Welcome Back to Year 6 – 1.3.24

Welcome back to you all and I hope you have had a fabulous half term. You have settled back into a busy week and you have all worked so hard. I am proud of you.

In Maths this week we have begun our unit on decimals. We have rounded to the nearest 1 and 2 decimal places, found the value of different digits, multiplied by 10, 100 and 1000 and finished our week by dividing by powers of 10. We have played Topmarks – Daily 10 which we love and spent some time on TT Rock Stars. I have set homework to reflect our learning.

In English this week we began our focused writing. We are using gathered facts to plan each paragraph and then we have used our plans to create our explanation text. We have used different writers' knowledge including technical vocab, brackets, formal language, synonyms to name a few. We will continue with this unit next week.

In Book Club this week we have read with an adult and changed our books if needed. We have also spent some time talking about regular reading at home and how this supports understanding of texts. We have checked our Big Cat logbooks to ensure we are booking our books out and reminding ourselves to keep up with our reading.

Our SpaG lesson today introduced us to our first look at an old SATs paper. We worked together as a team and using our SpaG books to tackle a few questions. We will continue with this next week. We also reminded ourselves about the spellings of the homophones: there, their and they're and then completed a task on Spagtastic.

In History this week we spent some time researching facts about the Stone Henge. We created henges in our last Forest Schools lesson and wanted to know more about this historical site. We have presented our facts in our own way and shared them with each other.

In Computing this week we began a new unit on spreadsheets. We created a set of data and thought about headings. We then went on to use Google sheets to enter our data and format our spreadsheets. We even added colour to different cells. We will continue with this unit next week.

In Science this week we completed an experiment to prove that animals need to evolve to survive. Using Darwin's finches and the Galapagos Islands we each became a bird. We chose different beaks and visited different islands. Each island offered a different food for the birds to eat. We collated our data after each island visit and eventually understood which island our bird would best survive on. We will use this data in our upcoming computing unit. An afternoon of great fun.

In Art this week we were introduced to Shepard Fairey who is a contemporary street artist and activist. In his work he tackles topics such as political power and propaganda. Fairey uses stencils and screen print to make his work. We then went on to think about something we are passionate about and would like to tell the world about. Our ideas ranged from animal cruelty to climate change. We have begun to create mood boards to capture our ideas.

We have continued to think about Courageous Advocacy this week as we looked at the recycling services provided by Terracycle. Year 6 are going to use Terracycle to encourage the recycling of those difficult items in our school and in our wider community. We are very excited to get going with this project.

Our first music lesson of this half term saw us creating our own ideas for a beatboxing scenario. We worked in groups to plan using ideas from a brainstorming session. We need to ensure everyone contributes equally and we will continue with this unit next week.

We have begun a new RE unit this week thinking about Jesus and who he was. We looked at two Bible passages – Isaiah 9: 6-7 and Philippians 2: 6-11. We then used them to answer the question, 'Who was Jesus?' We then went on to think about people who met Jesus and what they thought of him. We watched a short video from the Bible project and recorded a short reflection.

In French this week we continued from our last lesson. We selected pronouns with the correct form of a verb and created sentences about how people travel to school.

During our Wellbeing lesson this week we thought about what we would do if we ruled the world. Lots of discussion before we worked in our journals.

Our PSHE lesson this week was taught by Mrs Pointon as we all came together in the hall to be introduced to our next unit.

We have taken part in PE this week with both Mrs Whittingham and Kick.

We have enjoyed buddy time this week as we travelled around the daily mile track. This was a real treat.

Year 6, what a super week you have all had. I am so proud of you. You have settled back into Year 6 quickly and you have worked extremely hard. I hope you have had a wonderful weekend.

Your teacher,
Mrs. B.