Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Thank you for coming along to view our page. We do love to share our learning here. 

Throughout the year, we will be adding a whole host of content including: photographs, videos, music, news, information and top tips for learning. Please do continue to visit us regularly to keep up to date. 

Best wishes and a very happy new academic year,

Mrs Dring, Miss Allen, Mr Perriman and all of year 6

xxxx

The Highwayman - Writing in response to the poetry of Alfred Noyes

We have been looking at The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. We have examined the poetic devices; written in the style of Noyes; created dramatic phrases in response to and created our own stanzas to alter the ending. 

In addition, as an extended written outcome, we wrote follow up narratives, thinking of the characters as ghosts wandering and searching for one another. The outcomes are outstanding - take a look at Jamie's extract. Stunning language for effect, Jamie. Well done

The violet, isolated moor was silent. Sounds were blocked by a field of shrouded fog. The phantom, lunar galleon radiated the entirety of the purple field. It was a gloomy, dismal, dim night, which felt like an eternity.  Try as they might, the grey clouds failed in their attempt to float across the sky. This vast forgotten land was once a happy field of love, but only broken hearts remained.                              

Gym - developing control and poise

In PE, we have been working on our core strength, control and poise. Initially, we worked on floor mats and low equipment to ensure that we could move slowly and purposefully. We looked for areas for development and worked towards our own targets. 

Once we were happy with our physicality and personal awareness, we moved on to the wall equipment. We have looked at ascents and descents as well as balance and control whilst climbing. We spoke about muscle groups and thought about the best body parts for different lifts, balances and climbs.

We have had lots of fun and each week, we are keen to get on and see what we can do to improve on the last session.  

Sharing assembly and SATS briefing

A big thank you to all of the parents and family members who came along to watch the sharing assembly this morning. It was great to see so many of you. Weren't the children AMAZING! We were so impressed with them and their professionalism- their voices were loud and clear and they spoke with such confidence. 

I hope that you found the SATs information session useful and informative. For those who could not make it, or had to get back to work, the slides are below, as promised. 

Welcome back! Let the spring term commence. Thank you for your support so far this year. We look forward to the year ahead and cannot wait to share further evidence of your children's successes. 

Here we go! 

Remembrance - Lest we forget

In year 6, we have been looking at the sacrifices of our armed forces and those who have lost their lives to battles. After some class discussions, we decided to go home and speak to our families about our own ancestors and those who actively served in combat. As a result,our children are learning more and more about their families and stories are being shared amongst families. We are creating a board where children can share their news and their family members. 

Welcome to year 6.

We are so glad that you are here, visiting our class page.

We are exceptionally excited about the year ahead and all of the opportunities that will undoubtedly come our way. We take our role as the leading class very seriously and consider ourselves to be positive role models.

We shall post lots of information about our learning so do keep popping by to see what we have been up to.

Very best wishes,

Year 6, 2018

For year 6 

Practice files for children in preparation for Wednesday as requested by year 6. :)

Secondary Transition - A visit from Miss Scott

Today, as part of our ongoing transition arrangements, Miss Scott - head of year 7 - from Monks Walk visited to answer our questions and talk about the expectations of KS3.

Miss Scott told us all about her 3 Rs - respect, responsibility and readiness to learn. 

We all agreed with her rules and her ethos and were excited that she is so excited about the new M year. Year 6 are getting more enthused with each conversation and, no matter which secondary school we are headed too, we know that we shall be very ready by September. 

PS: see below for images of Chris demonstrating the smart (if a little big in this case) Monks Walk uniform. 

 SATs champions 

Year 6 did us proud during SATs week. They were cool, calm and collected throughout the week and showed great confidence and maturity. So, statutory assessments aside, we can resume normal learning this week. We have started with an analysis of maths games and preparation for game design.

Well done, you superstars.  Onwards and upwards we go! :)  

SATS Week 2019

We had a lovely start to our assessment week. We were all feeling calm and ready to shine. We started our day nice and early with a lovely collaborative breakfast followed by mindfulness colouring. We showed off our skills in our SPAG tests and then spent the afternoon in the park. What a lovely day for it. 

MONTHS OF THE YEAR

We have been revising time this week and we needed a bit of help regarding the number of days in each month. We shared a poem and a little trick to help us to remember. 

30 days hath September

April June and November

All the rest have 31

Except for February alone. 

We also used our knuckles to represent each month. Ask your child to explain the trick to you. It really did help us to remember.

Year 6 - end of term check-ins and target setting

This week, we have been looking at our current knowledge and unpicking our gaps and areas for development. It is clear that the children are working exceptionally hard and are making fabulous progress in their learning. We are building on our secure knowledge and continuing to add to our bank of knowledge and understanding across the curriculum. We are very proud of our progress and our ongoing journey.

Ask the children about their successes - there have been so many! :) 

Each week, the children in year 6 complete a 15-minute write as part of their weekly home learning. This week, Luca and Barnaby's stories blew us away. Have a read and see what you think.  What can you see that makes them so special and impressive? 

The Mysterious Library - By Luca

In the mysterious musty library an old tale is told that children go missing. 

"Where do they disappear to?" "How long do they stay for?" I silently thought to myself while I walked up the dark crooked staircase.

