Whales May Update!

We are back learning the recorder with Mrs White on a Wednesday during Term 5 and are continuing to play a range of tunes. Here are some photos of us enjoying our recorder lesson:

Also with Mrs White, in line with our Living things and Their Habitats unit, we have been investigating helpful and harmful microorganisms. We have observed the conditions needed for mould to grow on bread, placing bread in various places around the school: in the fridge, dark cupboards and damp or dry areas. We also noticed that the bread which had been handled the most grew the most mould…

In Guided Reading and English, we have been enjoying reading Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. So far, we have written Haiku’s and balanced arguments to consider whether or not Michael’s family should have set sail on a round-the-world adventure. We have also written letters home from Michael’s perspective, our own alternate endings and our own short stories using the opening sentence of the text. We used Purple Mash to type up our Haiku’s, check them out!

Within Maths, we have finished our statistics unit: studying dual bar graphs, dual line graphs and reading, interpreting and drawing pie charts! We are also revising shape and angles too.

In PE, we have begun athletics and are enjoying the drier weather, allowing us to have our PE sessions outdoors. A polite reminder that PE is every Tuesday and correct PE kit should be worn to school on these days.

Careers Week
We enjoyed a brilliant, insightful Careers Fair where we had the opportunity to speak to a range of different visitors to discuss their job roles and ask questions. Year 6 were also given the opportunity to apply to be Head Teacher or Deputy Head Teacher for a day as part of Singlewell’s Careers Week. Congratulations to our 2 Whales children who were selected as joint deputies!

Here are some photos from Singlewell’s Careers Week:

Happy Easter from Whales!

During the latter part of Term 4, we have celebrated lots of exciting learning opportunities: Science week, Red Nose Day, the travelling book fair and Singlewell’s very own Easter Egg-Stravaganza.

Within Science week, we were lucky enough to be part of a really exciting and engaging assembly delivered by the Science Boffins. We also made a visit to our reception classes to spend some time with the ducklings which arrived to us as eggs ready to be hatched. Southern Water also delivered a really hands-on, practical workshop in our classroom which was a lot of fun. 

Our writing this term has absolutely blown the teachers away. We have written our very own narratives based on the video clip “The Lighthouse”. Our skilful writing has varied between the use of first and third person and has included some phenomenal vocabulary and direct speech too. Check out some of our written pieces:

To perfect the inclusion of dialogue in our writing mentioned above, we engaged in some role play in order to generate conversations between the villagers, the Lighthouse keeper himself and crew members aboard the ship. This supported us with embedding direct speech into our narrative writing, perfecting our ability to punctuate direct speech accurately. We really enjoyed this drama activity:

In addition to all of the above, we have been powering through our SATS revision, becoming ever familiar with the timing/pace and content expectations of these papers. We have quite literally put resilience to the test and have been determined to try our best when revisiting past papers and revising previously taught concepts. To reward this, Miss Watson decided that we were worthy of a well-deserved break… She set us a mini D&T project to design and make our very own Easter themed felt crafts for the last week of term. Here are some photos of the project so far:

 

Whales March Update!

We have started Term 4 with great enthusiasm, engaging in many rich learning experiences. We celebrated World Book Day on Thursday 7^th March, dressing up as our favourite book characters. Can you guess our chosen book characters?

On Friday 8^th March, we also welcomed author Tọlά Okogwu to Singlewell. We enjoyed a workshop delivered by Tola herself and had the opportunity to have our own copies of her books signed – very exciting!

In English, we have thoroughly enjoyed Floella Benjamin’s autobiography: Coming to England. We have discussed Floella’s experience with moving to England from Trinidad in 1960 and written recounts of her journey. We have also begun researching Floella and are preparing to write our very own biographies to represent her life too.

Within Maths, we have continued progressing through the White Rose sequence of learning and are working hard to build confidence with Fractions, Decimals and Percentages. In addition, we are continuing with “Arithmetic Fridays,” where we are building confidence and accuracy with our mental arithmetic strategies.

