Another busy  week with the children. In English, we have been continuing with our tension stories. The children have planned their own ‘spooky’ story, based on the stories we have been looking at over the last few weeks. They will begin to write this on Monday for the Year 4 children to read at their camping night later in the year.

In Maths, we continue to focus on developing accuracy and efficiency in Arithmetic as well as calculating percentages and solving problems using fractions and percentages. The children will continue to make links with fractions and percentages to decimals this week.

RE continues with our Revelations unit. The children have used the scripture and story to think about St Paul’s revelation on the road to Damascus and what we, as Christians, can learn from this encounter with God. This week, we will apply these lessons to our own lives and the wider communities and world.

On Tuesday at 10.20 in the school hall, Year 5 and 6 will be having a Mass. All are welcome and we hope to see as many of you as possible.

Monday 29th January – SAT’s Meeting from 5pm to 6pm in the school hall. We will be sharing with you all about what will happen during the week and how you can help your child to prepare for these assessments. We look forward to seeing you there.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Year 6 Team

We are now well into the Spring Term and the children have quickly settled back into their learning. Having spent the autumn term consolidating and building on the skills developed in Year 5, the new year is all about applying these in a range of different and sometimes unfamiliar contexts. It can be difficult for children to remain positive when having to tackle unfamiliar problems; they may find it hard to accept when they get the wrong solution or their work has not turned out quite the way they wanted. This is where developing a positive growth mindset comes in.

On Monday 15th January we spent every lesson focusing on feeling positive about our learning, identifying our strengths and areas where we could improve and take our learning to the next level. We learnt how to rephrase our frustrations into a positive outlook. Instead of saying ‘I made a mistake!’ we said ‘Mistakes are proof that I am trying!’. Instead of saying, ‘I can’t do it!’ we said, ‘I can’t do it – yet!’ We finished the day by identifying each others’ personal skills and qualities and then thinking about our ambitions and aspirations for the future.

In maths we completed our work on geometry and angles in shapes – pupils showed great confidence in tackling a wide range of non-routine problems. Our next unit is percentages so please do ask children what the reduced prices will be if you do take part in some late sale shopping. In English we have read a range of spooky stories to help us write effective campfire stories for the Year 4 camping night. Using their tension toolkits, children have already written some gripping tales as part of their learning.

Our RE journey has now moved into Revelations. This has involved reading scripture from Acts regarding the conversion of Saul. Children then created a ‘wanted’ poster to illustrate their understanding of Saul’s acts prior to his visit from Ananias.

You should have received a slip detailing the ‘creative homework tasks’. These all link with our scary story writing and study of electricity in science. We are looking forward to sharing the children’s work after the spring half-term.
Other daily homework tasks are as follows:

Reading – 15 mins a day. Focus on reading speed AND understanding of what has been read. Try and read a range of books.

Maths – We are sending marked arithmetic tests home every week. It would be useful to focus on a particular type of question children have struggled with. We will of course be covering these in daily arithmetic sessions too.

Spelling – we would like children to keep working on the Year3/4 and 5/6 spelling lists in addition to the spellings that are sent home weekly.

CGP Books – Please encourage your children to work through these books if you purchased them following our last parents evening. If you would like to order some for your child, please contact school reception.

BOOSTER GROUPS
We will be beginning additional booster lessons for maths and reading from Monday 29th January. Most of these will take place during the school day, however there are a couple of arithmetic booster groups that will begin at 8:30am. You will recieve a letter next week if your child has been identified as benefitting from this extra support.

Many thanks for your continued support,

The Year 6 Team

Year 6 ended this week with an exciting launch of our S.T.E.M days. This is a whole school opportunity for the children to go deeper with their learning in Science by making links to Technology, Engineering and Maths. Year 6 had a fabulous day exploring, designing and making bridges using their scientific knowledge of materials and forces, using maths to calculate scale and distance and their engineering skils to create a structure for strength and support.

Next week sees the start of Advent and we are looking forward to our whole school Advent Mass on Tuesday at 10.20am at Sacred Heart Church. We can’t wait to see you there.

English sees us continue with writing monologues and Maths continues with our fraction work – focusing on using the four operations to calculate with different fractions and applying them to problems.

A big thank you for the home learning books that the children are bring in. The homework is of a high standards and the children are enjoying sharing it with us and their classmates. Can we please remind you to encourage the children to  complete their homework diary each day with the Sumdog, reading and maths homework that they are undertaking.

