This week we have begun our learning in all curriculum areas.  A curriculum map for this term as well as a homework web for this half term will be posted on this page.  We are waiting for new reading diaries to arrive, but in the meantime, please make sure children continue to enjoy reading at home either with you, to you, or on their own for at least 10 minutes every day.  At year 6 they should be starting to read for longer periods of time sometimes too to increase their stamina for reading longer texts.  Each child will also bring home a list of spellings to learn each week - this week, these are spellings selected from the Year 3/4 statutory spelling list which they still need to learn.
We have immersed ourselves in the beautiful language of I am Cat by Jackie Morris - we will be writing poetry inspired by this wonderful text.  We have been recapping on our place value knowledge from year 5 and have moved on to learning about numbers up to 10 million.
With Mrs Ware we are learning about particles in solids liquids and gases in science; speaking and listening in French about sports; learning all about computing systems and networks in computing lessons and learning a Bhangra/Street Dance fusion in our Monday PE lesson.  The children are enjoying our futuristic novel called Phoenix. With Miss Ruby, the children have begun to learn about the Industrial Revolution and how it changed the day to day lives of the Victorian's. We will begin our art lessons , which will be a focus on skills and famous artists such as Claude Monet. 
Congratulations to Heidi who was this weeks' Star of the Week.'. Heidi has displayed positivity, maturity and resilience this week particularly in Maths and English. All the class have been asked to rise to the challenge of being the oldest and most mature children in the school, to lead by example and remember our school values, respectful, ready and safe.
Children should have brought home their weekly spellings to learn for next Friday and their new homework topic web for this half term. Expectations have been explained to the children so if you have any questions please ask. 
Have a brilliant weekend. Thank you.
​Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby.

Welcome parents and children to Year Six.  This year Mrs Ware will be teaching on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Miss Ruby will be teaching on Thursday and Friday.  We will normally have Mrs Jelley supporting us on a Wednesday and Thursday.  We are looking forward to an exciting year ahead.
First Week Back
The children returned on Wednesday, immediately looking and acting like Year 6 children, now the oldest and most responsible children in the school. It was so great to see all the children gathered together once more in the school hall with Year 6 sitting on the benches enjoying the privilege and taking the responsibility very seriously. We have spent the first few days settling back into normal school life and agreeing our class charter based around three basic ideas: We are READY to learn; We are RESPECTFUL of each other and school property and We are SAFE in and out of school and online. 

Thursday and Friday arrived and again the children came in ready to learn, responsible and mature. We have played games such as Zip, Zap, Boing, started our class novels, took part in a Place Value maths lesson, wrote a description/story of a dragon including similes and metaphors in English, had our first P.E. lesson delivered by Saints and we have started our Year 6 Art Gallery. Photos will follow!

We have participated in an assembly everyday and today was our Celebration assembly where we congratulated Rory who received the trophy for being mature, responsible, keen, polite and helpful. All excellent attributes we expect in our Year 6 pupils. 

Congratulations to Sycamore on an excellent first week back. We look forwards to kicking off more learning next week.  We will update you regularly. Please contact us if you need more information at this point.  Thank you, Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby. 

We said an emotional goodbye to our lovely year six pupils on Thursday.  It was fantastic to see them have an amazing night at our first ever Graduation Ball on Wednesday evening.  They all looked so smart - so lovely to see them 'dressed to impress'.
It was a pleasure to deliver an award to each and every very deserving child in our final year 6 assembly on Thursday morning.  They then took pleasure in soaking each other (and me!) in a water fight on Thursday afternoon before leaving to a guard of honour at the end of the day.
It has been a privilege to teach this fantastic group of children who have managed to achieve so much in the last two very peculiar years of primary school.  I wish them all the very best of luck in secondary school and beyond and look forward to hearing about all their accomplishments in the future.  Thank you for being supportive parents and carers and I hope you are able to have a break of some sort over the summer.

Can you believe that your child has nearly reached the end of their time at primary school?   I bet it seems like only yesterday that you were bringing them for their first day!  Don't get me started though....I'm feeling a bit emotional!!
We have had a great week - hopefully the outdoor and adventurous activities we have done in forest school and down at the river today will provide lasting memories for them and make up in a little way for not having a residential this year.  We have had great fun this week as well as learning a bit more about our local area, investigating habitats and using great problem solving and practical skills.

Next week, we will be recording our leaving messages and these will be posted on dojo throughout the week.  We will be saying goodbye to Mrs Mathews on Wednesday and of course having our graduation ball on Wednesday evening.  We are really looking forward to this and I can't wait to see them all turning up dressed to impress!!  

On Thursday morning at 9.30, we will have our awards assembly which will be on Google Meet.  I will send you a link for this nearer the time.  I recommend you use your child's @ntcps.co.uk Gmail account so there is no problem getting in to the meeting.  Remember to 'pin' the school window so you can see us as the main screen.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

The weather today just about held out and happily the Sports Day races went ahead as planned.  The children were all good sports and competed enthusiastically and fairly cheering their team mates on.  We will find out the results of this, combined with the results from the sports day activities they did in PE last week with Mr Stronge, on Monday in a special assembly.

This week we have completed our DT projects (nearly) of model playgrounds with lots of thanks to Miss Ruby for preparing and resourcing this project which the children really excelled in and really enjoyed.  We have been swimming once again, explored nets of 3d shapes in maths, begun drawing and researching for an information page about real, extinct and mythical animals and today set up an investigation into mouldy bread!!  WE did not have our RSE lesson today because of sports day so will have our final lesson which is about adult relationships and making babies on Monday.

Next week, I have some fun activities planned for them.  On Wednesday, with the help of Miss Prince our Forest Schools expert we will be having a whole day of outdoor activities which will include den building, ropes and fire building - I think there may be a few marshmallows to toast.  Children should wear old clothes and possibly wet weather gear if it's wet including wellies. They will almost definitely get dirty!  Then on Friday, afternoon, weather permitting we will be taking a walk down to the river to explore the local area and do a bit of habitat exploration in the shallow water.  again old clothes and wellies a must! 

Have a great weekend everyone, whatever you are doing.  I know what I'll be doing on Sunday - I hope many of Sycamore Class's predictions are wrong - we made it to the final - a historic achievement and, as I told the children today, you have to believe you can win if you are going to succeed. I still believe... 😁🙏 

The children in Sycamore class have been working hard on end of year assessments this week.  Considering the amount of time they have spent out of school and the lack of practice for doing tests such as these, they did very well.  I will use their scores to inform my teacher assessments on the reports which will be sent out at the end of term.  They applied themselves really well and have worked very hard this week.  

As well as that, the children have: been singing, used variables in football themed coding games(It's coming home), made models of microbes in science, learnt some French verbs, competed for house points in sports events and this afternoon, have learnt about positive relationships in RSE. I don't know how we fit it all in!!

As you know, the taster days at Okehampton college have been cancelled due to ongoing Covid restrictions - I hope you were able to attend the virtual meeting on Thursday evening.  There will be online assemblies on the taster days which we will hold in class, the first being on Wednesday next week.  Children might want to think about questions they would like to ask the Year 7 children who will be part of the assembly.

This week, we have also been practising a leavers' song as well as a song to say farewell to Mrs Mathews.  Sadly we will not be able to invite parents to leavers' assembly but we will record the bits we would have performed live. The plan is to livestream the awards part of the assembly.  This will be on the last day of term - time to be confirmed.

Today, during assembly, Miss Penny announced that for the first time in the history of North Tawton Primary school, we will be holding a Graduation Ball.   This will happen on Wednesday 21st July from 6pm to 8pm in the school hall.  The children have today come home with their invitations.  This event is for our Year Sixes only and will be an exciting and memorable occasion. 

Have a lovely weekend.
​

 This week, the children have been reflecting on their time here at North Tawton Primary School in order to write a piece for the leavers' book that they will all receive at the end of term.  This book is once again being paid for by the FONTS so thank you once again to the small team of volunteers that raise money to make things like this possible.
We are now in the last few weeks of term and we are starting to look forward to our transition to secondary school.  We had a visit from Mrs Hachipuka, the current head of Year 7, who answered the children's questions which were mostly food and playtime related!!  She encouraged them to look at their website, particularly the transition information: https://www.okehamptoncollege.devon.sch.uk/year-6-transition-information.html
In our RSE lesson today, we thought a bit more about the changes ahead and the responsibilities that children will soon have and the increased independence they will have.
We have been looking back on our learning over the last year, and indeed the whole of primary school, in preparation for the end of year assessments we will do next week. I have set revision homework on fractions and reading comprehension using the end of section questions in the study guide.
Miss Ruby has really enjoyed teaching Sycamore Class this week.  She was impressed with their behaviour at swimming and impressed with their maturity during their DT lesson using tools to make their playground models.  (See the pictures in the gallery)
The class shared our new Team Points song which was written by Kenzie and performed brilliantly after only one day's practice.  The video and words are attached below.
Until next week... 


