Year 6 Blog Friday 3rd March 2023

Date: 3rd Mar 2023 @ 8:05am

Welcome to our Year 6 blog.

This week, we have been lucky enough to welcome our Japanese visitors (Yuichi and his students), who will be learning about early reading and writing as they continue their journey to becoming teachers.  

REMINDER

For our PE lessons this term, which will include rugby and orienteering (weather depending), please bring in extra trainers (preferably old ones) that you do not mind getting dirty and a plastic bag to keep them in. You may take them home each week, if you prefer to clean them.

Our learning in Year 6 this week:

• In Maths, we learnt how to find the area of squares, rectangles and rectilinear shapes (using the formula, l x w = area), which then helped us to solve various shape problems.
• In English, Vita, our main character, witnessed her first circus, which inspired us to write a ‘rave review’ for a newspaper article. We have been working on perfecting our punctuation too.
• In RE, we continued our topic of ‘Unity’ by reading John’s gospel (17:11, 20-23), which helped us to write a prayer of the benefits people can have by being more united with each other.
• In PE, we focused on improving our individual performance with throwing, jumping and running in athletics.
• In History, we learnt where some of the ancient civilisations fit into a world history timeline
• In Music, we appraised another song written by Carole King, ‘The Locomotion’, and played some accompaniment to the song, ‘You’ve Got a Friend’. We also learned the recorder parts to the song.
• In PSHE, we continued our topic of online safety by learning about the age ratings system for films and other media. We can now recognise the different symbols related to the age ratings for films and can explain what each mean.
• In French this week, we recapped how to say (A town/city) ______ est dans l'ouest de la France using a map of France. Then we began to  learn our first irregular verb - the verb etre, to be, and practised using the right part of the verb with jobs vocabulary. 
• In Science, we learnt about the structure of a heart from a diagram, then we dissected some lambs' hearts to see if we could identify the parts. It's not as easy as the diagram makes it look! An interesting experience!

Home Practice all relates to this week’s learning. These are the tasks needed to be completed:

Reading

• Please keep reading every day to build up stamina. A great idea is to read 20-30 pages a day (you can read more) in one sitting, as this will build up your ability to read at length for long periods of time.

Spellings (challenge words)

• Sumdog (Year 6 Sp 2 wk 2 long -y- sound)

Cycling, hyena, identify, imply, justify, apply, multiply, occupy, python, qualify, recycle, rhyme, supply, cyclone, hyphen

Maths challenges:

• Counting:
  • This week we have been counting in single digit steps to prepare us for future division learning. Try to do the same out loud or with paper.
  • Draw a line with some marks on it like I do in class. You could write the numbers as you count up or down, then double check it to make sure you have said the correct numbers.
  • Start with these numbers: 1.4, 2.64 and 3.726 and count up 10 times then back again in 0.3s:

1.4, 1.7, 2.0, 2.3, 2.6, 2.9, 3.2, etc

And in 0.4s:

2.64, 3.04, 3.44, 3.84, 4.24, 4.64, etc

• Number facts:
  • To help your maths even more, please continue to learn your numbers facts, 6 + 9 = 15, 5 + 7 = 12.
  • Then change the place value of these digits (0.6 + 0.9, 0.05 + 0.07, etc)

• Sumdog (Prime numbers Sp 2 wk 3)
  • We practised doing this same activity in class, so work on achieving close to 100% accuracy with this challenge.

• Sumdog (Area Sp 2 wk 3)
  • This week’s challenge will ask various area questions related to squares and rectangles. The purpose of this exercise is to read the question correctly as the unit of measurement will be important. For example, if the question asks, what is the area of 7cm x 5cm? The answers could be 35cm (squared, with a number 2 symbol) or 35cm. Make sure you read the answers carefully too.