Have a lovely week,

The Year 6 Team.

The highlight of our week has to be the Year 5/6 mass at Sacred Heart on Tuesday. With the theme being ‘prayer’, Year 6 put smiles on many faces with their Sister Act inspired rendition of Salve Regina. In fact it was so well received, Father Jeremy requested a repeat rendition to close the service. Thank you to all those who gave their assistance to walk the children safely to and from the church, and to all who attended the service.

Many thanks also to parents who supported their children by meeting with their teacher at our parents’ evenings. It was lovely to meet you all and we are looking forward to continuing to support and challenge our pupils over the coming term.

Maths lessons have focused on fractions this week, moving from simplifying to ordering using a common denominator. Children are growing in confidence in their explanations of this sometimes tricky concept.

In English we have been examining different character viewpoints using the painting ‘An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump’ from 1768 (Google it). It was great fun discussing pupil ideas from looking at a section of the painting and then revealing the whole scene. From this, we created interesting dialogue and have begun planning a monologue for the whole scene from a chosen character’s perspective.

Another busy week then and we have more to look forward to in the coming week, which culminates in a STEM (science, technology, English and maths) investigation day on Friday.

All the best,

The Year 6 Team

Dear all,

This week saw the children exploring war poetry and poetic devices in order to create their own remembrance poem.  We were amazed at how the children took on the task in such a short time to explore messages and emotions that they wanted to convey about war and remembering the fallen soldiers that gave their lives for the freedom of others. Both classes have created a memorial book of their work that will be offered at the Remembrance Assembly on Monday morning.

In Maths we started work on developing fraction and decimal knowledge for year 6. We will be completing a series of assessments next week to enable us to pin-point the next steps in the children’s learning.

In RE, we continue our work with Prayers, Saints and Feasts and look at the role of Saints within the Catholic faith. A reminder about the Year 5/6 Mass – Tuesday 21st November in the Sacred Heart Church at 10.20am. If there are any parents that can walk to the Church with the children, then please let the office or class teachers know of your availability.

The week ended well with a visit from authors – The Two Steves. The children enjoyed a fun-packed performance in the morning and then a writing workshop in the afternoon. We will be applying their story writing advice on Monday when the children have a go at writing a ghost-type story in preparation for our next unit of English.

Enjoy your week.

The Year 6 Team

It was lovely to welcome the children back to school feeling refreshed – we were all ready for half-term following the enjoyable but tiring Stubbington trip.

We have spent the week completing, editing and improving our non-chronological reports on some extremely original and quite gruesome bugs. Would you like to be confronted by a tarantuscorp? The children have applied their understanding of the features of this form of writing to include a range of generalisers, relative clauses and topical language. We may have the next Sir David Attenborough in our ranks!

Our maths learning has continued to focus on efficient methods of multiplying large numbers together. Maybe you could ask your child to do the calculations next time you reach for a calculator at home? We finished the week applying our learning to solve some quite comlex area problems with a few red herrings thrown in for good measure.

We are now studying Prayers, Saints and Feasts in RE, with a particular focus on Mary. Our first lesson investigated the many different titles that she has been given and a discussion of what these told us about her and her importance. We have since been learning the prayer ‘Salve Regina’ which was immortalised in the film ‘Sister Act’. Our hope is to give a showstopping performance at the Year 5 and 6 Mass.

Throughout the week the pupils have completed an assessment of the 100 Year 5 and 6 statutory spellings, the results of which have been shared and should have come home. We would be grateful if parents and carers could spend a little time each week testing children on the words they have highlighted. Please also encourage them to use Sumdog to improve their maths recall and to read daily.

Have a wonderful weekend!

The Year 6 Team

I am sure by now you have been told about the fabulous week we all had at Stubbington.

The children undertook their daily tasks and challenges with enthusiasm, determination and such posititivity. The teamwork and support their showed to their classmates was outstanding and lovely for everyone to see in action.

Monday highlights: Watching the orange sky of the Sahara sandstorm on the beach whilst rockpooling, making sandcastles and fossil hunting. Fox and badger watching from the hide.

Tuesday: Making shelters from branches and ferns and then testing them for waterproofness. Fox and badger watching from the hide.

Wednesday/Thursday: Earthquake assault course, small mammal study – observing field mice and undertaking a pond study.

Friday: Stubbington Fox (Hide and Seek) with particular emphasis on being ‘face stamped’ if caught.

Overall, I am sure further highlights included the daily tuck shop visit and the food!!

