Year 6 - Spring 2 - Week 3

Date: 10th Mar 2022 @ 7:27pm

Another fun-filled week in Year 6…this time, with a special focus on careers!

Once again, we have celebrated National Careers Week in school and our Year 6 pupils have covered a range of jobs as part of this. Through our Maths and Writing lessons, we started to understand the role of a teacher more.  As writers, we were tasked with writing a class blog. The children analysed previous entries from this year, identifying the range of punctuation used, as well as technical vocabulary. They then decided on a few subjects / class events that have taken place this year to create their own entry. Although these are not yet finished, we hope that the children can be as ‘picky’ about editing their own work as they have been about their teacher’s!

In Maths, we were given the task of marking arithmetic papers, working in pairs to decide on a particular pupil’s final grade. In order to do this well, they needed to explain their reasoning to their partner and apply their knowledge of calculations to decide on whether each answer was correct or incorrect. The children actually enjoyed this task – so much so, we may be grading some more papers in the future! 

In addition this, both Mr King’s group and Mrs Martin’s group have focused on measurement this week, particularly finding the area and perimeter of shapes. Mrs Martin’s group also recapped on volume, which Mr King’s group will be revising at the start of next week. The children’s arithmetic skills have continued to be refined as well through the use of some new games. The children are always huge fans of competitive activities to test their knowledge, such as ‘Shoot Out!’ and Kahoot, so they were incredibly excited to try some new websites – Blooket and Gimkit - on their iPads this week, which offered a range of new and exciting competitions.

As it has been National Careers Week, we have also welcomed visitors into school to discuss their professions. On Thursday, we welcomed Matt Taylor into class, who talked about his career journey from a professional footballer to a personal trainer. He discussed how he was able to turn his passion for football at school into a full-time profession before explaining how he moved into the world of CrossFit and what he likes about the sport. To conclude his presentation, he then took the children into the hall for a free PT session! How lucky are we?! 

To round off another excellent week, we welcomed Mrs Harris (or ‘Miss McMahon’ as she is known in work!) to talk about her career as a neurosurgeon. This was very appropriate as we had also celebrated International Women’s Day on Tuesday and one particular pupil had chosen to deliver a presentation about his mother, a neurosurgeon…who happened to be Miss McMahon! The children were fascinated to learn about Miss McMahon’s career in Science and about the work she does. We were treated to a fantastic presentation, which provided many fantastic learning opportunities around the academic qualifications needed for such a career; how others can inspire you and the importance of maintaing hobbies and interests outside of work as well. The topic of helmet safety also came up and this is something we will be discussing in class again in the future. This was definitely a memorable experience for the children, particularly those who were able to dress as surgeons and perform brain surgery on watermelons. Thank you, Miss McMahon!

Thank you to both of our visitors for coming into class this week to share their career journeys. Another ‘thank you’ to two ex-pupils who have been with us all week on work experience too. There are many children who will be grateful for the support they have received from the boys this week, especially our football squad who received two very well-organised training sessions!

A special ‘well done’ as well to our boys’ football team who faced Our Lady of Compassion this week as part of the Echo Cup. They continued to make us incredibly proud with their positive attitude and teamwork.

The children are aware of what their homework for this week is. Spellings have also been set on Google Classroom for next week. 

Please ensure you have received our message / email sent on Thursday via School Spider regarding a SATs briefing for parents. If you are able to attend, please email Mr King and Mrs Martin via the Y6 account.

Have a great weekend, everyone!