Welcome to Y6 Class Page! 

Can you believe we are now in the Summer term? I will update this page with details of homework, PE, classroom activities, trips and events!

Should you need to contact me, please contact the school office and I will get back to you as soon as I can.  

Mrs Evans

w/c 8.7.19

Wow! We are currently in the middle of show week (at the time of writing this, we are about to begin our second performance), and what an amazing show we have created! 

There is an electric buzz around the school as KS2 get into costumes and makeup, and practise their songs and lines - well done for a brilliant collaborative effort, everybody!

I have finally managed (sorry for the delay) to upload the photos from the residential to Robinwood - another fantastic time, making memories that will last for many years to come. 

w/c 1.7.19

The weeks are flying by as we approach the end of the year at quite an alarming rate! It's been 'all systems go' on the rehearsal front, with much choreography to learn. We are very much looking forward to seeing the finished product of Mary Poppins next week!

Have a look at our photos from the residential - a few have been uploaded there for you to look at: I will try to get some additional ones on there too. 

In Maths this week, we have been brushing up our skills with finding fractions and percentages of amounts, and also adding and subtracting both positive and negative numbers. Over the summer, it is vitally important that you keep practising maths skills with your child, so that they don't feel like they have forgotten everything in September! 

Aim for fast recall of times tables and all related facts: e.g. if 6 x 4 is 24, then they should also be able to tell you:

0.6 x 4 = 2.4

0.06 x 4 = 0.24

60 x 4 = 240

60 x 0.4 = 24

60 x 40 = 2400 

w/c 24.6.19

Prodigy Maths

Congratulations to Ash, Oliver H and Amy! 

I have received an email from Prodigy telling me about your progress! 

Road's End

Over the last couple of weeks (when not rehearsing!), we have been exploring a short film called Road's End. Children have been predicting and summarising, as well as creating rich character descriptions. 

w/c 17.6.19

What a fantastic time we all had at Sports Day! Well done to all Y6 pupils for contributing to the amazing banners, and for helping out when needed during the day! Huge congratulations to Edward and Anna for leading Lotherton to victory for yet another year!

The De-Turf routine looked fantastic - well done to you all!

We are pretty much rehearsing whenever we can now, which means lessons are segmented into smaller chunks of independent learning following initial input. Everybody is supporting the show by working well when not on stage, as well as learning lines and songs - rehearsals can run much more effectively when we know our lines! 

Next week, there are to be no scripts on stage - so get practising! 

w/c 10.6.19

The first two weeks of half term have flown by! 

We are now rehearsing daily, but there is so much to get through and so many other activities taking place! Please make sure you practise all of your lines and songs - I am trying to get the music on the website so you can practise at home - please bear with me!

Have a look at some of the other fun things we have been doing:

w/c 20.5.19

Another whirlwind of a week! 

Using the ScrapShed, each child was allowed to select just three items, meaning they needed to carefully analyse what their teammates had already retrieved so that they could make the best Viking longship possible! We had a great time! 

After building our longships, we wrote adverts - here are some extracts...

Do you need a longship? The best of the best? Well, today's your day! Longboat for sale! Made from Scandinavia's finest pinewood and the best of wood-cutters. An emblem so scary, it sends shivers down even the fiercest warrior's spine. (Trudi)

This amazing longship has been blessed by Odin and has won the Thor award for awesomeness. Only 65 hack-silver: how do you like your longship now? (Oliver HW)

Leeds Book Awards 2019

In December, all Y6 pupils were invited to be a part of the Leeds Book Awards 2019: we have thoroughly enjoyed reading and discussing the shortlisted books - all of which were exciting, varied and enjoyable in different ways. 

Today, the 'Willow Worms' were lucky enough to meet 5 of the authors and take part in the ceremony. Not only that, Holly's review of 'The House with Chicken Legs' by Sophie Anderson was read out in front of an audience of over 500 pupils from across the city, and Martha found herself announcing the winner: Liz Flanagan's 'Dragon Daughter'!

We had a fantastic day, and the pupils were certainly inspired to keep reading. Look out for the signed copies of the books in our school library!

If you're stuck for something to do during half term, why not visit Chapel FM?

Family Activity Day at Chapel FM

Fun family activities, including music, radio, drama and a virtual reality experience!

On Friday 31st May we are inviting families down to Chapel FM Arts Centre for a range of fun and creative activities. Have a look at what’s on offer and pop in for an hour or come for the whole day!

