Grange Valley Primary & Nursery School

Welcome to Year 6

Miss Whelan's Class

Spring 2

WB 04/03/24

This week we have loved celebrating World Book Day. We invited our lovely family in to enjoy some activities and share some breakfast with us during our Booky Breakfast and we also dressed as a favourite character. Some amazing efforts, well done everyone. We really do appreciate all of the support. We also had a good look around the books on offer this year and brought home some very full wish lists from our visit to the book fair.
In music we showed off our musical side as we continued with our unit looking at music and its link with pop art. We worked on creating music using our bodies and voices to accompany a piece written by Benjamin Britton. While learning bout the year that this was written we realised that year was very important in our History learning and the children blew me away with their retrieval of historic knowledge. Wren and Mrs Dolman would be very proud.
It was fantastic to see so many parents on Thursday, thank you everyone. It is always wonderful to be able to share the many positives with you face to face instead of through dojo messages.

Have a wonderful weekend.

The Year 6 team x

WB 26/02/24

The children have been busy this week as we continued our history unit, discussing how much of an impact Islamic Civilisation has had on Britain. The children have been linking their previous learning about what life was like in Britain around this time as a result of the fall of the Roman Empire. We are thoroughly enjoying this unit and it is creating some excellent discussions.

In DT the children have continued working on their measuring and sawing skills and we could not be prouder of their efforts. It is because of their teamwork during these sessions that their outcomes are so impressive. We cannot wait to see the final pieces.

In PE our swimmers are continuing to make some amazing progress towards their end goal, while the other children are starting to appreciate the beauty of yoga and all it has to offer.

Another well earned couple of days off Year 6, well done everyone.

The Year 6 team x

WB 19/02/24

The children have returned to school positively and are looking forward to the rest of their Y6 journey. We have seen some amazing attitudes to learning and the children are trying their best to reach their targets.

In History we started our new unit, learning all about Islamic Civilisation. We looked at how this civilisation came about and the differences between life in Britain, after the fall of the Roman Empire, and life in Baghdad. We looked at how their advances in maths and science have impacted us today.

In PE we took part in our first yoga sessions while others continued on their swimming journey. In yoga, we learned how yoga concentrates on the body and mind and learned some new poses. We have some work to do to completely relax during these sessions but we discussed how important taking time out is and are hoping to use our session positively next week.

In maths we looked at the relationship fractions, decimals and percentages have and started working really hard on our skills for working percentages of given numbers.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

The Year 6 Team x

Spring 1

WB 05/02/24

We have had a wonderful final week of our Spring 1 term.

To celebrate diversity week, we listened to the story '1000 Dresses' by Marcus Ewert and talked about the questions this book raised. We discussed the importance of acceptance, love, support and equality for everyone. We then created a book review. We continued celebrating with a whole school assembly, where each class dressed in a different colour and performed a song for the whole school. What a beautiful example of togetherness.

Miss Brown helped us to celebrate Safer Internet Day with a very informative whole school assembly. We also joined in a virtual assembly all about GEN AI and how to use it safely. The children loved this lesson and

learnt so much about how it works! We created information and safety posters about GEN AI after the virtual assembly.

Our favourite part of this week was without a doubt our silent disco. This was enjoyed by everyone, teachers included. The children had a ball dancing away to completely different genres of music! We cannot wait for the next one.

Have a great half term everyone.

The Year 6 Team x

WB 29/01/24

This week we have been celebrating all things maths as we got involved in NSPCC’s Number Day in many different way throughout the week. We celebrated by taking part in a Hat Parade where everyone made a fantastic effort creating their number hats. We also took part in some maths challenges which Stan decided to hide in some tricky places around our playgrounds. The children worked brilliantly to find and answer these. Finally, on Friday we dressed up, once again showing off our creative side, we even had some real life calculators. Well done everyone, great efforts.

In science we have been further developing our knowledge of electricity, looking at various hypothesis and carrying out experiments to test our predictions out. We’ve loved this unit.
One more week of hard work before our well earned half term everyone.

Have a great weekend.

The Year 6 Team x

WB 22/01/24

We have worked hard this week in Year 6.