We have started reading The Boy At The Back Of The Class by Onjali Q Rauf as our class text this term. We are enjoying it so far and can’t wait to watch the performance at the Marlowe Theatre at the end of next term. Please check the school app for further details on this school trip!

Miss Watson

 

 

Whales February Update!

This term has been busy indeed! We really enjoyed Story Telling Week and International Languages Day! To mark the start of Story Telling Week, we wore our pyjamas to school and spent some time sharing stories with a class from KS1. As part of International Languages Day, we spent the morning engaging with some French activities. We already enjoy French lessons every Friday with Mrs Morris and really loved putting some of our well-practised vocabulary to the test. We were also lucky enough to attend a French theatre production in our very own sports Hall! In the afternoon, we rotated around upper key stage 2 classrooms, visiting the classrooms and experiencing tasks from Brazil, Japan and Spain. We were also really excited to welcome two of our wonderful parents into Whales class next week to share some Singhalese and Assamese words and phrases with us – thank you!

In addition to the above, we have continued working hard in English (including Guided Reading and Grammar Punctuation and Spelling) and Maths, revising previously taught concepts and securing our understanding within these areas. Whales class are also looking ahead to our last week of term where we will be having a History Week, learning all about The History of Benin! We will also spend some time recognising the importance of Mental Health and Internet Safety as it is both Children’s Mental Health Week and Safer Internet Day during the final week of this term.

In Music, we can now play the notes B, A, G, E, D, F sharp, top C and top D and have really enjoyed our weekly sessions with Mrs White this term. Our favourite tunes to play are “Ee-b, G-b’s” and “up, down, round the bend”.

We have spent the latter part of term 3 refining our skills within Design and Technology. Our cushion designs have been finalised and we have been busy making our products. We have carefully considered decorative techniques for our cushions: use of buttons, beads, applique, embroidery and even stuffing some parts to make areas 3D. Each of our cushions are unique and reflect our personalities, likes and hobbies and we think the final products are absolutely excellent.

Miss Watson

Take a look:

All the information delivered at the Year 6 SATS Parent Workshop can be found at the bottom of the page.

Whales January Update!

Whales class have started the New Year with lots of exciting new learning.

We have begun yet another fantastic, emotive text: “The Giant’s Necklace” by Michael Morpurgo and have immersed ourselves in a range of writing opportunities such as writing our own endings to the story, writing diary entries and creating newspaper reports. We thoroughly enjoyed writing our own endings to the story and predicting Cherry’s fate before reading the heart wrenching ending for ourselves. Here are some of our story endings:

Before the Christmas break, we created our very own felt stockings and impressed Miss Watson and Mrs Morris with our resilience with sewing. In D&T this term, we will be designing and making our own felt cushions, deciding whether our product will be functional, aesthetic or both! Here we are practicing our sewing skills and attempting a range of stitches: running stitch, zig zag stitch, blanket stitch, back stitch and over stitch. When we begin designing (and making!) our cushions, we will select the stitches we think are most functional or aesthetic depending on our desired outcome.

In PE, we have begun gymnastics with Coach, we recapped tuck, straddle, pike, pencil and star movements and begun to put these into synchronised or cannon (same movement performed one after the other) movements. We had a lot of fun:

In PE, we have begun gymnastics with Coach, we recapped tuck, straddle, pike, pencil and star movements and begun to put these into synchronised or cannon (same movement performed one after the other) movements. We had a lot of fun:

We have conducted an experiment to answer “how does the heart beat?” and tried creating and testing our very own pumping heart models. Take a look!

Last but not least, we are also back having our recorder lessons once a week with Mrs White and are now playing along tunefully.

Miss Watson
 

Whales December Update!

This term, we had an own clothes day to raise awareness of Children in Need:

We have also fully immersed ourselves into our Art work this term, creating wire models and a few self-portraits to express our individuality.  

