. You have worked hard and used all your skills to complete them. Well done.

In Maths this week we have also managed to tackle percentages. We have been using friendly percentages to then find equivalent fractions and decimals. This has helped us to answer reasoning problems when comparing values. We have also calculated percentages of amounts using 50%, 20%, 10%, 5% and 1%. Our focus will continue to be on percentages next week.

During English this week we have fully edited our independent descriptive writing. These are powerful pieces and will be published in our study work books.

Spelling and grammar lessons this week have focused on subject, object and verb relationships in a sentence. We have identified each and created sentences to embed our learning. SpaG.com will focus on this area.

We have continued with our Science unit this week, Evolution, Adaptation and Inheritance. We recapped our learning so far and then began to think about variation and evolution. The timeline of a Dodo was our first task. How did these birds become extinct? We worked as table teams to create and discuss the timeline of events. Then, to consider survival, we played a game called Survival of the Fittest. Choosing different parts of an animal's body, we became herds of these animals. Out on the playground the herds grazed contently. This didn't last for long as different scenarios left some herds without the skills to survive. Could you survive a drought or an attack from prey? What features would you need to change to survive? We will continue to consider variation and evolution next week.

Our Geography unit continued this week. We recreated the features of a coastline using playdough. Our coastline began without any weathering or erosion. But as the years passed, our coastline changed. We moulded our playdough to create different physical features. Headlands and bays, arches, stacks and stumps were all visible on our boards. We completed an assessment to check our understanding. Well done Y6, you definitely know your stuff!

In Music this week, we began by practising the notes we have learnt using the glockenspiels to the backing track of our song Happy. We split into two teams, each playing a different part. We followed through with these two parts when singing the lyrics to this song. We assessed our singing and have decided to tweak the volume levels on both sides next week. As an extra challenge we successfully listened to, and copied 3 different riffs both individually and in succession. That's the silver challenge completed! We are attempting the gold challenge next week.

In French this week we played Simon says using action words as a table group. We then used word cards to battle against each other and completed a wordsearch. These word cards will now be placed on our class French display to use when we can.

We have celebrated Interfaith Week by enjoying an Aboriginal Virtual Reality workshop organised by Mrs Taylor. Thank you. The creation story was presented using dancing and chanting. The VR sets brought these dances to life and we thoroughly enjoyed taking part. We have also considered faiths across Africa in Y6. We have all researched different aspects of different countries and created a beautiful book to present our findings, which we shared in worship today.

We have discussed completed Spag.com tasks and terminology. New homework has been set. This includes: Spag online task (1), regular reading out loud and TT Rock Stars practice ready for our Inter CDAT Schools Battle, which begins on Monday.

Just to confirm the details of my theme day which takes place on Monday. I would like children to bring in an old single bed sheet (light colour) that you are happy to donate, and if you have any fake fur or animal print items we can make use of, all would be gratefully appreciated. If you do have items that are Stone Age based, then please bring them along too. We will be creating our own Stone Age range of clothing from these items. We will also enjoy other art activities to accessorise our outfits during our day, and we hope to end it by watching a film (time permitting). No food items are required for our Theme Day and children are asked to come into school wearing old clothes (preferably dark).

I look forward to seeing you all next week at parents evening.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs B.