Home learning update
Hello Year 6 pupils and parents
If you have come to the blog in seach of home learning resources for the self-isolation period, please be advised that these are now located in pupils’ Microsoft Teams accounts. Details of this, together with pupil emails and logins were sent out via parentmail recently.
Please contact the school office if you require further assistance.
Stay well,
The Year 6 Team
The power of the media!
The children this week have been thinking about the power of the media in a range of different ways.
We have been unpicking aspects of recent speeches given by Joe Biden and how his message of peace and unity relates to the ideals of our Creation Unit in RE – this has been an interesting exercise and the children enjoyed applying their Creation knowledge to current, real-world issues. On top of this, Year 6 have written a persuasive letter to the BBC requesting that more documentaries and television programmes reveal wolves in a more positive light. Again, this has been an enriching process where the children have acquired new subject-specific knowledge about wolves. Their composition and output has really ramped up!
Children have continued to develop their sending and receiving skills in netball, practising ‘the pivot’ to orientate their position better before passing. The girls certainly ‘out pivoted’ the boys this week!
Reminders
- There are still a couple of weeks until the reading passports are due in. Get stuck into it!
- It has been great to see what children have been reading at home through their on-going book reviews – keep aiming to complete a review every two weeks.
- Ideally, children should be making their way through their second ‘must read book’ of the year (out of six books)
- If you have yet to book your virtual parents evening slot, remember to!
Have a good weekend,
The Year 6 Team
Straight back into it…
Having had a lovely (if slightly wet!) half-term break, the children settled down into their learning without a break in their stride from last term.
This week we have learnt how we can use factors to help with dividing by two digit numbers. For example, 388 divided by 12 can be solved by first dividing by 3 and then dividing the answer by 4. Have a go yourself – it really is very efficient. Next week we will be learning ‘old school’ long division. It may help to have a reminder of this method here
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGqBQrUYua4
In our English learning we have been generating reasoned arguments to put in a letter to the BBC to encourage them to portray wolves in a more positive light.
Next week we were looking forward to listening to Debbie from the Waterlooville Foodbank and asking her some questions around their work. Unfortunately this can no longer happen but we have emailed her them instead and are looking forward to her responses.
We finished this week by taking a detailed look at the role of women in Ancient Greece, comparing their lives to those of modern women. This provoked some excellent discussion around what is ‘normal’ for women in today’s society and some outrage at the way in which Greek ladies were generally tied to the home!
Reminders
Please can all children continue to practise their times tables and related division facts. The lockdown period definitel impacted the recall of these.
The ‘Autumn Reading Challenge’ is still ongoing. Well done to Caitlin Meechan for completing hers this week.
Have a lovely, restful weekend.
The Year 6 team.
Year 6 Wolf Pack!
After a really productive final week of term, we are all very much looking forward to some time at home to recharge and come back stronger in Autumn 2!
Our English learning this week was woven into our grammar studies where the children honed their skills in unpicking word, phrase and clause choices of the writer. It culminated in them independently writing a non-chronological report on wolves, where new facts were learned such as the fact that a wolf’s howl can be heard up to ten kilometers away.
Finalising our study of Creation in RE, the children have been thinking about whether it is easy to be a person of God. Unfortunately there are many problems and conflicts affecting the world, with many of God’s people making sacrifices to try and address these. The Year 6 children went on to think about who else could help make a difference and what they themselves could do.
This links nicely into a pupil driven project we will be undertaking in November to collect foodstuffs and monetary donations for the Waterlooville Foodbank. More information will follow when the children have prepared it.
The major focus in maths this week has been to secure a formal method for multiplying a four digit number by a two digit number. Great progress has been made and we would encourage all Year 6 children to keep dedicating ten minutes a day to pracise recall of their number facts on Sumdog and TTRockstars.
REMINDERS
Peter Ashley Centre trip
Tuesday 10.11.20 (6Land) and Wednesday 11.11.20 (6Pratley)
Please make sure you have paid and completed the form which was sent out via parentmail.
All children will require a packed lunch on this day.
Pottering about this week!
A great time was had by all on Tuesday during our Harry Potter day of learning! The young wizards really stepped-up their efforts with a fantastic array of costumes and their efforts during the day. Dumbledore and Hagrid really hope they enjoyed it…
As you would expect, much of our English work revolved around a scene from Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone and the children loved watching the opening forty minutes of the film.
