This week the homework is Talk Time and is due in on Thursday 01 March.
Are animals happy in zoos?
This is a moral question which I’d like you to discuss at home with your child. During the discussion with your child, it’s important to appreciate that there may be two opposing views and that although it’s okay to disagree we should respect the opposing view.
As part of our Life Forces topic, we had a visit from two university students who are both studying to be doctors. They taught us all about the circulatory system and how we can keep ours healthy.
We got to hear our hearts beating through a stethoscope which made lots of us jump if you tapped it when it was in our ears.
Then, Miss Rushbrooke had to put on a very attractive vest so that we could decide where all of our organs are. We were confident about some but didn’t have a clue about others.
Lots of learning and lots of big words discussed!
This week’s spelling list continues our exploration of the Year 5,6 spelling list and we move on to the ‘p, q, r’ section.
There will be a test on these words on Friday 02 March.
parliament
persuade
physical
prejudice
privilege
profession
programme
pronunciation
queue
recognise
recommend
relevant
restaurant
rhyme
rhythm
This week’s homework is Talk Time and will be discussed on Friday 02 March.
Animal experimentation – vivisection – is it right?
Have a chat in the car, over dinner or while walking to the shops about animal experimentation and whether is it ok or not. Try researching scenarios which might suggest that it’s a good thing to happen or examples of it being a bad thing to happen and make some notes in your homework book.
We’ll discuss the statement together in class, most likely sparking up a debate, something we love!
On Monday, we had the most amazing experience meeting a variety of unusual animals during our ‘Meet a Creature’ workshop. These included a snake, a tortoise, a tarantula, a gecko, bearded dragons and a chinchilla. Some of the children were extremely brave and held or just touched the creatures. 
We learnt lots of interesting facts about the creatures’ habitats and how they adapt to their environments.
This half term had an exciting start as our first lesson of the day involved meeting some exciting creatures. We learn all about how these creatures have evolved into what they are today as well as some interesting facts about them.
We held quite a few lizards, all of which are reptiles and have cold blood so generally live in warm environments.
Snakes and tortoises are reptiles too but snakes have evolved to have no legs – and make an excellent scarf.
Spiders have eight eyes as well as eight legs and some of us were perfectly happy holding this one – it actually tickled a little bit.
A number of us weren’t too keen on some of the creatures – lots of children who appear very confident in the playground and classroom were not so happy when confronted with a giant millipede!
Even the staff had a go. We had to wrestle the snake off Mrs Small as she liked the look of it as a scarf… but she wasn’t so keen on the tarantula.
Who knew a giant millipede could make you so happy!
In PE this half term, Year 6 are taking control of coaching each other in football. We have 6 five-a-side teams who are in charge of improving each other in preparations for the games we play.
I shall say no more as the teams’ press officers have prepared a short summary of what went on in today’s lesson.
Written by Grace: Firstly, the physio -Nishaan- gave us some stretches to do to warm up our muscles ready for the lesson. Nishaan gave us four stretches then he told us to jog around the playground to get our heart pumped. Then, our coach, Abdullah, did a drill with Nishaan and Stanley while Grace and Pavan practised some dribbling skills using cones as defenders. When we became more confident with dribbling, we included it in a little match against another team. We were not allowed to tackle because we hadn’t practised that yet but it was still fun. We played that for about 10 minutes but then tidied away and discussed our lesson before going back into class.
Written by Edward: In my group we had Edward, Aleena, Matthew, Hibba and Megan. The first part was OK when we practised skills but we took the football game way too seriously. Hibba and I were the people who thought we were
not as confident in football. I enjoyed the game but people were taking it too
seriously and were tackling when you were not supposed to. I would rate this
football lesson 7.4/10.
Written by Isobel: In PE, we have started to play football until the end of term. We have all been given roles: coach, manager, kit manager, physio or press manager. In my group, Harry, Nico, Pohnum, Umiamah and I, we focused on dribbling. We did a set of drills that helped our dribbling skills and at the end played a small game with extra rules to help our dribbling skills.
Written by Pippa: Today, Year 6 did football for PE. There were five people in a group and each had their own role: coach (Noah T.), manager (Archie V.), kit/equipment manager (Pheonix L.), physio (Zach I.) and press officer (Me, Pippa G.). The press officer is who wrote the post, the coach trained everyone, the manager took charge, the physio fired up and cooled down everyone on the group and the kit manager got and put away the equipment. First, the physio took charge to get everyone ready. Then, the coach trained the group to warm them up. Next, everyone had a match against another group. Finally, the press officers wrote about it.
Written by Saleem: Today, Year 6 were asked to form a group of 5 and had each been given a role to play: coach (Oliver), manager (Brandon), kit/equipment manager (Iqra), physio (Owen) and the press officer (Saleem) . Children were asked to create a drill practising their dribbling skills as a group. At the end, the children played a match. Our group played very well due to some weather issues and played very well with each other. Today we had a great time and will hopefully continue this.
Written by Neive: Today we did football coaching: Enya was the physio, Neive was the press officer, Daanyaal was the kit manager, Elias was the manager and Matteo was the coach. Firstly, Enya did warm ups. We did ten star jumps, a game of tig and some stretches. After that, Matteo did our drill. Before he started, Daanyaal went and got some equipment for it. The drill involved us dribbling from cone to cone but there was a defender in our way. Next, we did a match against another team. We had to dribble to a line then stop it exactly on the line. We played for about ten minutes. Penultimately, we tidied away. Finally, we discussed the pros and cons of our session – Elias led it.⚽
Thank you to everyone who attended parent-teacher meetings recently. It’s great to see that almost all parents / carers took the time to hear how their child is progressing and to find out more about how to support their child at home.
Talking of support at home, the Learn More section of our website has lots of different top tips. Go to Help Your Child.
Of course, there are loads of games and activities online, too. Perhaps there’s too much – going on-line can be overwhelming. Here are two sites we suggest – useful for children of any age.
We really like IXL. Here, you’ll find pages for every year group, with activities to practise English and Maths skills. There are usually well over 100 pages for each subject. This could be overwhelming, but each subject is then broken down into helpful sub-categories. (For example, in Year 6 Maths, these are sections on Numbers and Comparing, Place Value, Addition, Understanding Fractions etc.)
This site is especially good to explain – and avoid – a common mistake in writing: ‘run-on’ sentences, which we call ’squashed’ sentences in school. These are two (or more) sentences that are squashed together. For example:
In half-term, I went to the cinema I saw Early Man it was great!
In this example, there are actually three ‘chunks’ (clauses) that all make sense and need to be split up (using a full stop or a dash or a semi-colon):
In half-term, I went to the cinema. I saw Early Man – it was great!
The sentences could also be joined with a conjunction:
In the half-term, I went to the cinema and I saw Early Man – it was great!
On IXL, there’s at least one activity to practise this in Y3-Y6 – start with the Year 3 one, even if your child is older.
The BBC Bitesize website has recently been updated – it’s probably best you avoid the old archived one, so use this link. The site contains pages on most National Curriculum subjects and it’s definitely worth checking it out.
Speak with us about other ways to support your child at home.
As always, there was some fantastic Creative homework to enjoy in our homework review yesterday. We learnt lots from each other about various parts of the body and, because we all completed our work in homework books, we can now create our very information book from it.
Here’s a sneaky peak at a few pages:
Dave from D:Side joined our class last week to teach us all about internet safety. Year 1 showed a great understanding of how to be safe online.
When we talked about being online, Year 1 understood that they must not give out personal information and must tell an adult if they are unsure about something that comes onto the screen. We also discussed about not talking to strangers online as they might not be who they say they are.