In English we have been using Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species to support our writing of non-chronological reports. We have been working hard to create the shape of our unit in order to help us. We are looking forward to completing these and even putting our creative side into our final piece.

In computing this week, we have been looking at the key vocabulary you need to know when coding? The children have really enjoyed this unit to date and are looking forward to further developing their coding skills.

We had another great Art lesson this week as we discussed the effect of light and dark on an object. We drew some items considering carefully how to draw it using our new technique 'chiaroscuro', a technique used by Leonardi Di Vinci.

Have a wonderful weekend Year 6.

The Year 6 Team x

WB 15/01/24

We’ve had a busy week in Year 6.

The children loved this week and made wonderful use of our fabulous school grounds having fun in the snow.

In maths we have been continuing to build on our decimal knowledge ,looking at multiplying numbers with two decimal places by integers. We’ve been paying particular attention to each step in our method, looking closely at the value of each digit.

In PE we worked together to complete some tricky tasks. After some attempts we soon realised that we relied on one another more than we thought to achieve the objective. We loved this session, having plenty of laughs along the way.

In Art, we continued looking at Mayan art, this week looking closely at way symbols and what they were used for. We looked at work by Dan Fenelon and tried to recreate one of his pieces. Some wonderful art skills shining though each week. Well done Year 6!

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

The Year 6 team x

WB 08/01/24

Welcome back everyone! It was wonderful hearing all about everyone's break and it was even better to see how ready the children are for the year ahead.

Year 6 have started 2024 fantastically well and we all enjoyed our first assembly of the year where we got thinking about how we can guide, challenge and achieve for 2024. We worked together in our learning council groups to motivate one another and we are all very excited about what 2024 has to offer.

In Maths we've been looking at decimals and using our knowledge of fractions to support our learning. The children are using their instant recall of facts to support them more in terms of their reasoning and problem solving and this is fantastic to see. Superb job everyone!

Our new Science topic is 'Electricity'. We've challenged ourselves to see what we can remember about electricity and also explored the ways in which it has impacted our life today. The children blew us away with their retrieval of previously learned facts about this topic. They even started some trouble shooting when putting together some simple circuits. More of that will follow as we progress through tis exciting unit.

It's been lovely to have the children back to school and the good news is this is a short half term everyone :-)

Have a lovely weekend.

The Year 6 Team x

Autumn 2

WB 18/12/2023

We have now completed our DT unit. Mrs. Holcroft and Mrs Mavers will find it extremely difficult to decide between our unique and exciting ideas for a new playground. Completing our model playgrounds required a high level of perseverance and accuracy when measuring, cutting and gluing our designs together. The children were incredibly mature when using the glue guns and saws to ensure that everybody was safe in the process. We are extremely proud of our finished results.

Christmas festivities are in full swing in Year 6! Our hard work really paid off as our Merry Mayhem performances have been a hit! We have enjoyed welcoming many of our parents, grandparents and guardians in to sing along to songs from all of our favourite Christmas films! We have also enjoyed our Christmas party day, making advent calendars and Christmas cards.

We are now ready for a break with our family and friends.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and look forward to seeing you all in the New Year! x

WB 11/12/2023

This week, our practice sessions are in full swing for our exciting Christmas performance. All the children have worked incredibly hard learning their songs and lines in some cases ready to all be put together with other year groups. The children can't wait to perform for their families and friends next week.

Some children have been learning the cornet in their music lessons and this week they performed for the class and showed off their new musical talent and performed 'Jingle Bells' with great confidence.

The Christmas festivities have begun with a Christmas Jumper and dinner day last week, as well as our Whole class trip to Gulliver's World! Now we have enjoyed a puppet show on Thursday, with lots of singing and laughing at the 18 different puppets that created the Christmas story.

During our PE lessons, we have been continuing to improve our fitness and endurance with a circuit of exercises using our new OPAL Playground tyres. The children were surprised at how much energy was required to lift and move tyres and came up with creative exercises which worked a range muscle groups.

Have a fabulous weekend!x

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W/B 06/11/2023

Another busy week has come to an end in Year 6.

