Year 6 - Snow Leopards and Jaguars

We started this week in Snow Leopards in our usual manner with English, maths and topic work. On Tuesday, however, the children were treated to an exciting morning of activities, all based on the theme of Mexico. Mrs Woolworth came into the class to share with them her wide knowledge and experience of Mexican culture. First, she talked to the class about the history of Mexico and its people and then she gave them sugar skulls to decorate. The children loved this activity - and you can see the results of their labours here: We had lots of fun making and eating various Mexican dishes including guacamole, which the children made themselves. Mrs Woolworth provided each of the children with a kit for making burritos and quesadillas and each of them was given the ingredients to make their own guacamole.  You can see from the pictures below that the children had a thoroughly good time and our sincere thanks go to Mrs Woolworth who invested so much time and effort to provide the

In maths this week, the children have continued their work describing positions on the full coordinate grid  as part of the unit on Geometry.  On Tuesday, we moved on to l earning about position and direction and this has involved children working with translating shapes from one position to another and describing the translation.  In English, we have started reading Holes by Louis Sachar and the children are particularly enjoying this author's style of writing. This books ties in with our new topic - Hola Mexico.  We have begun working on our new topic this week (Hola Mexico) by looking at the geographical location of Mexico and by listening to some of the music which is typical of the region.  The children have also had lots of opportunities this week to practise their song for the carol concert and for their performance at the Christmas Fayre on Friday. We hope that we will see you all there. 

It's been another lovely week in Snow Leopards and the children have finished writing their stories. In ICT, we practised our keyboard and presentation skills by typing these stories up. The children have used the  features of Spell Check to edit their work and the thesaurus to help them to find alternative words. Next week, we will be starting our new topic, Hola Mexico,  and our class reader - Holes by Louis Sachar.  In maths, we have finished our unit on adding and subtracting fractions and are having a 'fraction break' for a week before returning to multiplying and dividing fractions. In this intervening week, we are learning about Geometry - specifically, position and direction.  Once again, we have exciting plans for our new topic and are currently planning a 'Wow' event which will take place early on in the Spring term.  Mrs Penton and Miss Savory

Thank you to everyone who was able to come to the reading cafe last Friday. This was a real success and the children enjoyed creating works of art, which will soon be on show in the upper school library. In maths this week, we have continued with our work with fractions and the children have been doing number line work as well as adding and subtracting fractions. In English, the children have planned a story based in the Antarctic, with an animal as the main character. During this piece of writing, we are focussing on speech punctuation and using a variety of clauses in our writing. In science, the children are creating food chains and food webs, based on animals which live in one of the polar regions. Finally, please keep an eye out for a letter which will be coming home in the next couple of weeks, inviting you to our end of term carol service on Tuesday 18th December at 9:45am.

Thankyou to all the adults who were able to come along to our reading cafe on Friday 16th November. Everyone worked together to produce some fabulous artwork. We are hoping to display the work in the library over the next week or so. Here are a few photographs from the morning.

Our first walk. This is Grinlow Country Park. it has amazing views over the town of Buxton. Solomon's Temple is an old 'folly'. We all took turns climbing to the top for amazing 360 degree views. Don't worry, Chatsworth house is not sinking! However, this is a lovely group shot of all of us. We had just finished our tour of the house and were enjoying a look around the gardens before our picnic lunch. We all had an amazing time in the maze (sorry). Congratulations to Martha, who was the first to reach the centre. Later in the afternoon, we had a terrific tour of the farm. Some of us enjoyed a guinea pig handling session. ALL the guinea pigs had names. Enjoying the adventure playground. Starting our walk through Dovedale. Taking part in the annual Pooh Sticks competition. Here are the first of many photos showing what a truly fantastic time the children had in Derbyshire.

We were delighted to spend some time on the common yesterday afternoon. Our sketchbooks are handmade and we selected different types of paper to sketch on. We are learning how develop our outdoor sketching skills this term and we will take our sketchbooks away with us to Derbyshire.

We had a cracking time on Tuesday afternoon! We learnt how to find features on an O.S map and locate them using a 6 figure grid reference. This will prepare us for our Dovedale walk when we are in Derbyshire, where we will need to make good use of our map reading skills in order to complete our 8 mile walk without getting lost!

We have had a busy few weeks in Snow Leopard class. We have all really enjoyed developing our understanding of light in science. Everyone in class made a periscope - we just need to test them properly by taking them outside! Although this is a very busy time of year in year 6, we have still ensured that every maths lesson contains a 'get up and go' activity. We have enjoyed improving our counting skills by using the 'plinky-plonk' tins, and very much enjoyed doing this outside. We have also enjoyed securing our understanding of percentages and have developed our reasoning skills by our 'round the room' activity. The help desks went down a storm too!

We saw a variety of interesting WW2 related artifacts. A good time was had by all.