Grammar Games 2025
This week, Y6 have been embroiled in the hotly anticipated Grammar Games 2025. Each day has seen the children take part in a variety of tasks all related to grammar.
We’ve looked at punctuation such as apostrophes, commas and hyphens and we’ve recapped grammatical terms such as conjunctions, tenses and Standard English.
Each round, they totalled their points and worked out their table’s mean average to add to the leaderboard.
As we know, punctuation saves lives…
By the end of the week, we could crown our winners!
Help at home by asking your child which areas of grammar they’re confident with and which they need help with.
Science: Which materials make the best shadows?
Which materials make the best shadows?
I predict that opaque objects will be the best at creating shadows because they block all the light.
We then tested different materials: tissue paper, cardboard, glass, wood
Our predictions were correct! The objects that were opaque were the best at making shadows.
The translucent materials did create a shadow but the shadow wasn’t as dark (strong) as the other shadows.
Help at home by having a go at this quiz!
Friday 02 May
This week’s spellings are practising the split digraph i-e.
slide
time
like
line
while
The spellings will be tested on Friday 9th May.
Netball
The weather has been really helping us to enjoy our new PE topic this week. We’ve started a unit of netball which we’re really enjoying so far.
This week, we’ve focused on throwing but mainly catching, using a ready position and sticky feet.
Help at home by asking what sticky feet means!
Netball is a fantastic sport which teaches so many crucial skills like hand-eye coordination, using space and communication.
Living and learning: sleep
In Living and Learning this week, we’ve been talking about sleep.
We’ve analysed our own sleep to suggest any helpful changes. We know poor quality sleep really isn’t good for us so we want to make the best possible choices to look after our body and minds.
We also debated whether “a perfect night’s sleep is impossible” in Philosophy Friday and came up with some interesting contributions.
Jensen explained, “I don’t think it’s possible for anything to be perfect but there’s always small choices you can make to have good quality sleep. You can go to bed a little earlier, stay away from devices, read and make it as peaceful as possible.”
PE – ball skills
This week in PE we have started to work on our ball skills. We will be using our hand eye coordination to throw, catch and aim our balls. We started with a challenge to ourselves – could we catch the ball and clap our hands? If they finished that level then they had to catch the ball after touching their head and shoulders! The children were really determined and did a brilliant job.
We finished the lesson by playing ‘clash ball’. The children had to sit opposite each other and roll their balls so they clashed in the middle. It was lots of fun!
We will continue to practise our ball skills for the rest of the half term.
Help at home by practising throwing and catching different sized balls.
Pedometers in computing
This half term, we’ve been building up to making our own pedometers!
And we pulled it off!
As always, we had to use logical reasoning as a team.
We measured how effective they were by counting our steps and comparing it to how many had been recorded on the micro:bit.
Help at home by linking this learning to our computing vocabulary:
- simulation
- repetition
- decomposition
- computer network
- internet
- variable
- selection
- world wide web
Science: Which soil is the most absorbent?
Enquiry question:
Which soil is the most absorbent?
Science strand: We are chemists!
How we were scientists: We planned and set up a comparative test.
What we changed: the soil types; loam, chalky, sandy and clay
What we measured: how much water drained through the soil and was collected
What we kept the same: the amount of water and the amount of soil
What we found:
Our conclusion: Clay soil was the most absorbent.
Living and Learning: I know friends and family are important.
This week in Living and Learning, Year 3 have learnt about healthy relationships, what they look like and how we can maintain them.
We reflected on what attributes a good friend should have…
- a good listener
- being trustworthy
- kindness
- caring
- good at sharing
- being inclusive
- honesty
- are gentle with their words
These are things we expect from our friends and family but we also need to return the kindness, honesty and care too!
We discussed which attributes we thought we had and then which one we could work on. For example, Miss Birch said she could be better at sharing with others so she’s going to try each week to share with her friends and family.
We spoke about where we can go or what we can do to help if a relationship is feeling unhealthy like too many fall outs, bullying behaviour or if we’re not feeling safe.
Talk to a trusted adult.
Be honest with that person.
Write a worry in the worry box.
Visit Childline online or contact them on 0800 1111.
Here are some things we can do to support our mental health too!
Help at home by engaging in some of these activities when you are feeling overwhelmed by different emotions!
Living and learning: Mind Mate
This week in Living and Learning we looked at recognising and responding to other people’s emotions. We listened to two boys describing their friendship and why they are such good friends. We recognised some of these aspects in our brilliant friendships at school.
We were then presented with the scenario of one of the boys starting a new friendship with someone who had just moved next door to him. We tried to empathise with both boys and consider how this scenario would make them feel.
Owen might be jealous because he thinks that Bill won’t be friends with him any more.
Bill might be sad but Owen can make him feel better and still play with him.
Finally, we did some role play to act out what we would say in this situation.
I would tell Bill that we could play together.
They could all walk to school together.
Owen could tell Bill that they have been friends a long time and are still friends now.
Help at home by talking to your children about how to recognise emotions in others and what they would do if they saw someone upset at school.