Age 0-5 

11:45am - 12:45pm / Tots Music Hour

No booking required, but first come first serve

3:00pm / Story time

Arts & Craft activities

Stay & Play space 

Age 6+ 

1pm – 2pm / Ukulele Jam Session

Come on a make music, learn some songs and join in the jam. 

No experience necessary.

12pm – 3:30pm / Live Radio Broadcast

Come and be interviewed or be the interviewer! 

Play your favourite tunes, and learn how to run the studio...

12pm – 3:30pm / Virtual Reality Experience

Digital Landscape is a new Virtual Reality project by Creative Frame. We are taking the glorious landscapes of Yorkshire and bringing them into a 3 dimensional space you can paint !

2pm / Drama Games

Refreshments available throughout the day & light healthy snacks for the little ones.

Chapel FM is a beautiful Arts Centre created from the old Methodist Chapel near the Village Green in Seacroft, 5 minutes walk from Tescos.

£1 per child for local folks with postcodes LS9, 14 and 15 and £3 for everyone else

For more info contact Katy Hayley on 0113 22 55 944 or email katy@headstogether.org

Well done everybody! The SATs are over!

Wow! What a week! There were some really tough questions to conquer this week - even some of the invigilating staff were musing over some of the answers! We definitely all deserve a rest! We still have evidence based assessments in writing to complete, ensuring that Mrs Evans's folder reflects the standard we are capable of!

However, now that the SATs are out of the way, we can focus on other events. See below for a list of what we have coming up!

21st May: Leeds Book Awards Ceremony (only for those who signed up for the Willow Worms)

23rd May: Outdoor Classroom Day

24th May: Enterprise Presentation to parents 1pm and performance of our Vikings-themed piece at 3pm

27th May: a well-deserved half term break!

3rd June - 7th June: Bikeability (letters to follow, detailing which two days your child is involved in. Don't panic if your child doesn't have a bike or a helmet: these can be borrowed from Cycle Leeds)

3rd June - 14th June: Enterprise Fortnight: who can grow the most money from their ideas?

21st June:Enterprise Awards - we will reveal the profits!

3rd - 5th July: Tadcaster Transition*

3rd - 4th July: Boston Spa Transition*

3rd July - Leeds Minster Leavers' Service (for those not involved in transition!) 

8th July - 12th July: Temple Moor Transition*

8th July - Technical Rehearsal and Garforth Transition*

9th July - Dress Rehearsal to KS1

10th July - Performance 1.30pm and 6pm

11th July - Performance 1.30pm and 6pm

16th July - Drama Club performance to whole school 2:15pm

19th July: Church Service and Walk-out; Leavers' Party!

*I have not yet received any information of transition dates from any schools other than Temple Moor, Garforth, Boston Spa and Tadcaster. Should the parents of any of the other schools have information on this, please let me know. :-) 

w/c 6.5.19

Another 4 day week: how will we cope with a full 5 days next week?!

This week, we have been revising to make ourselves feel more confident for next week's tests, but we have tried to not make it super-boring!

Maths revision came in the form of The Million Pound Drop, and I am pleased to note that not everybody was penniless at the end of the game!

We haven't been spending all week just revising though! 

We explored how to create a character from the text we are studying in English, which is linked to our historical topic of Vikings. 

Using as many different materials as possible, the challenge was to create a Frost Giant. We are not quite finished yet, but look at our efforts so far!

The final thing to say this week is that Miss Greaves and I are so proud of each and every one of our pupils: next week is just another week! Yes, the tests can seem scary, but they are over so quickly and they only measure a really small part of what you can do. Try not to stress about them over the weekend - relax and do something fun instead!

w/c 29.4.19

This week, in Spanish, we have been practising writing about what we like to do!

Looking after our emotional and mental health

This week, we have discussed stressful feelings, and what makes us stressed, before finding ways to manage our feelings and discussing ways in which we can practise self-care. 

Some of the things that make stressed are: 

• family
• friends falling out
• our looks
• our abilities
• tests (SATs)
• homework
• trying to fit in
• feeling like we always need to be the best

w/c 22.4.19

The glorious sunshine of the Bank Holiday weekend seems like an age away, as we have battled some serious downpours this week!

However, the next Bank Holiday will be here before we know it - and we can then also celebrate the end of the SATs tests! Yey!