​

Good afternoon everyone.  It has been an active week for year 6 this week.  They went swimming on Tuesday - they all really enjoyed this and were really well behaved and a credit to the school.  Miss Penny was impressed with their confidence in the water.  Thank you to Miss Ruby and Mrs Robins for taking them.  We also had Quad Kids on Thursday (an inter-schools athletics activity run by OCRA) and then our normal PE lesson today with Saints.  We also managed to fit in: finishing our story chapters, maths lessons on angles + an arithmetic test, investigating living things in science, guided reading, spelling, French, RSE(puberty) and RE!!!! They really are working hard.  Our RSE lesson today was about puberty.  If children want to use websites to find out more encourage them to use the websites recommended below as searching randomly may bring up inappropriate or just incorrect information.  I will post the website links below.
On Monday, we will be having a visit from the head of Year 7 from Okehampton college to talk to them all about transition.  Next week, we will spend more time preparing for our leavers' assembly and  leavers' book as well as preparing for assessments in the following week.  For homework, I have asked children to use their revision books to go over any areas that they feel less confident in, in maths and reading.  This might include fractions, as well as prime numbers, square numbers, cube numbers, multiples and factors as it has been a while since we covered those things.  In reading they might like to look at inference and language choice as these are sometimes the sort of questions they find more difficult.  They also have 10 spellings to learn for next Friday.  I would like children to bring their revision books every day next week and then if we have any time we can do a bit of revision in class.

"Have we only been back for a week?" one of the children asked me today!  I know exactly how they feel.  We have crammed so much learning into one week that it feels like we've already been back much longer. 
The children completed their work on ancient civilisations with an interesting debate on which civilisation was the best and why.  This was an opportunity for them to, not only develop their critical thinking, perspective and judgement about historical events, but also to practise their oracy skills which are getting stronger all the time.
We have used drama this week to plan the next chapter in The Story of Antigone and started our practice writing stage of the sequence.  Earlier in the week, the children had a go at writing a 'crow's eye view' of a battle in Ancient Greece.  These were very effective descriptions - children are making good progress in their writing.
We have begun our final science unit (Living things and their habitats) and children have already been exploring the orchard for living things.  This afternoon, they found a toad making one of the huge tractor tyres its home!
Today we had the first in a series of Relationship and Sex Education lessons which covered ground rules for our sessions and the anatomically correct names for boys' and girls' body parts.  I intend to deliver the next four lessons over the next four Fridays which cover puberty, relationships and human reproduction.  You may find the following websites useful if your child has questions:
www.childline.org.uk
www.nspcc.org.uk
www.nhs.uk/Livewell/puberty/Pages/Pubertyinfoforchildren.aspx
 www.kidshealth.org/kid/
www.bbc.co.uk/education/topics/z3xxsbk
www.thinkuknow.co.uk
The children enjoyed their PE lesson with Mr Stronge today which will be athletics this half term.  Additional to this, Mr Foreman has organised an afternoon of athletic activity for us next Thursday called Quad Kids.  They will need to wear PE kits to school, therefore on Thursday and Friday next week.  As you know we will be starting swimming lessons next Tuesday as well - I have attached a copy of the letter sent home this week. Please return the slip by Monday.  It's going to be an active week!
Children have been set revision homework on division in maths and retrieval in reading as well as spellings.  I have also given them a new homework topic web today and I will also post a copy on this website. I will set revision homework for the next few weeks until we complete our assessments week commencing 28th June.  I have encouraged children to use the revision books to go over areas of maths or reading that they need to as well as the revision I have set.
Have a great week - the weather looks set to be sunny- please remember to send children to school wearing sun protection and with a hat next week.

Hi everyone and happy half term.  It has been so nice to see a bit of sunshine this week and see the children enjoying our amazing grounds for both play and learning.  We used the orchard for some great drama activities this week linked to our English text The Story of Antigone.  We will be carrying on with this text after half term. After half term, I will be taking the class to Parklands Leisure Centre for swimming lessons with their trained swimming coaches.  There will be more information about this the first week back and this won't start until the second week after half term.  They will need a one-piece swimming costume or swimming shorts(preferably not board shorts), a swimming hat and they may use goggles if they want to.

Miss Ruby has shared some of the work that she has been doing with the class in this message:
This week the children completed their RE unit: 'For Christians, what kind of King was Jesus?' Through this unit, the children have explored Noble Prize Winners, their hopes for the future, leadership styles, the 'Kingdom of God' and ideas about a better world. They have explored what Christians believe around this and the difference this makes to how they live. After half term, the children will explore the unit 'How does faith help people when life gets hard?'.

This week in Art, the children completed the Unit 'Photography'. Throughout this unit, the children have created photomontages, truisms and self portraits based on specific artist styles. After half term, we move onto a DT project called playgrounds which will see the children busy with glue guns, tools and wood! Watch this space!

It was lovely to see all the children sharing their learning in our whole school assembly today.  I hope some of you were able to join us virtually and enjoyed hearing about the great learning that's happening across the school.
I hope you have a happy and restful half term - I haven't set any homework or spellings to learn so that children can have a proper break.  I hope that they will be reading for pleasure as much as possible and if they do get bored they could use their revision guides or Times Table Rockstars or Nessy to brush up on their knowledge and skills.
Enjoy the sunshine 🌞🌞🌞