Another wonderful week in Birch class! This week Year 6 have…

• Had a fantastic time learning to weave the frame of a lantern with willow and rush. We were guided by expert and local craftsperson Linda Lemieux. We’re hoping to use the lanterns in our Christmas performance.
• Completed their end of unit assessment on the Four Operations ( x - / + ). These hard working children managed to triple their average class score from the start of the unit! Amazing!
• We’ve started writing our independent stories based on Kensuke’s Kingdom – they’ve planned them well, so that they are as exciting and engaging as possible. I’m looking forward to reading the finished result
• Discovered the Hindu story of ‘the man in the well’… let’s put it this way, he had a very bad day!
• Been sketching trees and leaves like botanists in Science –we’ll be using our detailed sketches to classify the trees on our grounds next week.
• Been finding all of the UKs counties and learning about the UKs physical features in our Geography lesson
• Drummed to our hearts content in Music with Miss Rowe…
• And trying to wrap our minds around M.C Escher’s ascending and descending staircases - no small task – with Mr Dray in Art.

Another wonderful week in Birch class flies by! This week…

• We completed our second unit of maths, the four operations, and I’m looking forward to see the results of Monday’s assessment paper; I feel that they’ve really come a long way over the last 5 weeks, particularly with times tables – thank you parents for supporting with that at home!
• In Literacy, Michael has washed-up ashore on a mysterious island somewhere in the South Pacific. We’ve designed our own desert islands and we’re looking forward to using the great vocabulary we’ve ‘magpied’ from Michael Morpurgo in own stories next week.
• In Science, things were getting pretty sugary as we tried to create a classification key with over 20 of our favourite sweets. Zero sweets were harmed in the process of creating the key, but some are now closer to extinction.
• In our Geography lesson, we learnt the different regions of England as well as wondering why the largest (South West) was the least populated. We also used atlases to find all of the UK’s major cities.
• In RE, we looked at the story of Rama and Sita and discussed how we thought Hindus might use this story to help them be good.
• And, in PE, we got very rosy-cheeked and puffed out during Mr Ansel’s circuit training!

 

We’ve had a super first week back in Birch Class – the children have been working really hard and are a credit to you all.  
This week… 

• In Maths, our brains have been hurting as we get to grips with long division! I’m impressed though – they worked hard and they’ve picked it up quicker than I was suspecting – great stuff! 
• In English we’ve started a brand-new unit based around Michael Morpurgo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom. We read Adolphus Tips to support our learning on WW2 before half-term, and it has been great to compare and contrast two stories by the same author as well as look at how paragraphs are constructed. 
• We’ve switched from History to Geography this half-term and we’re now exploring our wonderful country and the rest of the kingdom. Over the next 6 weeks we’ll be answering questions like: what is a National Park and how many do we have? How many different counties and regions are there in the United Kingdom? Where does the UK gets its electricity from? What industries make up the UK’s economy?  
• In Science, we are looking into the fascinating life of Carl Linnaeus and his classification system. 

Other highlights: We learned of great sporting success in Birch class; before half-term, OCRA held a Quad-kids event across many primary schools in the area. Bertie and Luca finished 1st and 2nd respectively across all of the large schools! Excellent! 
 
DON’T FORGET! 
Next week is Times tables Rockstar's nationwide tournament! Log-in to TTRS every day of next week and spend at least 30 minutes practicing your times tables and let’s show the world how clever Birch class is!