In computing we started our new unit, a VR World. This unit is all about the VR world and this week we were looking at the impacts VR and AR are having on our world. We discussed how exciting this can be and all really looking forward to continuing our learning in this unit.

In maths, we’ve looking at fractions. We’ve discussed what we already know about fractions and all realised how important our learning about common factors and multiples is for this area of maths. Times tables and their importance is weaved into almost every area of our learning.

In English we have been looking at persuasive writing, discussing the positive language and elements of exaggeration that are required in order to produce a great persuasive brochure. I’ve loved reading the many rhetorical questions and I am ready to set off to South America immediately having read the children’s final pieces.

We’ve also started our new DT unit this week. I cannot wait to watch the children learn new skills during our DT unit and transform their playground design ideas into a 3D version. Their ideas were amazing during our first lesson and they even used peer assessment to help give advice on how their friends could improve their design.

Wonderful efforts this week Year 6, well done.
Have a great weekend everyone x

W/B 23/10/2023

That's it, our first half term in Year 6 is done :-)

This week we finished our wonderful poems which were based on readings from The Book of Hopes. We created our very own poems in the style of The Hope-o-potamus. The children included a range of writing techniques and we were very impressed with their outcomes. Well done everyone, this was not easy but you persevered and tried your very best.

In computing we completed our unit, My Digital Life, which helped to improve our knowledge of the risks of online usage and it
developed the skills we need when using online services. We enjoyed many whole class discussions about certain situations that may arise when online and all children had the opportunity to think critically about their online lives. The e-books created by the children were absolutely fantastic.

The children enjoyed being part of the whole school celebration for Black History Month. This year the theme was 'Saluting Our Sisters' and each class worked hard to inform the assembly of how their significant person has influenced and made contributions to changing world music. The song performed by each class was absolutely wonderful. Well done Grange Valley and Mrs Dolman for a lovely assembly.

You have all worked hard this half term, we hope you enjoy your break and are all excited about our new half term :-)

The Year 6 team x

W/B 16/10/2023

Can you believe we almost finished our first half term of Year 6 everyone?

Year 6 have been enjoying this Art unit and this week they worked on replicating a famous painting in a photographic way. Edvard Munch would be proud of their efforts. It was lovely to see the children using their skills to complete this and also how much fun they had doing it.

In English we have been looking at The Hope-o-potamus based on the poem by Greg James and Chris Smith which is from the book ‘A Book of Hopes’. This is a beautiful book and one we would highly recommend. We looked at creating a jigsaw shape for our poem and discussed how the shape would support us to build our own poem. We explored the ideas around what ‘Hope’ is, what does is look like, feels, how is it represented, does it just occur on its own or do we need to look for and
create hope in difficult situations? This was a great topic to discuss with the children.

In PE this week we looked at conflict and bouncing back. We worked in small teams and it was wonderful to see how the children have been using their skills learnt in previous lessons to support them this week. Despite the tasks being tricky, they were able to work on conflicts for peaceful solutions, agreeing with their peers on how to best achieve the objectives, They reviewed ideas that were not working in order to build something successful. I was very proud of you all.

Don't forget it is our Halloween Party on Tuesday evening :-) Let's get spooky Year 6.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

The Year 6 team x

W/B 9/10/2023

What another busy week we have had in Year 6!

In art this week we have been taking inspiration from Derrick Boateng when creating our own album cover. We looked at various different compositions before agreeing on the picture and then setting about making changes based on our preferred saturation, contrast and vibrancy. Well done Year 6, you were absolutely brilliant.

To celebrate World Mental Health Day, we talked about how mental health is a universal human right but despite this, some groups face more barriers to good mental health than others. We talked about how we see ourselves and what we can do to support good mental health for ourselves and others by writing our own pledges.

Year 6 spread their positive vibes around the school this week when they gifted staff with a ‘Kindness Bag’. Thanks to Meg from the LFC Foundation, the children worked hard to ready their bags and included some beautifully worded messages for the recipient to read. Well done Year 6 you made us very proud :-)

Have a great weekend everyone.

W/b 02/10/23
We are absolutely racing through the weeks in our first half term of the year.
In maths this week, we have been practising methods for long multiplication and short division. We have also been breaking down the vocabulary in different word problems in order to identify the correct operation needed to find the answer. Our English lessons have consisted of planning and writing our end of unit narrative based on Shaun Tans’ ‘The Arrival’. The children have shown great maturity using thesaurus and editing stations for punctuation, grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure to edit and draft their work. Next week we will make our final edits and we are looking forward to showing off the final pieces.
In our session with LFC Foundation we continued concentrating on how to support mental health in children and created our very own stress balls. We also took part in a meditation session, allowing us all to relax, unwind and clear our minds of our busy lives for a few minutes.

we enjoyed a wonderful assembly from Year 4 where we were reminded about the importance of harvest. Thank you to everyone for your kind donations, they are all going to a great cause where you will be helping people less vulnerable than ourselves.

Have a great weekend everyone.

The Year 6 Team x

W/b 25/09/23

Can you believe we have completed another week in Year 6?
This week in our classroom we have continued to learn about The Americas, concentrating on our previous knowledge of lines of latitude and longitude and building on this to support our new learning. We went on to compare different locations and used the maps to identify where they were. We compared climates, biomes and terrain. We are looking forward to our next lesson when we will be taking part in some fieldwork in our local area.
In science this week, we were learning all about blood and its composition and we took part in an exciting practical lesson where we created our own model of blood.
In PE we have been enjoying our time in the pool, practising those skills necessary to stay safe in the water and working on our skills in order to swim 25m unaided. We have also been working on our organisation skills when we showed resilience in organising one another to complete some problem solving challenges all while using our time effectively.

In English we looked at using relative clauses in our work when we created some unusual creatures and went on to write some fantastic reports on these new creatures. These lessons allowed our wonderful imaginations to be explode onto the pages.
We are really enjoying reading Holes by Louis Sachar, learning all about how Stanley is using his understanding of others to help him survive at Camp Green Lake. We cannot wait to see what is come for Stanley as we continue to read on.

Have a great weekend everyone and don’t forget to read as much as possible at home in order to earn some stamps towards a reward.

The Year 6 team x

W/b 18/09/23

Thats another week completed in our Year 6 classroom.
This week the children have worked extremely hard in many areas of our curriculum, highlighting many of our POWERS..
During Maths lessons, Year 6 have been looking at operations in combination and in isolation. The children looked at creating and solving expressions involving brackets, exponents, multiplication, division, addition and subtraction and used their prior knowledge of their times tables to support this new learning.
The children have continued with their Arrival writing this week and they have enjoyed learning about idioms and sharing their favourites that they have heard before! They applied these in a play script which they presented to each other, demonstrating their fantastic drama skills!
In PE this week we continued to work on our communication and teamwork skills and brought this into our lesson where we concentrated on decision making. The children not only made Peri proud but they made Wren proud too as they showed off their knowledge of directions during a fun activity.
We also had an inspiring assembly from Brychall academy, one of our local High schools. We have lots of excited children eager to attend their open evening!

Well done on a fantastic week everyone. We hope you all have a great weekend.

Keep up the great work Year 6

The Year 6 Team x

W/b 11/09/23

This week the children have been settling into their routines and busy timetable and showing how resilient they are.
In maths this week the children have been refining their knowledge of place value, working with numbers between 1 000 000 and 10 000 000. We looked at reading and writing numbers to 10 000 000 using place-value counters, numerals and words as well as rounding and comparing numbers to 10 000 000.
In English we were using Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’. This picture book is a beautiful representation of the difficulties a migrant might endure when moving to a new place. We used thesauruses to help us build a bank of synonyms and looked closely at our basic skills when describing plot points in the story.
Some of our children have been taking part in swimming lessons where they are becoming more confident in the water and working towards being able to swim 25m unaided. Others have been taking part in PE lessons where they have been working on their communication and teamwork skills during a variety of activities.
Year 6 had they first session with LFC Foundation as part of the #iwill campaign. They loved working with Rob to come up with an issue that they feel needs addressing for young people. We cannot wait to see how much progress they make over the coming weeks.

We are very proud of your efforts this week, have a wonderful weekend everyone.

The Year 6 team x