I went to the biggest library in the world. It looked very ancient. I started to look around the children's section - all of the books on the shelves had corners that were broken and ripped and I was too scared to open them in case they fell apart.

I started to walk out of the dusty library when a very bright beam of light shone in to my sensitive eyes. I wished that I had brought my sunglasses with me. Just then, I felt myself slowly starting to get sucked in to a book and a picture of me was forming inside. 

The Magical Book - by Barnaby

In this magical book, we unravel your mind. Let it roam free and travel. What will unfold in this book of wonder is mysterious secrets that will strike you like thunder.

There was once a book that made a man so curious that he set off to find it and uncovered its secrets. 

Our Sharing assembly

We had a fabulous response to our most recent sharing assembly, which was held on Tuesday.. The children really did us proud when they shared their fabulous learning with so many of our friends and family. We had a whole host of treats including a demonstration of calculation from Mikey (who has worked so hard to secure methods for division), impressive examples of descriptive writing from Hayden, Ava and Reghan and  a whole class (4 part) rendition of George Ezra's Shotgun. Well done to all of the children. What an amazing amount you  have  achieved in just 2 weeks. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Welcome back and a very HAPPY new year to you all. We hope that you had a wonderful break and that the festive season brought all that you wished for. We would like to thank all of our children and their families for their lovely good wishes, cards and gifts. We really appreciated your kindness, goodwill and generosity.

So, in to the new term we go and this is a big one. We have so many exciting things coming up, starting with our sharing assembly next week. We are looking forward to seeing many of you there. The assembly will be followed by a short information meeting for parents, regarding the statutory assessments in May.  If you cannot make the meeting, please do not worry - I shall send the information pack home and post it here. 

This term, our topic is 100 years. We will be starting the topic by looking at our knowledge of the eras, putting significant events in to order. It is always fun to think about what came first. Then, we will be looking at the second world war. The children have signified their interest in this important event in history and we shall be undertaking many cross curricular activities to explore it.  

Year 6 Library Visit

Today, year 6 visited Welwyn Garden City Library. We were greeted by very welcoming staff who were more than happy to tell us all about the wonderful resources and activities that are available at the library. Did you know that our library stocks over 55,000 books?

We started with an introduction to the library, the Dewey system and the range of resources available. The staff then read us an extract of 'The 65 Storey Tree House', which we all enjoyed immensely.  We then spend time looking at a range of archived resources from local schools -  including photographs of Homerswood in 1988 - and toys of the past.

Next, we perused the books. We were very excited to find our favourite authors' latest offerings and found many novels from authors we don't yet know. We spent lots of time reading and sharing books and, by the end of the session, we all wanted to fill our bags with books. Some of us are already members of the library so we selected some books to take away for 3 weeks. 

If you are not a member already, we all highly recommend the library and we cannot wait to return. Many thanks to the staff who made our morning extra special. 

Guess The Job - Rocket to the Future

As part of our PSHE and Rocket to the Future, in collaboration with Youth Connections, we have been learning about our options and our unlimited potential. We have considered the opportunities that are available to us and have thought about our future selves. We have explored a range of careers and educational pathways and have considered our strengths and areas of interest.

As part of this journey, we were visited by a 'mystery guest' who answered our questions to enable us to guess his role.  The children asked some fabulous questions and  it didn't take long for them to reveal his career. 

After a photo opportunity, the children continued to ask questions. One in particular, asked by Chris, really impressed all of us. 

Chris asked, " You've been in the role for over 20 years. How has the job changed in that time?" Wow! What a brilliant question. We were all interested to hear the answer...

" The biggest change has come from technological advances. Things have really changed in that respect.  We have had to learn lots of new skills.".

November 2018

Along with the rest of the school, we have been commemorating the centenary of the end of World War One and considering the lives of servicemen and servicewomen past and present. In year 6, we are writing two types of poetry: black out poetry and cinquains. We looked at a range of poetry, including 'In Flander's Fields' and many images of poppy fields to inspire and inform our writing. We also read and watched extracts from the memorial services across the country.  We will be making a class book of poetry which we hope you will pop in to see. 

Week Commencing 8th September

We have really hit the ground running this week and have packed so much in to our week. We thought you might like to know what we have been up to in our first full week.

Maths

In Mathematics, we have been looking at place value and calculating by powers of 10.  We have been working with some really challenging large numbers, place holders and decimals and have used the bar model and a Gattegno Chart to help us to calculate accurately.

English

In English, we have been researchers, finding out all about the Amazonian Rainforest in preparation for writing our non-chronological texts. We looked at many example texts to really understand the genre and to identify good practices. We responded to the texts we read and used this to reflect on our own writing. We now know what we are striving to achieve and have a clear plan of how we can get there.

Topic

In Topic, we have been looking at the geographical position of Brazil. We have examined maps to understand where in the world it sits. We created our own maps to show human and physical features. In addition, we have been looking at a range of Brazilian Art and have responded personally to examples. We liked the contemporary design and the bold, bright colours. The art we examined had lots of energy and made us feel positive. We have also been examining the rainforest in line with our English learning. We have discovered a lot about the flora and fauna, the conservation and the threats that still face the rainforest.