Good afternoon everyone, 
​
We hope this blog finds everyone well, the end of the week has certainly turned more autumnal. Please make sure the children come with a coat and also a spare pair of clothes might be useful for those footballers who get a little wet and muddy playing football at lunchtime! It is great to see them all being so active whatever the weather. 

Here is a snippet of what we have been up to this week.

Science
We carried out an investigation this week to see how much sugar would dissolve in a small amount of water.  The children used scientific skills of: raising questions that can be investigated, predicting, observing and recording.  They also learnt and used some new scientific vocabulary: solute(the sugar), solvent(the water) and solution.  I also asked them to consider what sandy beaches would be like if sand was soluble.

History
In history we continued our exploration of what life was like during the industrial revolution.  This week, we focussed on the working conditions in factories and coal mines.  The children considered the dangers in both work places and decided where they'd rather have worked if they had been alive during this period.

Life skills
This week I took the children to Okehampton where they took part in a number of workshops all focussed on learning the skills needed in 'real life'.  These included beach and sea safety from RNLI, some CPR training from St John Ambulance, information from a Dartmoor Ranger, online safety from the Police and others.

Maths
This week in maths we have wrapped up our unit on place value. This included comparing and ordering numbers, understanding negative numbers, and also rounding. These lessons have included solving word problems and reasoning as well as using fluency in our understanding. Next week, we will move onto the four operations or addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and this unit will take us up to half term and beyond.

Art
This week in Art we designed our school Christmas cards as part of our school fundraising initiatives. The children used their fingers and hands to create a picture of Father Christmas and his reindeers! I think it’s safe to say they look great, and the children had fun making them. Let’s hope you are just as pleased and would like to buy a pack as a memento of their time in Year 6!

French
In French this week we began to look at Nationalities asking the questions “what nationality are you?”, “what nationality is he?”, “what nationality is she?” and answering by saying “I am/he is/she is”. Our knowledge of flags also came in useful here!

PE
In our P.E. sessions with Coach Edwards the children played some small team games where they practised some of the skills needed for netball such as passing and moving to find a space for the ball and then we all got chance to play a game to recap the actual game itself. The children were split onto teams of 5 and played high fives netball. They then rotated in and and out and when they weren't involved in the match they were practising ball skills in small groups. 

We hope everyone has a great weekend and look forwards to seeing the children next week. Please return French residential consent forms by next Friday so we have an idea of numbers. Once this information is in we can confirm staff members and dates! If you have any queries at all about this, please come and see us. We want to be able to help everyone as much as possible to enable all the children to come. We both fully appreciate how daunting it might be to send your child off on a residential abroad and how much effort it might take to get things organised with regards to passports etc. If we can be of any help or reassurance or answer any questions you may have, please, please let us know. We can help with anything, honestly!  It would be lovely to have as many of the class together as possible making some amazing memories! 

Thank you so much!
Gina  and Jo

Hello and welcome to this week's round up of fun in Year 6...I don't know about you but due to the bank holiday the extra day at home has really put me out of sync and I keep getting the days muddled up! Anyway, please read on to see what the children have been doing this week.

History
We used a role play strategy called 'hot-seating'  in history this week to share what we learnt about living conditions in the crowded cities of Britain during the industrial revolution.  We had children in character as one of Robert Peel's first 'Bobbies' of the newly formed Metropolitan Police; A nurse working with patients suffering from cholera; a working class Victorian child living in terrible conditions and a middle class factory owner making money from the mass production the industrial revolution enabled.  The children then wrote in role as one of these characters.

Science
We had a refreshing glass of squash in our science lesson so we could see how liquids mix to form new substances.  We learnt also that these substances can be call impure substances and drew particle diagrams to show how an impure substance is one where there are at least two types of particles.

In English, we continued our cat themed text exploration by reading the classic poem The Tyger by William Blake.  See if your child can recite the first verse.

Maths
This week in maths we have begun to look at making numbers to 1 million and 10 million. We then looked at how we write these numbers in words and numbers. We learnt about the power of 10 and how we can make numbers 10/100/1000 times bigger or smaller using a Gattegno chart to help us and finally we looked at using number lines to 1,000,000. Lots to take in this week!

Art
This week in Art we continued to look at ‘Impressionism’ after the children practised mixing watercolours to recreate Claude Monet’s famous ‘Japanese Footbridge’ painting. They focused on replicating a small section of the painting using these colours.