For our first self-portraits, we used tracing paper to outline a photograph of ourselves and added meaningful words and phrases which we felt captured our personalities best. The technique used is Micrography (drawing with words). Here is how they turned out:

Alongside this, we felt inspired by artist Chuck Close and the use of his fingerprint to create self- portraits, we used grid lines to help with dimension. We were really impressed with the results, here are some photos of the process and our final pieces:

With resilience, we worked with modelling wire to create wire models which could be shaped to reflect an emotion. Here’s how they turned out:

We have also finished reading “Holes by Louis Sachar and High Rise Mystery by Sharna Jackson! Both texts were enjoyed by all and have sequels... I wonder how many Whales children will be adding “Small Steps” by Louis Sachar and “Mic Drop” by Sharna Jackson to their Christmas lists!?

Miss Watson

Whales November Update!

We are really enjoying learning and applying the skills within tag rugby in PE and have found the contrast in rules, in comparison to Netball last term, very interesting!

In Art, we are in the midst of our “Express Yourselves” unit where we are considering how we express our individuality and emotions through our clothing and facial expressions. We are looking forward to making our wire sculptures as our final product towards the end of term.

In Maths, we have started looking at fractions and are building upon our prior knowledge covered in previous years. Alongside this, we are now partaking in “Arithmetic Fridays” to increase our speed and accuracy with mental calculations.

We are still reading Holes by Louis Sachar in English and Guided Reading which has allowed us to access a range of writing opportunities. We particularly enjoyed creating an advert for the “red venom” nail polish, here are some of our creations:

We hope that those of you who were able to come to our book afternoon this month enjoyed spending some time with your child celebrating their hard work!

To commemorate Remembrance Day, we decided to use watercolours to generate some thoughtful Art work which we displayed in our classroom window for our school community to enjoy. We hope you like them.

Miss Watson

Whales October Update! 

We have thoroughly enjoyed our first term together and were so grateful to be able to welcome our parents into both our colour run and Autumn workshop events, we hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did! Thank you also for your support with our Harvest collection, bottle tombola donations and for sponsoring your child to partake in the colour run.

Within English, we have finalised our text “Wonder” and have all truly learnt something special about empathy and our treatment of others. This led to some excellent writing including letters and diary entries. In conjunction with, and celebration of, Black History Month, we enjoyed texts “High Rise Mystery” by Sharna Jackson and “Happy Here”, both written and illustrated by black authors and generated our own freeform poems, reflecting what makes us happy.

Whales have shown true resilience within maths and are now feeling much more confident with areas such as Place Value and Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division… even long division!

We have also learnt a lot about Crime and Punishment through the ages within History and enjoyed the gory details. To finalise our Netball unit this term, we played a year 6 Whales VS Sharks Netball match which allowed us to put our skills to practice. It was a lot of fun!

Miss Watson

September Update!

Wonderful Whales have kick-started their Year 6 learning without delay!

We are thoroughly enjoying our first class text: High Rise Mystery by Sharna Jackson and are learning lots within Guided Reading, Maths and English.

In PE we have been learning Netball skills with coach Shannon, practicing our passes, shadowing skills and pivots too. Our historical enquiry skills have been launched by learning about Crime and Punishment through time. Within Science we have begun extending our understanding of electricity and had a go at making our own circuits. In addition to this, we have shown curiosity in D&T where we have made and tested the effectiveness of bridges, strengthening them with beams and trusses and experimenting with the weight they can hold. Here are some photos of our creations and experiments:

We have also been lucky enough to continue learning to play the recorder this term with Mrs White who was so impressed with the notes and tunes we retained since our lessons with her during year 5.

Your child is set homework weekly. Their homework book will be sent home with their homework and spellings enclosed each Friday and must be returned by the following Wednesday. Please continue to listen to your child read and encourage them to record their reading in their new reading record too as this will allow your child to earn raffle tickets to be entered into our prize draw each term.

Miss Watson 

If you were unable to attend the 'Meet the Teacher' session, here are the slides shown for your information.