Until then, we are spending time boosting and practising various maths skills, as well as filling in a few knowledge gaps along the way. This week, we have been revising adding and subtracting whole numbers and decimals, fractions of shapes, quantities and amounts, interpreting data from line and bar graphs as well as learning how to calculate the mean (average). 

 Ask your child to show you how to solve these problems:

In English, we have continued to read Neil Gaiman's 'Odd and the Frost Giants', which is a fantastic story about Thor, Loki and Odin and how they need a young Viking boy's help in order to defeat a Frost Giant. 

We used pencil crayons to practise our sketching skills: look at this work in progress!

Welcome to the Summer Term!

What fun we had rolling our eggs! Congratulations to our winners: Skye, Marcos and Amy!

Also, huge congratulations to Fallon, whose decorated egg won 1st prize.

SATs

We are now well underway with our pre-SATs booster programme, which ensures we still offer a rich and balanced curriculum whilst also boosting specific objectives so pupils feel confident as they go into test week. 

By offering boosters in this way, we avoid any pre/post school boosters, which is usually preferred by the children!

If you have revision guides at home, please continue to work through the objectives identified by your child as areas they would like to improve, or identified via the short assessments. 

w/c 18/3/19

A fantastic week! We have been trying to get our heads around ratio and proportion in Maths. 

Ask your child to explain to you!

e.g. for every 2 red beads in a necklace, there are 4 yellow beads, so the ratio is 2:4. 

If there are 20 red beads, we would need 40 beads to make the necklaces. If there 100 beads in a pack, what is the total number of necklaces we could make?

Shakespeare

Brilliant rehearsing, directing and performance techniques displayed from all: look at our fabulous photos! Well done to those pupils who shared their work to the whole school!

Garageband

We have created some great music using Garageband technology! Pupils were asked to consider what instruments and syncopated sounds would work to create a 'spooky' soundtrack.

We then used post-it notes to feedback to each other. 

w/c 11.3.19

We explored sound during Science Week, understanding that that sound is produced by vibrations that travel as waves (vibrating particles). We took part in experiments to test how sound can be directed, and analysed our hearing capabilities from 20hz – 20000hz.

Why not see if you have superhuman hearing powers too?

In English, we have looked at a spooky, short animation called Alma. We have explored descriptive language, image and vocabulary linked to Alma, as well as identify themes throughout. 

Have a read of our short blurbs. We returned to these the next day, to see how we could improve them - most improvements involved ensuring our writing was in the same tense and also including higher level punctuation. Ask your child to explain how they improved theirs:

An ordinary day. A young girl’s curiosity leads to a major consequence. Her rebellious decision to go into a peculiar shop with peculiar dolls goes terribly wrong. She is blind-sighted by the beauty of the dolls, but doesn’t notice the finer details of the shop: missing posters, no shopkeeper and thousands of dolls. Will she make it out alive? Ava and Jessica

One winter day, a young, curious girl named Alma approached a weird shop; Alma drew her name on a wall opposite. Suddenly, a peculiar doll appeared: it looked just like Alma. She tip-toed into the shop and touched the doll… Holly and Martha

One snowy evening, a young girl named Alma was skipping down the street. She saw a mysterious little shop. Behind the shop, there were lots of names on a chalk-board. Alma decided to write her name on the board and to her surprise, she turned around and saw… Olivia, Anna and Charlie

A mystery, a thriller… A happy girl, just skipping down the street. Suddenly, she notices a shop. She was tempted. Read to find out more… Edward and Daisy

Alma was skipping up a mysterious alleyway. She looks around, and sees chalk. Then, she sees a wall of names. Of course, she writes her name on the wall. She slowly turns around, and sees a mini version of herself and tries to get in. She fails to open the door and she throws a snowball and walks away. Creak…. she walks in… Kacey and Miles

A little girl called Alma writes her name on a suspicious wall. What happens next is up to you to find out…  Rated PG. 5*****. Award-winning. Jacob and Patrick

A young, innocent girl was walking down the street, not knowing the dangers of what would happen next. Her life would be changed forever – or will it? Tilly and Elliot

Alma is an ordinary girl who lives in an ordinary house, but when she goes down creepy street and finds creepy shop, it changes her life forever… Oliver S and Laila

She thinks it’s all fun and games when she writes her name on the wall, but what she doesn’t know is what’s about to happen to her… Curtis and Lana

What will happen when a little girl goes into a shop she is not supposed to? Curious Alma sees a doll that looks like her and tries to get into the shop to have a look. I’m…a…doll…. Trudi and Emily

A young girl, about your age, skipped down the street. She looked around, seeing missing posters everywhere. Scraaaaape! She wrote her name on the board behind her. An interesting shop, that looked very old, captured her eyes. Creeeakkkk! The door opened. She reached out for the doll – a doll that looked exactly like her, except for her blue eyes. What will happen next? Darcie and Amy

Alma is a small girl who is curious. She sees dolls in a window. She is tempted to go inside – will she go in? Marcos and Skye

A curious girl was skipping down the alleyway and saw names on a wall. She wrote her name and turned around. She sees a doll in the shop that looks like her. She tries to get in but the door won’t open. Just as she was walking away, the door mysteriously opens… Oliver HW and Harmony

w/c 4.3.19

We have had an extraordinarily fabulous week!

World Book Day was fantastic - we spent the day exploring Mr Men stories, writing our own and sharing them with Nursery and Reception, and exploring music technology further.

WhatsApp

As of May 2018, WhatsApp’s minimum age of use is 16 years old.

Many Y6 pupils are involved in WhatsApp group messages, which are causing upset and distress to children. Please can I ask that if you allow your child to access social media, ignoring the age restrictions in place, you regularly check the messages and screen shot anything you feel may cause upset to another child, taking responsibility for what your child writes. 

Too much time is being spent out of class, dealing with arguments, silliness and name-calling happening on social media. 

Garageband on the ipads is a great app - the best way to learn how to create tracks is to have a play: today, we explored the drum machine, varying the complexity of the sounds created by different instruments, and also the autoplay feature on the guitar. 

Today, in our Mr Men project, we looked at the features of the Mr Men stories, noting how the setting and vocabulary links to each character. 

This is in advance of writing our own story, in the style of Roger Hargreaves!

w/c 25.2.19

A great start to Spring 2!

This week, we have been reminding ourselves about conversions of measurements in Maths, mainly how to convert miles to kilometres and back again. 

Did you know 5 miles = 8 kilometres? Or that 1 mile = 1.6km?

Ask your child to explain how to calculate the following:

10 miles?

25 miles?

3 miles?

40 km?

16 km?

In English, we have been editing, reviewing and proofreading our 500 Words stories - many of us are discovering that trying to reduce our word count, whilst still retaining the essential elements of our stories, is actually quite tricky! I am looking forward to reading all of these over the weekend, to decide which will be the top 5 who go through to the judging round.

Mr Men and Little Miss!

We loved responding to a 'plea for help' from Adam Hargreaves! We came up with Mr Smelly, Mr Sweaty, Mr Groovy.... we had some rather interesting ideas, and I am sure we will have many more before this topic is over!!! 

w/c 11.2.19

Well done to our top 5 TT Rockstars scorers! You rock! Hopefully, over half term, the whole class will be on TT Rockstars and we can win the battle!

Ava

Jessica

Kacey

Martha

Oliver H

w/c 4.2.19

We had an incredible topic day this week, learning more about rivers. We now understand erosion and deposition, after spending some time on the playground pretending to be a river flowing around the meanders, eroding the riverbank as we rushed around the outer bends, and depositing the rocks/sand/soil as we slowed down on the inner corners. 

We then had a visit from the Yorkshire Dales River Trust: the mobile River Van was a great resource: see our photos of how we used microscopes to classify invertebrates from a local river - the staff were very impressed with our scientific knowledge of classification and habitats as well as our geographic knowledge of rivers!

We loved exploring our brand new atlases (purchased with the rewards from the Scholastic book fair) to find rivers around the world, and discussed how we used rivers, including the long term negative and positive impacts of our usage. 

A fantastic day had by all!

"I found it fascinating. I didn't know so many different insects lived in rivers and lakes." Laila

"I found out lots! I was really interested by the life cycle of the Mayfly". Kacey

"The river table was my favourite part; I found it really interesting." Patrick

"Who knew so many non-flying insects turned into flies?" Elliot

"The truck was really interesting: it was good to see how to reduce the impact of flooding." Martha

500 Words

We have launched Barwick's 500 Words! Y6 have spent the last week exploring different ways of finding ideas and creating interesting characters, using props and images as stimuli...

We are now ready to build up our ideas into stories: Mrs Evans can not wait to read the fantastic stories from Y6 class, and wonders who the Gold, Silver and Bronze winners will be...?

w/c 28.1.19

We have had many giggles this week as we have been learning about what happens to boys' and girls' bodies during puberty. (It's ok to giggle!)