French/MFL (Modern Foreign Languages)
In our French lesson are learning question was “Can you say how you are feeling and why ?” and “Can you say what you need in the classroom and understand others making requests ?”

PE
In our P.E. sessions with Coach Edwards the children will be focusing on netball (as mentioned before) and the skills associated with it.  This week we played some small team games where we practised some of the skills needed for netball such as passing and moving to find a space for the ball and then we all got chance to play a game to recap the actual game itself. 

Thank you if you managed to attend tonight's meetings, we will make sure we share with you all, the information from them.

Have a lovely weekend.
​Miss Ruby and Mrs Ware.

Welcome
Welcome back to the children's first full week back after the Summer holidays. They have a had a very busy week in class and have continued to settle very well. Their attitude to reading at home is superb and almost all the class do this every night which is wonderful. Homework will commence soon and we will have more information about that in the next few days. Independence is already developing with them taking charge of resources and roles in the classroom. They love jobs such as putting out the benches in assembly, collecting the team points and tidying the pencil pots. The children have also been busy carrying out baseline assessments this week and have applied themselves very well. 

English
We have begun our first writing sequence which is based on the core text I am Cat by Jackie Morris.  This week, we read and responded to the book, which is actually a poem about a domestic cat dreaming of being various wild cats.  The book has beautiful illustrations and the language used is poetic and wonderfully descriptive.  We will be looking at other 'Cat' texts through this unit which will culminate with the children writing their own 'I am...' text about an animal of their choice.

Maths
We will begin our maths unit focusing on place value, numbers up to 10,000,000, comparing them, writing them, using number lines, powers of ten, rounding and negative numbers. This unit will last two weeks.

History
Our History unit this half term is all about the Industrial Revolution.  In this first lesson, the children learnt a little bit about what it was like to live in Victorian Britain and the class system in place at the time.  They also discovered that there was a huge boom in the population at this time and the effect that this had on people's lives. Next week, we will find out a bit more about the living conditions for working class people living in the cities at this time.

Art
This week in Art we completed our ‘All about Me Hoodies’ and this gave a great insight into who we are! They are on display in the classroom, and we hope you get chance to see them at our information evening next week. We also began to look at ‘Impressionism’ (totally different to the previous activity) and the children practised mixing watercolours to replicate a small section of Claude Monet’s famous ‘Japanese Footbridge’ painting.

French
In our French lesson we recapped phrases we had learnt last year and also discussed why we learn a foreign language and what makes a good linguist. We also began learning a new phrase “his name is and her name is…” and used it to play games.

P.E.
In our P.E. sessions with Coach Edwards the children will be focusing on netball and the skills associated with it. This session will be every Friday morning for the year.  This week we played some small team games where we practised some of the skills needed for netball such as passing and moving to find a space for the ball and then we all got chance to play a game to recap the actual game itself. We will also begin swimming at Okehampton which will form one of our P.E. lessons. this will start on Thursday 29th September 2022. 

Remember next Friday 23rd at 3:35pm our Information Evening and the straight after at 4pm our French Residential Information evening. We hope we get as many of you as possible to attend this very important date and an incredible opportunity for your children! 

Wishing you all a peaceful bank holiday weekend. We will see the children next week on Tuesday. 

Thank you,
Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby

Welcome to the Academic Year 2022/2023, as parents/carers of a Year 6 child. This blog will be published weekly on a Friday to update you with what the children have been learning, including photographs, videos and more. 

With the sad news today, this blog will be short as we have had a sombre end to the week as we felt this was appropriate. The children have taken part in a memorial assembly rather than a celebration assembly and today at 12pm, Year 6 walked to St. Peters Church to listen to the 'muffled peel' of the bells that happened across the country at the same time. We felt this was a fitting way for the children to mark the occasion today as a mark of respect. 

Over the course of the week the children have settled in with some games and activities. They have begun learning rules and responsibilities required in Year 6 and have agreed on our class charter. They have voted on our class councillors and also our House Team Captains. 

Next week the children will begin with our usual timetable (which we will share with you at the up and coming parents/carers welcome meeting on Friday 23rd September straight after school). 

We look forwards to adding more detail in our next blog at the end of next week. We wish you a reflective and peaceful weekend. Thank you.
​Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby.