Year 6 Friday 28th January 2022

Date: 28th Jan 2022 @ 4:15pm

Year 6 have had another busy week, with lots of learning and some super leadership roles working hard throughout the school. All of our buddies have received glowing remarks from the lunchtime staff, the reading ambassadors are supporting reading every day with the Receptions and our Learning Times team has expanded with even more writers!

Next Tuesday, Year 6 have been given the incredibly fortunate job of planting trees, which were generously donated to school. Mr Ainsworth will be joining us so please do not forget your wellies or old shoes on Tuesday.

Our learning in Year 6 this week:

• In Maths, we learnt about angles, how to identify them, draw them and even find missing angles within them. We also learnt how to multiply using the compact multiplication method, so from now on try to use this instead of the grid method – it will help us to become even quicker mathematicians.  
• In English, we have improved the way we write dialogue, by accurately using the punctuation in our speech and adding various verbs to blend action into our stories.
• In RE, we learnt about the Bible and how it is divided into 73 book with two main sections: the Old Testament and the New Testament. We used references to find a range of genres within the Bible (drama, history, poetry, prayers, letters, etc).
• In PE, with having learnt the basics of Hockey, we divided ourselves into mini groups to play competitive matches in 4v4 or 5v5 games. In gymnastics, we explored ways of using apparatus to show various partner balances. We then applied them to a gymnastics sequence of 2 balances, 2 rolls, 2 travels and 2 jumps.
• In History, we introduced our main topic of the Mayans by investigating clues from a village found a few hundred years ago. We used these clues to predict what the Mayan civilisation was like.
• In Music, we started to learn ‘Each and Every Day’ for Children’s Mental Health week, listened to and discussed music composed by Shiva Feshareki and also played Denadon in 3 parts with the Djembi drums.
• In French, we learnt some facts about Cameroon (a Francophone country) and watched a video about a child’s daily life there.
• In Science, we have worked at improving the level of detail and scientific facts in our predictions and conclusions. We have planned a comparative test about how different yoga poses will affect our pulse rates, ready to start next week. It would be really beneficial if the children could bring their phones or Fitbits to help measure their heart rates accurately again (but do not worry if you don’t want to as we have shared before and it has worked out brilliantly these past few weeks).
• In PSHE, we explored what social media is and how it can affect us in positive and negative ways.

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

• Reading – Continue to read every night for 30 minutes. You also have a Reading Journal/Diary that must be used for the title of the book and any reading challenge chosen.
  • The days when you can change your book:
    • Monday – Roller Coasters
    • Tuesday – Big Dippers
    • Wednesday – The Waltzers

• Spellings (challenge words)
  • Sumdog (Homophones Sp1 wk 5)

isle, aisle, aloud, allowed, past, passed, prey, pray, coarse, course, rain, reign, knight, night, stationary, stationery

• 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, 2 and 3 and count up 10 times then back again in 6s:

1, 7, 13, 19, 26, 31, 27, etc

and in 8s :

1, 9, 17, 25, 33, 41, 49, etc

• Number facts:
  • To help your maths even more, please continue to learn your numbers facts, 6 + 8 = 14, 8 + 7 = 15.
  • The best way to do this is to simply have someone in your home quiz you with questions like (8 + 6, 6 + 5, 3 + 8, 5 + 9, etc)
  • Then get them to change the place value of these digits (0.8 + 0.6, 0.06 + 0.05, 0.3 + 0.8, etc)

• Sumdog (Divisions mix of 7-12)
  • Each child has their own tables target which they should know. The Sumdog challenge may relate to their target but if not, you can always use the ‘trainer’ section of Sumdog for extra Tables Practice. Every Tuesday there is a tables test.

• Sumdog (Angles challenge – 150 questions)
  • For this challenge, there will be questions related to less or more than a right angle, identifying which are acute and which are obtuse. Then there will be questions to read protractors to the nearest 10 degrees and 5 degrees. I have increased the challenge to 150 as this practice will be incredibly beneficial to you in the coming weeks.

Maths and Spelling Training.

Do not forget to keep using this extra feature: the maths and spelling training sections will provide a tailored challenge for your child to practise skills, facts and words that they find difficult. Once your challenges have been completed, use this feature to challenge yourself in both spelling and maths.

Spend some time training so the program can learn the skills your child needs to work on and practise.