We have enjoyed an interesting week of mathematical investigations, with a particular focus on efficient addition and subtraction strategies. Children practised using redistribution, rounding, number lines and written methods with a range of calculations, thinking deeply about which they preferred and why. By the end of the week it was good to see pupils manipulating the original number sentence in order to apply their chosen strategy.

Guided reading and English lessons blended together this week to give the children a taste of Dicken’s portrayal of the moment that Oliver Twist first entered Fagin’s hideout. After analysing his text and playing around with new language, our week ended with a re-write of the film scene to be sent to his publishers. We are looking forward to finishing and editing these on Monday.

Our topic work is ongoing, and we spent time this week completing timelines to compare the Ancient Greek, Mayan and Celtic civilisations; did you know that the Mayans were stuck in their own stone age while the Greeks were masters in bronze?

We are now just a week and a few days away from our Fairthorne adventure. Hopefully you are feeling well prepared. If not – please keep an eye on your email for the Fairthorne welcome pack which includes a copy of the suggeted kit list.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Year 6 Team

The children have really adjusted to their new classroom environment well, settling in to their new routines efficiently.

For English, the children have been looking at Narnia and refreshing their writing skills from before the summer holidays. They have been developing their reflective skills during this and are hopefully looking forward to their unit on Oliver Twist – a heritage text focus for them.

Kicking-off our History topic, Ancient Greece, Year 6 have explored atlases to locate Greece in the world, and they have zoomed-in on its climate, neighbouring countries and its degrees of latitude and longitude. They used their creative skills to express this information!

It was great to get outside for our weekly Tuesday PE where we began our cross-country unit of learning. After a few false starts, children improved quickly in how they used their moving body parts to jog more efficiently and for longer. As they will understand, this is the foundation of endurance running, which we will explore in the weeks to come.

A few reminders:

• Homework is handed out on Monday and due in by Friday.
• Weekly spellings will be tested on Friday.
• Vocabulary work (mainly in the form of discussing words) will be sent home on Mondays.
• A short activity will be set on Sumdog to develop fluency in maths.

We look forward to seeing you at the Year 6 Welcome Meeting at 5:30pm on Monday 23^rd September.

Year 6 Team

The Year 6 Team enjoyed officially welcoming the students  – who we last met as Year 5’s – into their new classes in Year 6. We are all very much looking forward to getting to know each and every child and are excited by the learning opportunities that are planned.

Our first two days have been very productive – looking at the relationships between larger numbers in Maths, analysing and collecting ideas for a setting description in English and familiarising ourselves with the different styles of reading questions in Guided Reading.

In RE we spent time interpreting what the revised school mission statement would look like in words, phrases and actions while Science lessons introduced our first topic – Light.

Pupils have been issued with their new school homework diaries  – further information regarding their use and expectations will follow shortly. Parents should also have received a new Home-School Agreement – this is for your information and does not need to be returned to school.

Upcoming dates for your diaries:

Parent Welcome Meeting/Faithorne Residential Evening – Monday 23rd September 5:30-6:30

Fairthorne Residential – Mon Oct 14- 18

Have a lovely weekend.

The Year 6 Team

What a full, final week! Our week culminated with our Year 6 Leaver’s Mass today, where the children reflected on their time at St Peter’s and the growing that has taken place to make them into the confident, resilient, well-rounded young people that they are today. The children (and families) were most moved by the photo-montage that was assembled at the end – a few tears were shed…

The most memorable event of the week took place on Tuesday night for the year 6 children, where adults and children of the school were entertained by our end-of-year production of Joseph! While everyone pulled together for the performance and the practising that occurred beforehand, a special mention must go to our lead role as Joseph – Riley was a future West-End star in-the-making!!! He really made the role his own and was creative in his characterisation and positioning of the character…Step aside Jason Donovan!!!

The children can look forward to a Fun-Day on Monday where they can come in wearing sports clothes and also bring a change of clothes for their D.I.S.C.O.!

Have a cracking weekend!

This week has seen an amp-up in the life of an actor in a production – the children have worked relentlessly all week to address their lines and staging positions. As the actors amongst us know, this is an arduous and laborious task, but one that is needed. The children are so excited about the number of tickets sold and the prospect of showing the culmination of their work. We are proud of where the children have got to with ‘Joseph’, bearing in mind the time they have had.

Many thanks go to parents and family members who have gone out of their way to provide costumes; this has made the children feel very special and has given them a sample of life on the West End stage!

We look forward to seeing you all at Oaklands. The curtain rises at 6pm Tuesday 16th July.

Have a great weekend.

The Year 6 Team

Beautiful weather arrived just in time to make the Year 6 Bikeability Week an enjoyable experience with not a damp saddle in sight. After a day of scrutiny from the instructors, the children then faced the local roads, developing their road awareness in real-life situations. They demonstrated commitment and critical thinking to remain safe at all times. Well done to all!

Inbetween riding their bikes, pupils have been investigating how heart rate responds to differing levels of exertion; they carried out a range of physical activities and compared these to their own measured resting heart rate. Bar charts were created to illustrate the data and children calculated their ‘mean’ for each activity. This allowed for discussions surrounding anomalies within a set of data – some dodgy HR monitoring took place with one person reporting a heart rate of 14 beats per minute! He must be fitter than Mo Farah!!!

Hopefully we will see you at Summerfest tonight and at the Sports Day on Monday morning at 9am.

The Year 6 Team

As our Everest survival topic continues, we were delighted to welcome Malcolm Harris – a professional photographer and mountaineer – who presented  a really engaging talk about his adventures around Everest Base Camp and summiting Kilimanjaro. On top of this, Malcolm also showed the children his range of mountaineering equipment, including a pair of the infamous crampons! And no, he didn’t experience any ‘cramp-on’ Everest! Thanks must also go to Sienna, who brought her father’s climbing equipment in that he used in 1988 during his trekking around the base of K2. To wrap, this up, a final thank you to Mr Cunningham who also spoke to the children about his trekking from Kathmandu to the area around the Khumbu Glacier. We really hope this has inspired the children to realise that the world is a small place, and that you can do anything you put your mind to. Just remember – ‘manage the risk’.

It was lovely to end the week with our Brazilian Carnival celebrations. The children had put a lot of effort into creating: Carnival masks, carnival shaker, Christ the Redeemer artwork and Brazilian banners. See below for a snapshot of the afternoon…

Another busy week in Year 6 began in an uplifting way on Tuesday with the celebration of Year 5 and 6 Pentecost Mass at Scared Heart Church. The weather was on our side as we walked to and from a wonderful service hosted by Father Jeremy with Miss Keo providing musical accompaniment. As we have been very focused for the past few weeks, Year 6 are grateful to the Year 5 children for leading the worship on this occasion.

The children were given the opportunity to write more informally this week when creating ‘A Dummies’ Guide to Mountaineering!’ The resulting puns and word play are ‘snow joke’ and the children truly ‘peaked’ on this particular piece of writing! They deserve to be read – which is a good opportunity to remind parents that they are invited to view their children’s work in class from 3:30pm this Monday. To further immerse the Year 6’s in their survival topic, Mr Cunningham kindly shared his photographs and maps from a trek he made in the region a ‘few’ years back; the children were very taken with a particular passport sized photo found inside his Sagarmartha National Park Trekking Permit…

While they were engrossed in their writing, Year 6 were visited by photographer Malcolm who was taking shots for future school publications. By sheer coincidence, he too has actually trekked most of the way to Everest Base Camp and was so impressed with their focus and interest has offered to share his photos, equipment and experiences with us this Thursday morning. How kind. We’re sure we’ll have many questions to ask!

Keeping with our topic, maths had an Everest focus too. Pupils were given an altitude profile graph of a round-trip to Base Camp with a series of related questions. Did you know that temperature drops by 6 degrees centigrade for every 1000m climbed from sea-level? Imagine how cold it can be at the 8,848m summit!

Have a lovely weekend,

The Year 6 Team

Coinciding with the spring summit season on Mount Everest, this week saw the Year 6 pupils begin their latest English topic – survival. We immersed ourselves in the world of mountaineering by watching scenes from the film ‘Everest’ and reading excerpts from the book  ‘Into Thin Air’ – the real life recount on which it was based. One of the most dangerous parts of any expedition up the south-west face is having to cross the Khumbu Icefalls, a slowly moving ‘river’ of ice, riddled with crevasses and hanging ice cliffs waiting for their next victims – an ideal setting for the children to write an extended story full of tension. We are very pleased with the results of their efforts over the week; they have all managed to convey character and capture the setting through their use of dialogue, action and description.

To tie in with the physical demands of survival situations, we have begun a new science topic this week, focused on human responses to exercise. Having analysed Mr Land’s heart rate over the course of a 10km run, the children are looking forward to comparing their own responses to running with and without the burden of a parachute on their backs. Should be fun!

The D-Day celebrations were another focus this week, and we were fortunate to have Kris share his Dad’s first-hand experience of the events that took place on Southsea Common. We enjoyed reading the programme and brochures which taught us more about the preparations made and huge numbers of brave soldiers that left the south coast for various Normandy beaches.

A little reminder that we would welcome parents and relatives to join us at Sacred Heart Church at 10:30am  Tuesday 11th June to celebrate the Year 5 and 6 Mass.

Have a good weekend,

The Year 6 Team

After a short but demanding term, we are all looking forward to enjoying a week of rest and recovery. Sadly, Friday was the last day at St Peter’s for Josh, so we decided to hand over the blog to him. Here is what he wrote…

This week turned out to be a farewell week for me as I will be leaving after half-term. For most of the week we had the pleasure of learning about similarities and differences between the poison dart frog and the UK frog. After we had taken some very useful notes, we had to write a non-chronological report about these amazing amphibians. We were given the choice of either writing it up on publisher or decorating it in our books.  My final week at St.Peter’s culminate with a celebratory football game on Friday. Also this week, the whole school voted for their favourite Year 6 art habitat on Wednesday. Working in groups, we designed rainforest scenes to tie-in with our work on evolution and adaptation in science. We (well I won’t be there!) are looking forward to learning the results after half-term.

We wish Josh well at his new school and thank him for his contributions to St Peter’s, particularly his efforts in cross country which saw him represent Havant at the Hampshire Championships!

Have a lovely bank holiday weekend.

The Year 6 Team