We have moved onto refining our skills in multiplication and division this week, where the children have tackled real-life problems and they have considered how drawing a table can help them see a pattern in the problem. Of course , knowing your number facts is a real help for these types of problems – please encourage and make time for your children to practise these as part of their home learning.
TTRockstars is a great resource – maybe you could challenege one-another!
Plans have been finalised for a morning of adventurous activities at The Peter Ashley Centre. A Parentmail has been sent with full details. If you need further information, do contact the school office.
Have a great weekend!
The Year 6 Team
Rain stopped play!
What a wet week! Torential rain stopped play on Tuesday afternoon during PE, which was a shame as the children were collecting data using the school’s Garmin GPS watches to be able to input it for their computing lessons later in the term. Therefore, we will have a longer PE session this Tuesday afternoon.
Writing this week has finished off studying Narnia and the children have thoroughly enjoyed writing from Lucy’s viewpoint as she explored the wardrobe and the winter wonderland. This learning will prepare and heighten their senses for Harry Potter week next week. Tuesday is Harry Potter dress-up day where children are encouraged to dress-up as a character from the film series. This is NOT mandatory however. Please be aware that they will be doing PE in their outfits, so trainers are best suited for the day.
Do ask your child to explain ‘Stefan’s Method’ for subtraction to you – they have been applying this nifty strategy to their maths this week.
Please keep up with the reading passport challenge and book reviews to help with your child’s self-reflection of their text. It has been great to see so many of the ‘must read’ books gracing the children’s tables. Keep it up!
Have a restful weekend.
The Year 6 Team
Settling in…
What a busy week! The children have started to settle into the learning pattern of the week and their new learning environment. We have finished our first mini-unit in English and we are now practising our skills in some writing based on ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by C S Lewis. This will be followed quickly by another piece based on ‘Harry Potter’. These units will focus on developing the children’s control and use of a range of clauses within sentences and their precision within this. Hopefully they will be fired up by the settings that are revealed.
The children enjoyed their PE this week where they played football in small teams and focused on their spatial awareness and the pitch around them. By the end, they looked ready for the England Team!
In maths we are coming to the end of our unit on number and place value, and have been developing our skills in rounding and using negative numbers in context.
It has been good to see so many children in possession of the ‘Reading Passport’ books and the ‘Must Reads’. We have been fortunate enough to have Mrs Porter, the school librarian, visit our classes each week to enable children to take out books of interest. She has also been inspiring us with classic tales such as ‘The Lady of Shalott’. Great intonation Mrs P!
We are looking forward to the Year 6 Mass with Father Jeremy next Tuesday.
Please keep encouraging your children with the home learning tasks. These are marked in class every Friday and should be in school on that day (or before).
Have an enjoyable weekend.
The Year 6 Team
Welcome to Year 6!
Welcome to our first Year 6 blog post for the new academic year 2020-2021. We hope you visit this site on a regular basis to keep up-to-date with current events and notices regarding pupils in 6P and 6L.
The Year 6 staff team have enjoyed getting to know the children better in these, the first few days of term. We have been very impressed with the speed with which they have settled into new routines, particularly when many have been away from the school environment for some time now. Of course we would have liked to have met the parents to say hello and share important information for the year ahead. As this has not been possible, we have prepared a short(ish!) video presentation which can be found by clicking on the link below:
We continue to work on our presentation skills!
If you do require further clarification on any aspect please contact us via the school office email.
PE Days
PE in Year 6 takes place on the following days:
Tuesday – Every week.
Thursdays – Every other week beginning 17/9 (1/10, 15/10).
Children should wear their PE kit to school on the days they have PE
Reading Journals
We have had a great response to the Reading Journal ‘Create your own cover’ competition. Winners have been chosen and will be announced next week.
TTRockstars
To improve children’s speed of recall of number facts we would be very happy if they could spend 10 minutes practising on TTRockstars at least three times per week. They have their logins in their maths homework books. The programme is set to automatically increase the challenge when a child can answer questions within a certain time-frame so it will ensure they keep progressing.
Have a great weekend
The Year 6 Team
Our final week of home learning for those that are at home!
Hello everybody! Here it is then, the last week!
To close with for the year, all we can say as a Year 6 team is that we know you are ready for the next stage of your school life. In class, there have been such mature, positive and forward-thinking views held in the last three weeks relating to your transition and this demonstrates what a solid position you are ALL in to move forward in terms of your mind set and outlook.
As a group of children, you have shown such good learning behaviours this year, where you have had to be resilient and reflective throughout, as a result of the many challenges faced. BUT remember, this has only made you stronger and ‘tougher’ in how you are able to deal with things and this is a great recipe for you moving forward into new territory. Overall, you have shown a really strong commitment to ‘wanting’ to improve and this has been shown in the learning that has taken place from September through to this last week. Keep being curious and resilient! Keep pushing forward!
We will miss each of you greatly!
This will be our last home-learning blog for the Summer Term. Should you want to keep yourselves ‘ticking over’ during the summer break, please be assured that the learning will remain on these pages for you to dip into as you see fit. In addition, you will have access to all of our online learning resources such as SATSBootcamp, MyMaths, Sumdog and TTRockstars until the end of August!
Monday – Please reflect and look back briefly over the learning that has taken place last week relating to your Transition. You should have finished up to and including Session 6 last week – if you have not, then you will need to complete these sessions before moving on to Session 7, 8 and 9.
-Please complete the Session 7 part of the booklet and read the accompanying material.
Session-7-What-is-normal-anyway
Tuesday – Please complete the Session 8 part of the booklet and read the accompanying material.
Session-8-Friendships-and-fallouts
Wednesday – Please complete the Session 9 part of the booklet and read the accompanying material.
Session-9-Living-well 1-13
Session-9-Living-well to end
Thursday – Today is a day to catch up on any transition work you have not been able to complete yet! Please ensure your reflection has been thorough and that you have discussed your thoughts, feelings and outlooks for the year ahead with your parents or family members. Remember, if you have any older siblings at secondary school, then they can be a great ‘sounding board’ for you as they are ‘living’ the secondary school life as we speak…
Maths
I thought we should apply our number sense to a few warm-up problems. Click on the link below to see the questions:
For our final three days we are going to continue to build on the work we have done on statistics last week. You wil need to print the questions off so that you can interpret the graphs properly.
The tasks are here: Statistics
Links to the Oak National Academy online lessons can be found here:
Monday: https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/interpret-line-graphs
Tuesday: https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/construct-line-graphs
Wednedsay https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/interpret-pie-charts
RE
As we approach the end of the school year and consider our journey in faith towards God, now is a great time to reflect upon each of the Sacraments that form a special part of this journey. Please choose ONE of the seven Sacraments below: Baptism, Holy Communion, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders, Reconciliation or Anointing of the Sick.
With your chosen sacrament, have a go at ONE of the following tasks…
· Write a prayer or poem about your favourite Sacrament. How could you ask for God’s blessing and guidance throughout your Christian journey? Describe how you would feel during the Sacrament.
· Create a stained glass window to represent the key symbol(s) of your chosen Sacrament. What do these symbols mean and why do you think that they are they important?
· Can you find any photographs at home from when you or a family member took part in any of the Sacraments? Discuss what the experience was like and what you can both still remember.
Family Science Activity 10.7.20
Spaghetti Towers https://www.rigb.org/families/experimental/spaghetti-towers – to watch the video
The activity:
· Make a tower from spaghetti and marshmallows.
· ExpeRiment with the construction of your tower to find out which shapes are best for building with.
· Learn why some shapes are more stable than others when you build a tower. https://www.rigb.org/docs/spaghettitowers_infosheet_0_1.pdf – for the full information on the activity and questions to ask your child(ren)
You will need:
Packet of spaghetti (uncooked) • Packet of marshmallows
What to do:
Challenge a child or children to use marshmallows (whole ones or pieces) to join lengths of spaghetti together to make the tallest tower possible. You could start by building a simple cube and seeing what you need to do to make a taller structure that remains standing.
Going Further challenge:
· Instead of building a tall tower, you could try to build the strongest bridge from spaghetti and marshmallows.
· You could limit the amount of spaghetti and number of marshmallows to make the task more difficult.
· You could give children a budget with which to ‘buy’ spaghetti and marshmallows and make the ‘cost’ of the tower another element they have to consider.
· Try out this interactive ‘shapes’ lab to see how forces affect different shapes: http://bit.ly/ShapesLab
Music
Think back over the past school year which started in September 2019. What can you remember doing? Make a list of these things.
Now think of a tune you know well.
Using this tune and the list you have written, can you compose a song about this school year? Perhaps you could record yourself singing it.
Home learning week beginning July 6th 2020
Hello everybody! We hope you are well.
This week for English, we will be focusing on our speaking, listening and reflecting skills. We will not be carrying out Guided Reading, so you will have a good chunk of time for English.
We will cast our minds back to two weeks ago, where we commenced our ideas and thoughts of ‘Transition,’ what shape that takes for us in this current situation, and what that looks like for us when thinking about secondary school. We will also reconsider our mind set, and how possessing a positive, growth mind set could lead us on a similar path that Kid Awesome took from our book study, ‘You Are Awesome’ by Matthew Syed.
ENGLISH (1 hour and 20 minutes each day)
This week you will need to print off this workbook to complete the relevant sections each day:
Be-Awesome-Go-Big-Workbook pages 1 to 12
Be-Awesome-Go-Big-Workbook pages 13 to 16
Be-Awesome-Go-Big-Workbook pages 17 to 20
Be-Awesome-Go-Big-Workbook pages 21 to 22
Monday – Read the Session 1 powerpoint attached and, in the booklet that is in this blog or printed for you in class, complete the session 1 questions and tasks from the booklet.
You should really take your time to reflect first and not just commit to the first thought or idea that pops into your head. Take your time!
Session-1-Being-awesome part one
Session-1-Being-awesome part two
Tuesday – Read the Session 2 powerpoint and complete the Session 2 booklet. Then, move on to the Session 3 powerpoint and complete the Session 3 section of the booklet.
Wednesday – Read the Session 4 powerpoint and then complete the Session 4 booklet. The powerpoint and the booklet that you are completing should, we would imagine, run alongside each other as some of the advice from the powerpoint should be thought about and considered when you are completing each section of the booklet.
Remember, you will get more out of this Transition process if you are honest and reflective about yourself as a person, as a learner and how this could look when you look at yourself as a ‘future self.’ This ‘future self’ of you could be ‘you’ in a day, a week, a month, six months…There is no time frame, but if you can think about how you can grow, and grow into a Kid Awesome way of thinking, then transition to secondary school and ways of overcoming obstacles could become smoother for you. This is because you will be open to persevering with tasks and you will be open to making mistakes and thinking about how to improve upon things. If you have read this blog to this point, well done! Great persevering!!!!!!
Thursday & Friday – Read the Session 5 powerpoint and at the same time, complete the Session 5 booklet. Then, move on to the Session 6 powerpoint and complete the Session 6 booklet.
Session-5-Lost-but-not-lost.pptx
Make sure, by the end of Friday, you have completed the first six sections of the booklet!
SPELLINGS (10 minutes; three times this week)
Look back within your English book. Write down 10 spellings that you got incorrect, whether they were silly or you did not know how to spell them.
Re-write them correctly five times each.
Then, create a Wordsearch for a parent or sibling at home that has all of the 10 spellings in. I would make perhaps a 100 square grid, so that is 10 squares wide and 10 squares high.
Maths
This week in our maths learning we are going to revisit fractions, decimals, percentages and statistics.
Remember to warm up with 5 arithmetic questions everyday:
This week’s lessons are here:
Monday https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/understand-percentages
Tuesday https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/equivalences-between-fdp
Wednesday https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/problems-with-percentages-of-amounts
Thursday https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/interpret-mean-as-an-average
Friday – Go to MyMaths and complete the assessment that has been set.
The tasks for the whole week are here:
Geography
In this, the final lesson of the unit, you will have an opportunity to demonstrate your acquired knowledge and understanding whilst also developing your independent learning and research skills.
Your role – A Brazilian Tourist Guide
You will be taking on the role of the Brazilian tourist guides who have the responsibility of attracting tourists to visit Brazil.
- What do you think this job role entails?
Answer – being very persuasive and attracting tourists to visit Brazil
Think about the following questions and jot down your ideas:
- Why would you want to visit Brazil?
- What would attract tourists to Brazil?
- What do you think we would have to create to attract tourists to Brazil?
Travel Brochures
Travel brochures are designed and written in a way that should persuade the reader to want to visit the places they are showcasing. Spend some time exploring the features of this travel brochure for Latin America. Brazil can be found from page 40 onwards. What does it include that helps to ‘sell’ the location?