During the week, the children’s behaviour was excellent and even with slight illnesses, spirits were kept high. They were a credit to St Peter’s. However, by the end of the week, tiredness had set in so we were all looking forward to our own beds again!

A photo album is in progress and will be added in due course.

Enjoy your half term and look forward to seeing you all on Monday 30th October.

The Year 6 team.

What a busy week we have had!

Having completed our atmospheric descriptions in English, we began immersing ourselves in the fascinating world of bugs as preparation for writing a non-chronological report. This meant that we were able to watch some incredible videos showing the amazing variety of creatures present in the world, picking up on the topical language used.

Our English topic links with our study of evolution and inheritance in science, where this week we have learnt in more detail about how theories of evolution have changed over time. This led to some deep conversations about what we as individuals believe. It has been very interesting to see the children’s homework showing the characteristics they have inherited from their parents – these are up on display and attract a great deal of interest in class.

We are coming to the end of our study of creation in RE and have learnt the importance of the Sabbath and how it is kept holy by the Jews. Children are now creating a guide for making the celebration of Sabbath holy. Next week will see us begin our unit on Prayers, Saints and Feasts.

In maths we have completed our work on addition and subtraction by applying our skills to solving a range of word problems involving measures. Pupils have completed a cold task on multiplication and division which will be used to guide our learning next week.

Stubbington is now just around the corner and we are all very excited! In preparation we have been honing our map reading skills, identifying symbols and using 4 and 6 figure grid references to locate features.

Have a wonderful weekend!

The Year 6 Team

Well what a week it has been! Our Ofsted visit proved a positive experience in year 6. The children were amazing and showed the inspectors all the learning and progress they have already achieved in English and Maths and it’s only week four!  Their engagement and manners were fantastic and are a credit to St Peter’s and their previous teachers – a wonderful year group.

English saw the end of the Whale unit with a wonderfully descriptive and atmospheric piece of writing to describe an encounter with the whale. We then allowed the children to write an extension piece of a diary, letter or journalistic article from a different point of view to not only apply their writing skills but to enhance their creativity.

In Maths, we have been looking at deepening and mastering of addition and subtraction problems. We are challenging the children to find ‘unknowns’ in these problems by using various strategies, asking them to explain their reasoning and then encouraging them to prove their answers with drawings and written evidence. Year 6 has some able mathematicians who have be particularly relishing in these challenges.

RE saw the conclusion of our Creation unit where the children generated some great discussions on the theme of ‘sacrifice’ and how we can deal with conflicts in our lives by deepening our relationship with God through the story of Cain and Able.  Very thought provoking and mature discussions.

Thank you to all the parents who attended the welcome meeting. It was lovely to see so many of you. Please can we remind you to return the consent/medical forms for Stubbington as soon as possible and if you have missed any paperwork then please pop in after school with any member of the Year 6 team and we can give you the relevant documentation.

Have a wonderful weekend.

The Year 6 Team

Welcome

Despite the fact that we have only been in school for nine days, Year 6 pupils have already impressed us with their superb attitude to learning and the quality of work they are producing. A fantastic start to the year for all!

This week we began our science topic ‘Evolution and Inheritance’, which involved learning the difference between the tricky concepts of adaptation and evolution. Children explored how environmental conditions have at certain times favoured the light or darker versions of the peppered moth, explaining which moth would be most prevalent in 2017 and why.

In our RE topic of Creation, children have considered the sacrifices made by Moses as he led God’s people out of Egypt towards the Promised Land. Next week will see us move on to learning about the Ten Commandments and the sacrifices made by the Israelites.

We have continued to develop and apply our understanding of place value and rounding in maths, with all children showing fantastic collaboration and reasoning when solving challenges in small teams. Arithmetic is practised every day and we would like to encourage all pupils to continue to learn their times tables facts every day to support this.

‘Whale Boy’ has captured our imaginations to an even greater extent this week with its rich description. After analysing how the author used this to create changes in atmosphere, pupils have begun to craft their own paragraphs with the same aim in mind. Spellings are a key element in achieving age related expectations for Year 6 pupils  – please encourage and help your child with theirs when you can.

Finally, we have received a last minute invitation to attend a special science day at Purbrook Park School next Thursday. This will be a day of exciting hands-on activities and investigations to inspire our children in this area. Transport to and from the school will be provided by St Peter’s. We will send out further details before the day.

Have a lovely weekend

The Year 6 Team