What's really important is that pupils learn that they can talk about worries and concerns regarding the physical and emotional changes they are starting to face: we have discussed body changes, B.O., mood swings and temper tantrums, and how to look after our parents during this difficult time, especially if we are the eldest child in the family - going through puberty is difficult for the child, but also for the parents!

We have also looked at the next part of the learning, which is finding out how babies are made. 

Next week, we will go into more detail about this, and also find out how babies are born). 

SATS

Please look in the SATs info star - I have sent a letter home today about a short information event, where you can find out about the tests and ask any questions. There is also the opportunity to buy revision guides, and I have highlighted those most relevant for your child. 

Please note that I do not EXPECT parents to buy these, and it is by no means compulsory. You may choose to buy none, one, two or all four: I get asked each year about these so I am simply providing guidance. 

Revision materials only work if closely supported by a parent. They are not intended as a solely independent activity. 

Maths Express!

We are becoming very slick at Maths Express: a rotation of 5 minute activities that challenge our maths fluency in:

- times tables

- fractions, decimals, percentages

- finding fractions of amounts

- mental maths

This must be why we managed to beat Sycamore on

TT Rockstars Battle of the Bands this week! Don't be complacent though, Y6 - practise every single day to be in with the chance of being next week's Most Valued Player! Congratulations to Oliver HW for this week!

Headliners!

Congratulations to our Headline Acts! These are our fastest five pupils in Y6!

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Ava

Edward

Holly

Jessica

Amy

Thanks to Emily and Fallon for bringing in their fantastic handmade Pokemon characters! We couldn't believe how intricate and delicate these were; you two clearly have a lot of patience and heaps of talent! 

Battle of the Bands!

As of Tuesday evening, we are in the lead in our battle against Sycamore class - but only just! Don't let them take the lead!!!

Drama Improvisation

Today, we created a variety of characters and storylines, as inspiration for storywriting... using our Props Bags, we had lots of fun thinking up weird and wonderful plots!

Ride of Passage

I have been super impressed with everybody's writing, based on a short film titled 'Ride of Passage'. Toki and his fantastic journey on the back of a colossal chameleon has captured everybody's imaginations! Watch the film here:

In Computing this term, we are aiming to make either a quiz or a story using Scratch programming software: many children are already very skilled at using Scratch, and the best way to improve further is simply to practise! 

All pupils are encouraged to log on to the school account (see Mrs E for a password reminder if needed) to develop their skills at home. 

Bring it on, 2019!

2018 is so last year: we are totes ready for everything this year is going to bring!

This week, we have been spending a lot of time on Maths!

We have been looking at decimals, (up to 3dp), but also taking part in a lot of Maths outside of the normal lessons. 

We took part in a Maths quiz, with Y1 - Y5, and tried to answer all the questions: some of us struggled with the Y6 questions - perhaps some revision is needed???? 

Our Maths Art day was excellent! We made snowflakes, using measurement, shape and symmetry; a treasure map, using coordinates; a maze, using position and direction; a Kandinsky-inspired abstract piece, using felt shapes; and mandala designs which used measurement, accuracy and precision.

We also went outdoors: collecting leaves; adding up the totals; asking ourselves what the total would be if each leaf was worth 10; and sorting into hoops to find single and multiple unit fractions of amounts. 

e.g. we collected 120 leaves altogether. If each leaf is worth 10, then what is 2/3 of this amount? 

In English, we have been using our inference and deduction skills to analyse a short film. We looked at exciting vocabulary to use, before we attempt to write a 3rd person narrative.

Merry Christmas!

Have a wonderful Christmas break and make sure you do lots of fun things, rest, eat well and get some exercise in the cold, crisp air. 

There is no compulsory homework over the Christmas break (you're welcome!), but if you have a spare moment, and you wish to spend it practising your brain skills, please challenge yourself with:

TT Rockstars (times tables fluency) 

Studyzone.tv (times tables fluency; Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary)

Prodigy Maths (arithmetic and reasoning)

SpaG.com (Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary)

ReadTheory.org (Comprehension)

MyMaths (arithmetic and reasoning)

or by learning as many of the statutory spelling words as you can (Y3/4 and Y5/6). 

See you in January!!

Shadow Puppet Nativity

We loved performing our shadow puppet nativity stories to Nursery, Reception and Y1 today! 

ReadTheory.org

Wow! Charlie has an amazing 3269 Knowledge Points as of today, 14th Dec! Please encourage your child to access ReadTheory.org as often as possible (log in details are in homework books). Short comprehension texts are completed, with misconceptions fully explained. Great for improving inference and deduction skills. 

Road Safety Pantomime!

What a treat! This week, we were overjoyed to be invited to watch the Road Safety Team's Christmas Pantomime. The message of 'Think, Stop, Look, Listen' was delivered via Rudolph, a Christmas Fairy (Scary Mary!) and Father Christmas himself! Well done to Y6 for being a great audience.

"It was funny, and it had an important message behind it." Holly, Y6

Visit from West Yorkshire Police - Wed 12th Dec

I was very proud of the class today; they all listened with respect to our visitors from West Yorkshire Police, asking relevant and thoughtful questions as they learned about Hate Crime. Compassion and tolerance were both shown in abundance, with pupils shocked to hear about the way people can be hurtful towards others. 

Light, Art and Remembrance 21.11.18

Y6 were fabulous on our visit to Leeds on Wednesday. We stood in (a rainy) Millennium Square and imagined what it must have been like to be one of the many young men who answered Lord Kitchener's call to volunteer to be one of the Leeds Pals. 

We marched up to the Town Hall, just as they would have marched: proud, excited and happy to be part of the fight for victory, oblivious and unaware of the horrors they were yet to face. 

We explored Leeds City Museum, finding the WW1 case with the fascinating exhibits in, including Pte Edward Spetch's cigarette case, which stopped the bullet entering his heart and saved his life. In role as Edward, we wrote letters home explaining how we felt. 

After that, we enjoyed lunch in Leeds Art Gallery and experienced many of the exhibits, including the Memorial exhibit, exploring how we honour the dead. We then found our favourite aspects of the exhibits and sketched a small section of them, looking at how light is used within art.

All in all, we had a full, educational day and returned home exhausted!

w/c 12.11.18

Another full-on week for Y6! Mrs Sanderson, Mrs Evans and Miss Greaves were incredibly impressed with the responsible and respectful attitude displayed by the children as we visited the war memorial, remembering the soldiers who most probably gathered around the maypole before leaving the village for the final time. We listened to a reading of 'In Flanders Fields', and read the names of the dead, ensuring that we will not forget them, even if they no longer have family around to speak their names. 

Mrs Evans has discovered a fascinating website (see below), where you can enter a street or postcode, and it tells you the details of those who sacrificed their life in World War One. Highly interesting, and definitely worth a look: 

ReadTheory.org

Wow! Today we have been practising our comprehension skills online: please encourage your child to play at home - look at how many points Ash has achieved! Well done, Ash!

We are looking forward to our visit to Leeds on Wednesday 21st, where we will discover more about the Leeds Pals for our chronological report. 

Make sure you have brought your consent form back!!

w/c 5.11.18

Remember, remember, the 5th of November....and also to practise your timetables! This week, we have been working on our 12x tables, including all related facts: if 3 x 12 = 36, then we know that 0.3 x 12 must be 3.6, and 3000 x 12 must be 36000!

Please keep practising at home: nearly EVERYTHING in Y6 relies on secure knowledge of your times tables!!

In PE, the heavy rain on Wednesday meant we took part in a one-off Archery lesson, which was lots of fun! Next week it is Rugby: please make sure you bring a jumper, as the weather is getting colder and chillier!

Library Fundraiser Coffee Morning

A huge thank you to all the parents and grandparents who donated cakes for our fundraiser, and also all those who attended. Hopefully you enjoyed it! Great efforts from Y6 pupils (and Y5 librarians) - well done!

We raised over £160, which will go towards purchasing much sought-after new titles, and additional book jackets to protect our new books. 

We were also very proud of the wonderful readings to commemorate 100 years since the end of WW1. Y6 will be visiting the War Memorial in Barwick on Monday and will spend some more time next week finding out about the Leeds Pals.

Thank you!

w/c 22.10.18

We had great fun this week, making our African Masks: see below for photos of the mask workshop and also the dance workshop from last week!

It's fantastic to be able to explore other cultures, and as African history featured heavily in our topic this term, it was a great experience. 

15.10.18

This week we have been consolidating our knowledge of square and cubed numbers in Maths, before moving on to BIDMAS (Order of Operations). We have proven to be quite skilled in this area, so Mrs Evans challenged us to an investigation where we had to find different integers, but were only allowed to use 4 lots of 4! (Some of us were only allowed to use 3 lots of 4, and that was really  tricky indeed!)

See if you can manage it!!

All aboard the Maths Express!

Each week, we are practising our fluency skills on the Maths Express, where we complete a series of challenges and puzzles at different 'stations'...

In Science this week, we consolidated our learning about the circulatory system by creating a comic strip about Barry the Blood Cell, whilst continuing to film our vlogs on the ipads. Hopefully we will be able to edit the footage together next week to create our final piece.

In GPV, we had a visit from the Grammar Police, as Mrs Evans has noticed we are often committing the crime of COMMA SPLICING. This is where a comma is used to separate two independent clauses, instead of using a full stop, higher-level punctuation or a conjunction. 

We vow never to make this mistake again!! 

Super exciting news is that we have all now got a Writing Buddy! This is a fellow Y6 pupil, from one of our Alliance schools in South Leeds, who we will write to and communicate with over the course of the year. We will review each other's writing, and make suggestions and constructive critiques in order to help each other with our writing. We are in the process of writing our introductory letters and will hopefully be able to send our first piece of work off at the end of next week.

This week, we also took part in an African Dance workshop as part of Black History Month and our ongoing Cultural Diversity project. At the time of writing, we have no photos, but Mrs Evans will aim to add some as soon as possible!

A Celebration of Reading Coffee Morning, Friday 9th Nov 09:45-11:15

One more thing to mention is that on Friday 9th November, Y6 will be helping the Pupil Librarians host a coffee morning to celebrate reading and hopefully raise vital funds for our library. Guests will be able to play book-themed games, listen to pupils read and also take part in a classic children's literature quiz. Nursery children will be invited too, as we are launching our EYFS reading scheme after the holiday. (This is where Y6 team up with children in Nursery and Reception and read to them on a weekly basis).

As the following Sunday is Remembrance Sunday, we will also be marking the occasion with the reading of extracts and poems. 

We would love to invite you along to this special event! Even if you can't make it, please consider baking / purchasing a cake / buns / scones etc to help our coffee morning be a roaring success. Thank you!

w/c 8.10.18

This week seems to have gone so quickly: it must be all the hard work we are doing in Y6!

In Maths, we began by consolidating our division skills through various reasoning and problem solving challenges. We then strengthened our understanding of common factors, common multiples and prime numbers, ensuring we know how to not only identify these special numbers but also work with them in a variety of contexts. 

We celebrated Ada Lovelace Day (www.findingada.com) on Tuesday, recognising her achievements as a brilliant mathematician and problem solver: we even had a try at solving some logic puzzles!

In GPV (Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary for those who don't know), we focused on identifying and producing sentences in both the past progressive and the present progressive tense. We played a game to help make this a bit more fun! 

One Small Step...

In English/History, as World Space Week continued, we collated our research into the moon landings and created a newspaper report to demonstrate our learning. 

Conditions on Slave Ships

As part of our project exploring slavery, we recognise that sometimes the content may make us feel uncomfortable (or even ashamed of our heritage), but is essential not to forget the actions of our ancestors. This week we investigated sources of evidence to retrieve key information about the appalling conditions on board the ships that transported the slaves across the Atlantic, and collated this information into a key document in our Focus books. 

Barnbow

We have been learning about the local munitions factory, Barnbow, and the tragic accident on the 5th Dec 1916. Ask us about what we know about why the poppies used to symbolise remembrance of the workers is yellow.... 

As part of a wider scale project, we contributed to an installation to commemorate 100 years since the end of the First World War, which is to be exhibited at Armley Mills museum.

In Reading this week, Mrs Evans was once again boasting about how brilliant we all are, so teachers from other schools wanted to come in and see how we work in a Reading VIPERS lesson - well done everyone!

Road Safety

We have also had Road Safety Training this week, particularly around speed awareness. We enjoyed going out into the village to measure the speed of vehicles travelling around the corner near Mr Virdee's: we discovered many cars slowed down a lot when they saw SID's unhappy face! (SID = speed indicator device).

w/c 1.10.18

This week, in Maths we have cemented our knowledge on how to use factor pairs to make division easy-peasy, and how to create skeleton tables for those trickier numbers. (We also learnt that the creators of Transformers called their most powerful Transformer ‘Optimus Prime’, because 'Optimus' is the Latin word for 'the best' and 'prime' means 'indivisible' (undividable) and therefore something at its strongest).

