Year 6 - Snow Leopards and Jaguars

The children have worked so hard in their revision groups this week and we have been working on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions. The children finished off this unit by applying their understanding of fractions to solving word problems. In English, we have introduced our new book - Journey to the River Sea - and the children have been finding lots of facts about the Amazon river and the Brazilian rainforest to help them engage with this story and the characters within it. The red spelling words have been sent out for next half term so please look out for these in the children's bags. If you could display these at home and encourage your children to learn them, that would be really useful. We have begun looking at Hinduism in RE, which involved the children re-telling a Hindu story. As scientists, we collected specimens of flora and fauna from the common and made detailed scientific sketches based on Charles Darwin's work.

Well it's all change in Year 6 with our revision groups starting at the beginning of the week. The children are really enjoying these sessions and have adapted quickly to the changes. We are getting some lovely feedback from the, particularly about the maths booster groups. In English, we are in the final week of writing based on our book 'Holes' by Louis Sachar. The children are currently in the middle of composing a balanced argument based on a story line within this book and are producing some lovely pieces of writing. As our topic - Hola Mexico - draws to a close, we have been finishing off the science work about light. The children have been involved in plentyof practical investigations as part of this work and have shown that they have learned a great deal. Next week, we begin our new topic called 'Darwin's Delights' and will be basing our English work around the book 'Journey to the River Sea' by Eva Ibbotson.

Last Friday, The children had a fabulous morning making periscopes. This helped the children to develop their understanding of how light travels. In the afternoon, they got to test them out and went for a spy around school. The children also wrote instructions to help younger children make periscopes too. We have all been delighted with the wonderful compliments we have received over our ceramic work. Lots of people have noticed how amazing our work is! Our Clay masks have been fired and have now become ceramic. On Friday we started to glaze our work. This will take us another session as we need several coats of glaze in order to get a bright finish. Once we have glazed, the masks will be fired a second time and they will go on display for everyone to admire.

Year 6 have had a busy week completing practice papers. We have been delighted with the progress the children have made since October. All of the children have shown a really positive attitude this week and have wanted to show us all the new things they have learnt over the last few months. We will be sharing this information with the children over the next few weeks. We are preparing to start our revision for the SATs and in the next couple of weeks there will be some slight timetable changes. We will prepare the children for this. We are also planning to run after-school booster sessions for some children. If your child has been selected to take part in these sessions, a letter will be coming home next week. Several parents have asked if there are any revision guides they can use at home. The photos below show a couple of examples. They are good for short bursts of revision. You can get books focussing on subject guidance and also practise questions. The books cover reading, SP...

Well, another busy week in Snow Leopard class! The children have managed very well with different teachers taking the class while Mrs Penton has been away. Mrs Weyer and I are very proud of them. Today the children finished making their fabulous clay masks. We will now wait for them to dry before they are fired and put on display. Lots of people have been admiring our work already! We also turned our classroom into a writer's studio. The children could decide where they would like to work. We also lit a log fire to keep warm in our studio!

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 ...

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.