Year 6 - Spring 1 - Week 5
Date: 3rd Feb 2022 @ 9:43pm
It is hard to believe we have already completed the penultimate week of this half-term!
In Writing, we had already immersed ourself in the horror genre last Friday when we entered our candle-lit classroom with eerie music playing on arrival. This week, we officially started our writing journey, focusing on our attention to detail when describing a setting and aiming to include particular punctuation and grammar objectives such as semicolons and the subjunctive form. The majority of our pupils started to finish their pieces by the end of the week…and they are fantastic! At one point, Mrs Pringle visited the classroom and told us she was leaving “with chills” after reading a few extracts!
In Maths, the children in Mr King’s group developed their understanding of how to interpret pie charts before moving onto shapes and angles – having expressed a desire to revise these latter topics following some revision tasks last week. Mrs Martin’s group have been working hard to perfect their calculations involving fractions.
Next week, the children will be sitting some practice assessments, just like they did in Autumn term. We are confident that the children will give their best and will hopefully be able to see how far they have come since November!
In PE this week, the children loved starting our tag rugby sessions. We worked on our ball control and our dodging skills…but most importantly, we learned how to put a belt and tags on! It was a lot harder than we initially thought! After the first session, many of the children expressed their enjoyment of the sport and said that they liked it a lot more than they thought they would – which was fantastic to hear!
A special ‘well done’ as well to the two pupils in our class, who took part in the Sefton Cross Country event this week. What a great effort!
Our learning around the Shang Dynasty concluded this week. Throughout the half-term, the children have gained plenty of new knowledge on this period, including how the Shang Dynasty was founded and what life was like for a citizen at this time. Our pupils also had to consider different sources and question how accurate some information about the dynasty was. We hope the pupils enjoyed this History topic…we know Mr Hughes certainly did! He has always been happy to share his knowledge about China today at the end of our lessons - having taught in Shanghai for several years before joining the TSP family. Thank you, Mr Hughes!
It was very appropriate to be learning about Ancient China as well this half-term as on Tuesday we celebrated Chinese New Year. We were very fortunate to have a Zoom call with a secondary teacher in Fuzhou named Horrace, who told us all about the most common beliefs and customs practised in China on New Year’s Day. The children enjoyed hearing about these from Horrace with his first-hand knowledge…and were particularly interested to learn more about the ‘lucky money’ that students in China receive!
On the topic of Zoom, the children were also very fortunate to be able to chat with Mr King’s friends, Jess and Charley, who very recently broke a world record for the fastest female pair to row across the Atlanic Ocean. Following on from our PSHE lesson last week around insecurities, it really was a fantastic conversation about being positive and challenging yourself, so much so that we had to start writing down some of the life lessons Jess and Charley had learned from the experience. Such precepts included:
- Don’t overthink things as it may stop you from doing something great;
- Little steps making big mountains;
- Food is key;
- You get back what you put out;
- Being weird is wonderful;
- ‘Hashtag’ no filter;
- Be yourselves!
Perhaps our favourite story from the whole conversation was that Jess and Charley had been told by somebody prior to the trip to not be themselves as it could be perceived that they weren’t taking the challenge seriously. They then informed us that they had ignored this advice, had the best time and set a world record! (Additional note: that person then admitted they were wrong afterwards!)
To conclude our week, following our second tag rugby session of the week, the children returned to class for an ‘afternoon tea’ in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee on Sunday. We had tea and scones together and listened to some British anthems. Once again, it has been a very busy – but very enjoyable – week!
Children are aware of what their homework is for this week and next week’s spellings are on Google Classroom.
Have a great weekend, everyone!