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/images.cloud.kuoni.co.uk/brochure/2018/Latin%20America%202018.pdf
Use your ideas to form a success criteria for the creation of a successful brochure/ tourist information guide. Compare what you have come up with to this list:
Brazil Lesson 6 Success Criteria
Task
Pick one task that you would like to complete from the following options:
- A city escape brochure
- As a member of the Rio de Janeiro tourist information board your task is to attract tourists to visit your city. Your guide should include the following information:
- The location of the city
- The major human and physical landmarks
- The best places to visit and explore in the city
- The food and drinks you should try
- The best cultural events you should attend
- A beach resort brochure
- There are hundreds of beautiful beaches around the world which people should visit. As a member of the Brazilian tourist information board you have discovered that people are opting to visit beaches in other parts of the world rather than those in Brazil.
- Your task is to create a beach resort brochure that will encourage tourists to visit the beaches of Brazil. Your brochure should include the following:
- Images and descriptions of the best beaches
- Maps and directions of the beaches showing people how to reach them
- The best human and physical landmarks found close to the beaches of Brazil
- The best places to stay, visit, and eat whilst visiting Brazil’s beaches
- The natural wonders of Brazil information guide
- Many people have heard about the natural wonders of the world however very few have the opportunity to visit them. As a member of the eco-tourism board in Brazil your task is to create an information guide to share with tourists who want to visit these places.
- Your guide should include information about the following:
- The Amazon Rainforest
- The Pantanal
- The Cerrado
- The Caatinga
- The Mata- Atlantica
- The Pampas
- A guide to the Amazon rainforest
- As one of Brazil’s most well-known natural environments, many tourists want to visit. As a member of the Amazon rainforest tourism board your task is to create a tourist information guide to help visitors find out all they need to know about the Amazon.
- Your guidebook should include the following:
- The location and size of the Amazon rainforest
- The plants and animals of the rainforest
- The indigenous people of the rainforest
- The cities of the rainforest: Manaus
You will find the following website useful to support this task:
- Brazil Fact File on the National Geographic site: http://ngkids.co.uk/places/country-fact-file-brazil , ICT (computers/IPads etc.).
Remember we would love to see your finished work! Email it in please 🙂
Art
Art Challenge For Father Jeremy:
Father Jeremy has got a very special celebration coming up on 26th July this year. He will be celebrating 45 years since his ordination into the priesthood. I think this is a remarkable achievement and should be marked by your incredible artwork. Therefore, your Art challenge for the next fortnight is to produce a piece of art for Father Jeremy. This can take any form you like from street art, a drawing, collage or even some edible art! As well as being a priest, Father Jeremy has a wide range of interests including walking, reading and nature. So let you creative juices flow and come up with something spectacular….I know you will!
As I have mentioned, this is a two week challenge and I would ask that, as well as me displaying your art on the Blog, would you please keep hold of it (yes even sculptures you may make), so that I can collect it from you, when we are all back in school and put it in a book and then present in to Father Jeremy.
As always, you can still send any other art work to me and I will post that on the Blog too.
Please email your artwork to me:
n.pearson@stpeterswaterlooville.hants.sch.uk
Thank you
Keep creating and keep safe!
Mrs Pearson
Music
Over the past few weeks, you have listened to 10 pieces of music composed by Musical Trailblazers. Go to the website below and listen to them again.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ten-pieces/ten-pieces-trailblazers/zfpy7nb
Which was your favourite and why?
Which was your least favourite and why?
Family Science Activities
If your child has an allergy to eggs – please choose another exciting investigation from https://www.rigb.org/families/experimental
Bouncing Eggs https://www.rigb.org/families/experimental/eggsperiments – watch the video
· Make an uncooked egg bounce!
· Experiment with different liquids to see what effect they have on eggs.
· Learn how the acid in household liquids like orange juice and vinegar react with eggshells and make them dissolve, leaving the inside of the egg intact. https://www.rigb.org/docs/dissolving_eggs_infosheet_v2_0_1.pdf – download worksheet for instructions and questions to ask before and after the investigation.
You will need:
5 eggs • Glasses or jars that an egg can fit inside comfortably • Cling film • Oil • Milk • Water • Vinegar • Orange juice
Going further challenge:
· You can use the shell-less eggs you make from this experiment to do another activity which will let you shrink and expand the eggs by placing them in different liquids: http://bit.ly/nakedeggs
· Watch a video of how to make a coloured bouncy egg, then try making one yourself: http://bit.ly/Rubbe