Outdoor play rehearsals, July 7th

Seeing as how it was such a nice and the sun was shining, we decided to take advantage of the weather by taking our production rehearsals outside.

Scene groups rehearsed their lines and their manner of delivery in the sunshine and inched ever closer to our big date of July 18th - with 11 days to go, it's looking pretty good!

Careers morning Monday July 7th 2014

Today saw a very interesting break from the usual Monday classroom routine - two guests from Leeds University came to see Year 6 and led two very different tasks.

Mr Lawrence delivered an interesting lesson on symoblogy, where images were associated with memories and other associations and this resulted in our class creating their own coats of arms linked to life experiences and priorities.

Miss Wier delivered an interesting university life workshop during which she spoke openly about life as a university student, how to get to university and how to learn to look after yourself when away from home.

All in all, we had a fascinating morning and we would like to thank both of our guests for their time.

The ice breakers - would you rather... game with some interesting choices!

Discussing which jobs require a university degree

Discussing our career ambitions and the qualification paths we may need to take.

A starter's guide to symbology - how do the images we see every day affect us and what symbolises our own values?

Sports Day 2014

We decided to change the format of sports day this year, moving away from the round robin concept and moving back towards traditional, competitive sports.

Feedback from parents and children tends to suggest the new format is very popular and it was excellent to see the pupils from all classes compete so hard but in a wonderful, sporting manner at the same time.

Events included 100m and 50m sprints, the 4 x 50m sprint relay, the traditional sack race and obstacle course as well as the bizarre 'fancy dress race'. Add to this the potato and spoon, the javelin and the shot put and all in all this made for a wonderful sports day we look forward to revisiting next year!

That's it, Hayley, leap like a salmon...

Lightwater Valley Friday June 27th

On Friday June 27th Year 6 went on the first of our two end of year treat trips; Lightwater Valley.

After some minor delays, we arrived at the park just aftern ten in the morning and enjoyed four hours of fun and games.

This year saw the added bonus of no sunburn for anybody (Mr Harrison's head looked like a pink basketball last year by the end of the day!) and no lost shoes so all in all a wonderful trip on some scary but exciting rides. Let's have a look...

Dates for your diary - Important events for June.

Thursday June 19th and Wednesday 25th / Thursday 26th - S.R.E. workshops

• Best behaviour please!
• The workshops will last around an hour and will be delivered by Mr Riley for the boys and Miss Kitchen and Miss Duplex for the girls.
• Girls and boys will have the workshops in different classrooms.

Friday June 27th - Lightwater Valley trip.

• Bring a packed lunch.
• Wear your uniform please.
• Inhalers and other medicines must be brought in.
• No ipads or other expensive, breakable items.
• We leave at 09:00 and will be back at school at 15:00.
• If it's hot on the day please bring sun cream.

Monday June 30th - Sports Day.

• Please be at school by 08:50 sharp.
• Come in your PE kit, you can wear it all day.
• Please wear your house colours!
• Bring a water bottle.
• We will start our first event at 09:15 and will finish around 11:45 on the field.
• Plenty of cheering for everybody, regardless of their event or house.

Monday June 30th - Year 6 Prom.

• We will start at 18:00 and finish around 19:30.
• Don't have any tea as there is a massive, massive buffet if Mr Riley doesn't eat it all.
• Dress nicely - gentlemen don't forget your finest evening clothes!
• Tickets are £8, please pay at the office.

Play rehearsals - School Daze

Aside from The Highwayman, our main literacy focus this half term is our end of year play. Assembly will be a little different this year as we perform our own version of the excellent play 'School Daze'.

The parts have been allocated, the printer is fixed so Mrs Gray has very kindly laboured away ensuring everybody has their script and song lyrics. As you can see, rehearsals by scene are well under way and we'll publish more updates when we have them.

It's going to be great so we'll see you on the 18th of July...

Grumpy SGT Majors perfecting their shouting techniques

Script supervisor Hayley making sure our leading characters know their lines.

Enterprises - raising money for ourselves and the rest of school!

Ever since the SAT exams finished Year 6 have been money-mad! They have spent weeks devising more and more diabolical and wicked schemes to generate cash to pay for a number of school events, but in the end we opted against some of the Fish Finger Monster's more scary ideas and created a great set of enterprise businesses instead.

The enterprises will run for four weeks in total and will end on Thursday June 26th so get to them whilst you can!

Bikeability 4th - 6th June 2014

It's that time of year again - the old 'Cycling Proficiency' has been updated with the new and exciting  Bikeability challenge.

The aim of the sessions was to educate young people (ours!) on the risks of cycling on the roards and raise awareness of safer ways to enjoy cycling when out and about.

Big thanks to Ben for giving us his time, the pupils enjoyed themselves and learned a great deal...

The Highwayman

Year 6 have been studying a text-based unit lately based around The Highwayman.

Last week we decided to familiarise ourselves with the storyline and key events by acting scenes out during literacy.

Here's how we did...

Maths Learn By Heart - multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 or 1000

We have a new LBH task now and again it focusus on the basic skills that you will need for the rest of your lives. There are some simple tricks, however, to make these problems a little less daunting...

Divide by 10 = move the decimal point 1 place to the left (so 50.0 becomes 5.0)
Divide by 100, move it 2 places to the left.
Divide by 1000, move it 3 places to the left.

To multiply by 10, simply move the decimal point 1 place to the RIGHT (so 10.0 becomes 100.0)
To multiply by 100, move it 2 places to the right.
To multiply by 1000, move it 3 places to the right.

If you need any help then please just ask - and be ready for our tests on the following dates;

Test 1 is Friday February 7th.
Test 2 is Friday February 14th.

Presentation Friday!

From the start of the spring term, Year 6 shall be taking it in turns to hold presentations on a Friday afternoon.

The 20-30 minutes after assembly can be a little chaotic and we are now pleased to have something to work towards each week whilst learning something new.

This week, Davey, Hayley and Alex gave a talk on African animals and it was fascinating!

Maths Learn By Heart - Number bonds to 1000

Nobody knows their number bonds to 1000 including up to 4 decimal places so what is this LBH task REALLY about?

Yes, it's all about using column subtraction methods quickly and correctly.

Make sure you practice these for this Friday's test (09:00, Friday 24th January) and ensure your place value and borrowing is accurate.

It's nothing to worry about but make sure you are ready please!

Journalism

Year 6 have recently completed a short unit on journalistic writing. We have learned the key features of journalistic writing and applied them in various ways. On Thursday we carried out some action news drama and and this helped us to understand how to deliver news in an action-packed and exciting way...

Year 6 Gymnastics

Year 6 have now begun their spring term PE topic and we are looking at creating pirate gymnastics routines.

We will be learning about balances, poses and a variety of rolls we we will be carrying out safely - this learning will be demonstrated in our end of term pirates exhibition in the hall so watch this space...

Rolling on the high seas.

Planning our routines once the basic skills were established.