Wear it Wild in Year Six

Did you know that today is Wear it Wild day? Do you even know what Wear it Wild day is?

This is what WWF say about Wear it Wild day:

Wear it Wild is WWF’s annual fundraising event which takes place on Friday 20th October.
In workplaces, schools and homes up and down the land, people will be donning wildlife-inspired fancy dress – and raising money to save incredible wildlife at the same time.
Since 1970, populations of wild species have fallen by half. Without the tireless efforts of conservation organisations like WWF, iconic species like tigers, elephants and rhinos could become extinct in our lifetimes.
We’re not going to let that happen. But we rely on the support of people like you to bring about a future where people live in harmony with nature.
Taking part in Wear it Wild is a great way to raise funds, raise awareness – and have fun too.

Year Six have been helping raise money for Wear it Wild day by coming to school dressed as their favourite wild animal and paying £1 for the privilege.

Even the teachers have joined in!

 

 

 

Advertisements

Explore Learning Workshop: Persuasive Writing

You may remember from this time last year, we were visited by the Explore Learning Team who ran a really interesting workshop all on persuasive writing? Well, Explore Learning are back and this new group of Year Sixes are equally excited to get stuck in to some persuasive writing.

Come back later to see the final results of our persuasive writing workshop!

Goodnight Mr Tom

What an exciting night some of our Year Sixes had last night! If you’re a member of Miss Senior’s after-school reading club, last night, you had the opportunity to visit Sheffield Library Theatre to watch a production of Goodnight Mister Tom. Here we are just before the show started last night…

 

 

Benjamin Zephaniah Poetry

9:45AM

As part of our new topic, Black History Month, Year Six have been studying the poems of the world famous author Benjamin Zephaniah.

Brilliant, witty, funny – Benjamin’s poems could not be more different to the very serious, emotive poems from The Great War, which we were previously looking at. His poems, although based on serious topics, are full of humour and laughter, silliness and comedy: that’s why we like them so much!

Have you ever heard of a poem called Talking Turkeys? Neither had we until we watched this video. Take a look and see what you think about Benjamin and his poems:

9:50AM

After spending time, at the end of last week, studying and rehearsing one of Benjamin Zephaniah’s poems, currently we’re performing our poems for the rest of class. Keep checking back for pictures and videos!

10:10AM

What wonderful performances of some of Benjamin’s poems! Here we are during some of our performances:

 

*Mathematicians of the Week Announcement*

Congratulations to our two newest Mathematicians of the Week in Opal and Quartz classes! Both boys have been working really hard to develop their standard methods for division and multiplication. Well done boys and keep it up!

 

Maths – ‘What is the same and what is different?’

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What is the same and what is different?

‘What is the same and what is different when you multiply by 100?’

‘What is the same and what is different about 3-7 and 7-3?’

‘What is the same, what is different about 24 + 47, 204 + 307, 6.4 + 5.7 and 2304 + 2407?’

These are some of the challenging questions that Year Six have been solving this morning. Tricky, puzzling, confusing – we really had to think about what the question was asking us. The card wasn’t simply wanting us to solve a calculation, or even to just find the answer to a problem, we had to explain the calculation and describe how each part of the problem was either the same or different.

For example:

‘What is the same, what is different about 7 x 80 = 560, 7 x 8 = 56 and 7 x 0.8 = 5.6?’

All questions are using the digits 0, 8 and 7. By moving the digits under different column headings (dividing by 10 & 100), we are able to see how the answers have changed, but are still all different and getting smaller.

 

 

 

 

*New Topic Alert*

9:45AM

After studying World War Two for the last few weeks, Year Six are now moving on to a new, exciting topic. We’re currently watching this video… Can you guess what our new topic might be?

10:00AM

Any idea what our new topic is yet? Perhaps the spider diagrams we’re currently creating might give you a clue…

10:10AM

What does BHM stand for?

Any ideas yet? Some people might have guessed our new topic from the video we’ve been watching; others might recognise what BHM stands for.

BHM is Black History Month. What is Black History Month?

Black History Month is a month set aside to learn, honour, and celebrate the achievements of black men and women throughout history.

10:15AM

As part of our first lesson on Black History Month, we’re undertaking a P4C session to discuss the issues which inspired the start of BHM. We’re creating a series of philosophical questions to discuss as part of this session:

 

10:20AM

As a result of the questions we created, our topic of discussion is:

DID MARTIN LUTHER KING JR’S DREAM COME TRUE?

In response to this question, Gergo said, “Yes, I think it’s come true because, now, anyone can play with anyone in the playground at school and nobody says they can’t do it.”

Katie also said, “It came true because not as many people are being racist now. Nobody has to give up their seat on a bus because of the colour of their skin anymore.”

Finley disagreed. This is what he had to say, “Not really because there will always be that one person who’s out of line.”

 

Poppy Project (Part Two)

Today was our second session on The Poppy Project. This week, in art, we were creating our own image of the poppy, inspired by both our own collages and research done on the iPads.

We were to create our design, in our sketch books, within a 15cm square. Once our design was complete, we had to trace our design onto tracing paper so that it could then be transferred onto a printing tile.

Here are some of the designs we created today. Stay tuned for the results of our printing session…

World War Two Poetry

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime. . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen
Thought to have been written between 8 October 1917  and March, 1918

Have you ever heard a poem from The Great War before? Or even World War Two? Neither had Year Six before this week. Passionate and moving, emotional and poignant, many of the poems that we’ve been looking at in Literacy this week are really affecting and made us feel lots of different emotions. Some of the poems were sad and about death; others remembered the sacrifices of the soldiers and celebrated their lives.

Our task was to study a selection of War Poetry and, as a pair/small group, choose one of the poems to perform for the rest of the class. We had the option of performing the poem like a drama or simply reading the poem with the appropriate emotion.

Here we are performing some of our favourites:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

ICT Spreadsheets

Yesterday, Year Six were given a challenge. A challenge they had never been given before. “What was it?” We hear you cry! Well… we’ll tell you.

SPREADSHEETS! Now you might be thinking, ‘What’s so challenging about a spreadsheet?’ You might be surprised to know that using Microsoft Excel is not as easy as it looks.

Logical, methodical, systematic – to work with Excel, you need to think carefully about the task ahead so that you can enter the correct formulas and instructions. Each individual Excel spreadsheet had a different set of rules and instructions to follow. Here are some pictures of what we did: