Good afternoon everybody,

We hope this blogs finds you well after a very cold and bitter end to the week! We have had a high level of sickness in Sycamore this week, with what seems to be a nasty virus doing the rounds. We wish all those poorly a speedy recovery and we look forwards to seeing everyone fit and healthy as soon as possible. Please report any cases of Covid or scarlet fever to the admin team. Thank you. 

Maths - 
This week in maths we have continued our unit on fractions focusing on multiplying and dividing with integers and fractions. We have learnt some different methods to help us and then today we have been using these methods to solve multi step fraction problems. 

English - 
This week we have begun to plan and write our own twisted traditional tale. We have written our character introductions for our villains... who knew the three little pigs could be villainous??? and yesterday we began to write our stories.  We will finish them next week. We are all really looking forward to reading these and believe we have lots of authors in the making!

Geography - 
This week we have continued looking at population and have now finished this unit. We looked at ageing populations and discussed the challenges these have on the governments of different countries;  particularly Japan as our case study. After Christmas we have a history focus, specifically looking at Civil Rights in America. 

Science- 
We have finished our unit on sustainability this week! Our focus this week was on global warming and climate change which the children were passionate about and very knowledgeable. During the lesson we discussed what a carbon footprint was and Miss Collins completed a questionnaire to see what hers was...turns out it was a little high!!The link for this is on our class dojo page! Have a look and see what yours as a family might be!

PE-
Our last swimming session and what a HUGE improvement by all the children. It has been a delight to watch the children whilst they swim and develop their confidence. Almost all of the class are able to swim 25 metres without support...a wonderful achievement!
It was also our last Unihoc session today, so in the bitter cold we played a mini tournament in teams of 4. Lots of cold hands and fingers, meant the children had to pay special attention to what they were all doing!

French- 
Today we assessed our reading skills in French. We had two short letters to read. The first, we had to a read and then answer questions about. The second, we had to read and then translate into English. The new French knowledge the children have acquired has been phenomenal with many of them knowing an entire paragraph.

Next week-
Monday- Magic Martin Show
Tuesday- Year 6 Christingle Service in the church. 
Wednesday- Watching the dress rehearsal for the KS1and EYFS nativity.
Thursday- nugget treat afternoon
Friday- Christmas fun!

Have a good weekend everyone. Stay safe and well and enjoy the run up to the festivities!
Mrs Ware, Miss Ruby and Miss Collins

Hello everyone! We hope this weekly blog finds you all well. Here is a round up of our week in Year 6!

​English
We have been looking at twisted fairy tales in English.  This week we have planned and written an alternative version of Hansel and Gretel in which the 'villains' are actually the children who terrorise a poor little old lady - eating her out of house and home and eventually pushing her in the oven!   Next week, they will be choosing their own villain and story to 'twist'.

Energy from waste
We had a great day on Tuesday at the Energy from Waste facility in Plymouth.  It was great to be able to take the children out for the day for them to be able to make connections with our science topic of sustainability.  The tour of the site was really interesting, and the children really enjoyed it.  Hopefully they learnt a lot too - see if they can remember any of the fascinating facts on the fact sheet below.  So that we were able to offer this trip at no cost to parents, we went with a class from Chagford School.  Although this meant a longer journey, it was good for the children to meet some of their peers from another school in the Trust.  We were also supported by one of our Governors, Mel Holyoak who had this to say about our pupils:
I just wanted to drop you a line to say how lovely my day has been, and how much I enjoyed the company of your Year 6 pupils.  Without exception, they were delightful to be around: polite, charming, engaging, interesting and friendly...and honestly, they were just the greatest bunch of kids to be around. I hope they enjoyed the day as much as I did! 
Al the children behaved impeccably and were a credit to the school

Maths 
This week in maths we have been looking at fractions, learning how to add and subtract mixed numbers using different methods. These methods used fraction strips, number lines and finding a common denominator. We have also looked at how we can use these methods in multi-step word problems to solve different word problems. 

Geography 
This week we have been continuing our unit of population. We have been looking at the challenges of a growing population and discussed this relating two different case studies. We discussed the challenges in Kiberia in Kenya and New Deli in India and wrote about the challenges these area face with growing population. In Kiberia the main challenge was that the Government could not keep up with the rapidly growing population to provide housing. In New Deli the main problem was the air pollution from the increase in  traffic.

French
We practised our reading skills this week and were able to identify keep phrases and words that we have been learning about to answer questions about a famous French person. We were able to read what the person was called, where they lived, what their favourite foods were and also foods they did not like. We then learnt the French song, 'Oh, Holy night', which is sang to the tune of 'Silent night' and were able to identify cognates (see if the children can explain this word to you) and we also learnt some new words such as King, night, world, baby and love. Here is the song, if you'd like to see it! O Holy Night in French (Douce Nuit) - Christmas song for kids with lyrics ! - YouTube

We are now on the countdown to the Christmas holidays, however life in Year 6 carries on as normal. We have been impressed with the children's attitude to their spelling and maths homework, with almost all of the class making sure they have completed the tasks set. Please keep this up! It makes a huge difference to them. Thank you. 

Tuesday 13th December at 2pm will be the Christingle service in St. Peter's Church. Year 6 will take the spotlight during this service and it's always very moving and festive. If you can come along, it would be wonderful to see you there.

Enjoy the Christmas Fair tonight! Thank you for your continued support. 
​Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby