Year 6 - Autumn 2 - Week 2
Date: 10th Nov 2022 @ 9:57pm
Another busy week in Year 6!
In Maths, Mr King’s group has worked incredibly hard on a number of tricky topics. They have not only revised their understanding of long multiplication from last year, but this week had to apply it to difficult reasoning problems, which certainly tested their mindsets and resilience levels! They have also learned new concepts and methods, such as BIDMAS and long division (using the chunking method). The latter is a particularly difficult method to master and so we will be continuing with this next week, although the children were praised several times during Thursday’s lesson for the progress they made in a very short space of time – well done! Mrs Martin’s group have been working on rounding and next week will move onto finding percentages of numbers.
As authors, Mr King’s group now on our final piece of writing, having finished the story, ‘Star of Fear, Star of Hope’. The children have now gone back to the start and are writing a recount of the initial events in the book, but this time from the perspective of the secondary character, Lydia. Next week, the children will then be able to link together all the shorter pieces they have written from Lydia’s point of view so far and use them to write up an extended piece in their author books. We can’t wait to read them! Mrs Martin’s group have also finished ‘Star of Fear, Star of Hope’ and there was not a dry in the room…from the teachers! Next week, the children will be reading ‘Erika’s Story’ by Ruth Zee and creating a piece of writing based on this text.
Plenty of discussions around reading have been had this week and the children have had lots of great ideas for a new display in class called ‘Bookflix’ where we can celebrate what we have been reading and recommend texts to our peers in a quick and easy way. We have also started a new class novel following a very close class vote between four potential books. We will now be reading ‘George’, by Alex Gino, although the novel has since been re-published and entitled ‘Melissa’. The book tells the story of a young transgender girl and although we have only read a couple of chapters, it has already generated so much discussion on equality, diversity, stereotypes and sense of belonging.
The children enjoyed our World War 1 topic so much that there was a class vote before we finished last half-term to change our History syllabus and allow the children to continue the war theme this half-term with more of a focus on World War 2. The power of democracy prevailed and this week we began our new unit by revising and recalling everything we knew so far about WW2 – thanks in large to the texts we have read and the Zoom sessions with the National Holocaust Museum and Holocaust survivor, Hedi Argent. In addition, we have started a new Art unit with a focus on poppies and the significance of them in relation to war and continued with our group visits to Formby Luncheon Club so the children can continue to pick up unique and personal knowledge of the wars from local residents. It is wonderful that all the children in the class will now have this opportunity!
On Friday, the children took part in Remembrance Day by attending a service at Formby War Memorial and laying a wreath, which they had created themselves. Although it was largely a time for reflection, it was also a good opportunity for the children to see first-hand how the wars affected our local community and to pay respects to the all the soldiers listed, whom we had previously been researching in class last half-term.
To conclude our week, the children were very excited to attend a special, whole-school assembly in the hall to watch the launch of our sixth ‘Celebration of Kindness’ music video! There were plenty of laughs in the hall as we watched ourselves, our peers and staff dancing around school last week and having fun. This is always a great way to launch our Celebration of Kindness Week and we hope all the children have fun watching the video again over the weekend with their families. Remember, the video can be found on our Vimeo channel!
We hope everyone has a fantastic weekend and is excited for the week ahead - celebrating kindness!