It’s the end of a very busy first term in Year 6. I’m so proud of the progress the children have made so far this year – they have worked really hard and learned some new skills including: long division; how to thread a needle; how to sew and sew on a button; how to answer different types of SATs questions and much, much more.
They showed their musical side with a fabulous rendition of ‘We Three Kings’ at the carol concerts this week – tremendous!
I hope that you all have a safe, relaxing and restful holiday. Remember to have a go at the homework challenges you have been given – there will be prizes! I can’t wait to see what Year 6 achieve in the Spring Term! Bring on 2023!
Year 6 News 25.11.22
Year 6 continue to work hard and have been learning some valuable new skills since our last update.
English has been very emotional. We are using a Christmas advert as our writing stimulus and it has proven to be evocative. As a result, Year 6 have come up with some amazing vocabulary and have shown empathy towards the characters. They promise not to take loved ones for granted!
We continue to explore new ways to tackle division in maths and have spent time revising short division and division using factors before embarking on long division. It would be fantastic to see more Year 6s using Times Tables Rock Stars at home too…
In science, we were Taxonomists for an afternoon. We had to sort animals into different groups, based on their similarities and differences. This proved trickier than we initially expected!
We used our resilience in DT this week where we were learning how to join two pieces of fabric together using a running stitch. Even with our ‘cheat’ needles, it really tested our resolve. It was wonderful to see the children using teamwork to support each other too. Next week, we will be starting to sew our mini waistcoats. It’s all very exciting!
Year 6 News 11.11.22
It’s been an action packed few weeks in Year 6 (as always). In our English lessons, we have started to research and write a biography of Sir David Attenborough. He’s a very interesting person and we have found out lots about him already – for example, his passion for natural history was sparked when, age 7, was gifted a dried seahorse! In reading, we have started our new class novel. It’s a classic – The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So far, we are intrigued by the curious case being investigated by Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. We have been using our inference skills to build up character profiles of the two sleuths.
In maths we have been revising the concepts of factors, multiples, primes and cubes. This will really support us in the coming weeks when we will be tackling long division and long multiplication.
We have started our new geography unit - The North and South Poles and have done lots of retrieval practice to make sure we know the ‘Sticky Knowledge’ needed – such as the continents of the world and about lines of longitude and latitude. Similarly, in science, we have been revisiting learning from Year 4 about living things and their habitats.
Our new Design Technology unit is very exciting. We have been designing mini waistcoats, which will have a Christmas theme and be hand sewn by us. Watch this space to see our progress. Miss Gray was very excited by the choices of festive fabrics!
How on earth is it half term already?! I have really enjoyed my first half term at Ellington and I have been really impressed with the way most of Year 6 have settled in and risen to the challenge of the Year 6 curriculum – it’s tricky! Thank you to those parents who came to parent’s evening. It was lovely to meet you.
In English, have been busy rehearsing for our Harvest Festival assembly. We have learned various readings and poems linked to food, farming, autumn and harvest. At the time of writing, we are almost finished reading The Land of Roar – it’s a great book and we would recommend it to children in Key Stage 2. Our versions of the opening are now published too.
In history we have been learning about life as a Victorian child during the industrial revolution. We all agree it was a hard life! We have explored the work of Lord Shaftesbury and the reforms he brought in to protect children and make sure they were educated and well treated.
In art we have been using macro lenses to take close up photographs of everyday objects. Can you guess what they are?
We have had another busy couple of weeks in Year 6. We are still reading ‘The Land of Roar’ and enjoying the story very much. Our independent writing is currently being published and we are very excited to show our target audience (Year 4). Our challenge was to see if our writing would hook them in and make them want to read the rest of our adventure stories, just based on our fabulous setting descriptions.
We are still working hard in maths too. We have been ordering and comparing numbers up to 10 million - it’s trickier than it sounds at times and we will be moving on to rounding such numbers next week.
In art, we have been learning about macro photography and the work of the photographer ‘Weston’. Can you guess what the subject of the picture below is? We will be composing and editing our own macro photographs, next week.
In science, we learned about repeating results to get more accurate measurements. We investigated the average height of our table groups and realised that human error is a real problem!