The end of a very busy half term adjusting to the rigours of year 6 and our expectations.

We waved Miss Renier off yesterday amongst flowers and balloons wishing her a dry, bright and fantastically enjoyable day on Saturday as she becomes Mrs Renier- she has decided not to change her name as hers is so special to her!

As promised last week here are some of the amazing Anderson shelters and gardens that the children designed and made last week. I have to say the growth of cress in Elm was most impressive.

Wishing you all a very happy and restful half term.

The year 6 team

Give your children a pat on the back!

Our year 6 children have, this week, worked their socks off. Assessment week is always a tough week and the children maintained their focus right to the end. Staff are now getting to grips with all the marking and we will be feeding back on the progress of your children during the parent consultations after half term. Needless to say, from what we have seen so far we are suitably impressed and your children can be congratulated.

For relaxation, in the afternoons, the children have been hard at work on the most amazing Anderson shelters and victory gardens. Some of the gardens even have grass and seeds growing in them- such imagination!

Hopefully we will post some pictures of their finished master pieces next week when they are dry enough to be moved and photographed- watch this space.

Next week the time table returns to normal with a poetry literacy unit to take us up to half term.

Here's wishing all the children a relaxing weekend, lets hope the rain stops at some point, and again congratulations on all the hard work this week.

The year 6 team.

Update

We recently gave the children new passwords for the school's learning platform, DBPrimary. They have been asked to check that they can access the learning platform from home as we plan to do some of our ICT work based around the learning platform and we will also be trying to get the children used to the secondary style of homework where they are not given paper copies but have to access the activity on line. Another part of their preparation for the years ahead. We realise that not all children have access to this at home and will obviously continue to provide paper copies where needed.

With half term already looming we would ask that if your child is still unsure of their times tables that you encourage them to spend some time every day improving their knowledge of the tables of which they are unsure. A sound knowledge of times tables really does support their learning of other mathematical concepts e.g. division and fractions. If a computer is an incentive to learning then there are plenty of useful websites for practice, have a look on the Woodlands Junior School website and follow some of their links.

The week of the 15th October is assessment week in school and as the children will be working really hard in the mornings we plan to give them a slightly easier time of it in the afternoons. They will be designing and building Anderson Shelters as part of their World War II topic. For this to happen we would ask that you begin to collect old cereal packets, corrugated card, aluminium foil and small boxes that might be useful in the construction of these. Please bring them in to school on Friday 12th October.

The year 6 team

Wow, what a fantastic end to this week. So many Roald Dahl characters- it certainly made doing the register interesting this morning.

Congratulations to all the children for dressing up and joining in with our Roald Dahl day, a big thank you too to the parents who helped create the final effect.

Staff could be found on the playground this morning, amongst normally recognisable figures there was a group of Oompa Loompas, a few witches, Mike TV, the Twits and James’ giant peach with an accompanying spider. There was also the BFG- no prizes for guessing who that might be on a normal day!

Below please find some pictures of the many fabulous characters and costumes that graced our classrooms today.

The pace of work and success in year 6 continues unabated.

In our topic work we have been looking at the start of World War II and how it began to impact on the daily lives of the people of Britain.
Our art work has been linked in with our topic and the corridor outside the office area has become a gallery for the work of some very talented artists- scenes after the Blitz at sunset being the theme.

In our literacy work we are coming to the end of our unit on biographies and the children should be using their homework time this week to research questions brought home from school about someone either in their family, or who they know, or using the internet some famous name who was alive during World War II.

This information will then be planned into the form of a biography and written up in school during big writing time. Children should ensure that all the necessary information is in school for Thursday morning.

Wednesday of this week sees our annual day of Modern Foreign Languages. This year each class is looking at a particular region of France. In year 6 we are studying Normandy as a whole region and linking it again to our World war II topic and the D Day Landings.

This weekend sees Mrs Doran's preliminary visit to Marchants Hill, the PGL site that we are looking into in Surrey. Once we know more, a letter regarding the year 6 trip will be sent out.

Next week we begin a new literacy unit on fiction, the childre will need to write a book review during the first week. In order for this to be successful we will be asking the children to decide upon a recently read book and discuss it with an adult at home.

Thank you for your continued support.

The Year 6 Team

French Homework for the weekend. Due in on Monday ready for French on Tuesday:

Your homework this weekend is to create a cover for your French book using the computer.

You can either print this out at home or save it to the learning platform and then print it out in school.

There are some words that you must include in your cover and they appear below.

You will need to search, using Google or such, Second World War posters in French, type in

2ème Guerre Mondiale Posters en francais- some examples are on the sheet you were given in school.

In order to get the letters with the accents you need to insert symbol and select appropriately.

Make sure that you save your cover, either at home or to the learning platform so that if you need a new book you will be able to print out a new cover.

Wording for your front cover should include

CM1 et CM2

2012- 2013

Cours Moyen Deuxième Année

Madame Baikie

Then add your name and any relevant picture from the above web site.

Hello to everyone

What a fantastic start to the new school year culminating last week in a really great day out at Hendon. Many thanks to you all for dressing up and taking the time to make our evacuation day such a success. We look forward this week to beginning our World War II topic in the classroom.

This week sees the start of the real routine in year 6. Children have already brought home their first written literacy homework of the year, due in on Wednesday. Whilst homework will be set on Monday, due on Wednesday, set on Wednesday, due on Friday and set on Friday, due on Monday the specific nights for each of the subjects will vary to begin with.

Spellings will be set on a Friday to be learnt and tested the following Friday.

As the majority of homework will be done on paper it is important that the children make sure that the folders they have been given for transporting their homework back and forth to school are used in order to keep things neat and tidy. The folders are expensive and if lost it will be down to the children to replace with a similar one. Please ensure that your children fully understand this.

We look forward to meeting many of you on Friday afternoon at the year 6 Meet The Teacher.
At this meeting we will be giving out the termly topic webs and explaining our expectations for the term and year ahead.
Please sign your class list upon arrival as this will allow us to e mail topic webs to those people unable to attend.

The Year 6 Team