Long division as a formal method has been introduced. It is tricky to understand, but we must remember that the steps are nothing new; we are simply showing what we know and proving how we have worked out the remainders, instead of mentally calculating the remainders and squashing them into the bus stop! Have a look at this video: 

In English, our biographies of Martin Luther King are great - we have spent this week refining our work by applying our editing techniques, and using our Go-To-Guides to ensure we are working at Y6 standard. 

We have learnt all about World Space Week, in particular the Apollo 11 mission in 1969: we have compiled our research and next week will be ready to go into role as a reporter from 1969 to write a report as if we were there.

During Reading lessons, we have been linking to our theme and learning how Sam Cooke's 'A Change is Gonna Come' became a civil rights anthem in the 1960s, and then was used for Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008. We explored the lyrics and understood the context in which the song was written.

Why not enjoy his song and spend a few moments in quiet reflection?

Art lessons have been spent finding out more about Bernard Hoyes, the Jamaican artist whose use of complementary colours creates stunning images featuring movement - we need to spend a bit longer working on these before exhibiting them in our gallery, but if you look in the classroom you may be able to see some examples of our Picasso and Cubism work.

In PE, we worked on attacking and defending skills in basketball with Mr Peate, and then followed a Zumba routine with Mrs Evans on Friday, to Tina Turner's Proud Mary! Lots of fun!!

We have now planned out our vlogs in Computing (How do diet, exercise, drugs and alcohol affect heart health?) linked to our Science lessons, and will begin filming next week - hopefully we can share these videos with other pupils in school. 

w/c 24th September

What fun we have had this week! In Maths, we have been exploring the formal method of multiplication when multiplying 4 digit by 2 digit numbers. Most of us have now mastered this method, remembering to include our 'place holder zero' when multiplying the digit in the tens column. We have played games and completed treasure hunts - hopefully next week we will be ready to tackle long division!

In English, we have been using our new 'Go-To-Guides'  to help us understand the text features of a biography and create our biography of Civil Rights hero, Martin Luther King. I have been impressed with how interested the children have been in this topic - many of them are coming to school with additional facts they have researched, especially to include in their work. 

In Reading, we have been practising our VIPERS skills using Supertato: a picture book about an extraordinary vegetable!

Science this week involved further exploration of how the circulatory system is a transportation system for not only oxygen and nutrients, but also other substances such as illegal drugs. We enjoyed listening to our visitor tell us all about drugs, including the differences between medicines and illegal drugs, how all drugs originally come from plants, and how to say no to drugs should anyone try to persuade us to try them in the future. 

w/c 17th September

This week, we have been tackling negative numbers in Maths, discussing how if Jamal Blackman, Leeds United goalkeeper, were to build a mansion with underground levels, what floors they would be. We also translated this into temperature and analysed the differences between temperatures. 

In English and History, we are asking ourselves why the world should be ashamed of slavery, exploring the location of the Slave Trade Triangle, what was traded and which countries were involved. We investigated various historical sources and questioned the reliability of each, before making inferences about the experiences of slaves.

We have also further explored Martin Luther King, ready to begin our biographies next week. 

Reading has involved the theme of 'rain', comparing different poems and practising our VIPERS skills of 'infer', 'vocabulary', 'explain' and 'retrieve'. 

In RE, we are looking at Sikhism, comparing the beliefs to Christianity and noticing that many are the same. 

Music involved further exploration of Michael Jackson and Motown: playing along to the ballad 'I'll Be There', whilst listening and appraising 'I Want You Back' - see the concentration on our faces!

w/c 10th September 2018

What a busy week! This week, we have been exploring place value and rounding in maths, which can be quite tricky when working with large numbers. We discussed why it's important to be able to round accurately and thought of real-life examples. 

In Art, we have been learning about Pablo Picasso, creating Powerpoints about his life and the Cubist movement. Watch out for our cubist portraits, as we are rather proud of them.

Using an image of Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings, we analysed what we could see, using an acronym called DADWAVERS! to help us write more interesting sentences. How would you describe what you can see?

Martin Luther King

Our main focus this half term is going to be around real-life heroes such as Martin Luther King. We will be learning lots about the Civil Rights Movement, and this week found out who MLK was and why he was considered a hero.

Roald Dahl Day 2018

What fun we had on RD Day! Some excellent use of facial expression, body language and gesture to embody different RD characters. Pupils controlled their still images excellently, and carefully considered how to bring their characters to life using movement and vocal skills. 

Please see the photographs for evidence of what we got up to!!