Croeso i Flwyddyn Chwech

Teacher: Mrs Maunder

P.E. days - Wednesday (swimming - until 4.10.23) and Friday (please come to school in P.E. kit)

Forest School - Monday afternoon, alternate weeks (beginning 11.09.23)

Please click here for our Class Information Leaflet.

Class update

Summer 2024

22.4.24-3.5.24 

Year 6 have had an action-packed fortnight since the last newsletter, having had their adventure residential in Gilwern.  We were fortunate enough to have favourable weather which meant evenings were spent playing games, having wheelbarrow races and playing cricket. During the days the activities consisted of paddle boarding, gorge walking, abseiling, climbing and walking up the Blorenge.  I cannot express how proud I was of each and every pupil. They all gave every activity 100%, overcoming fears, encouraging classmates who were a little nervous and even remembering to look after the grown-ups who went with them! There were many laughs along the way, especially when emptying our wellies at each other after the water activities. On our return, we used all of the photographs taken during the trip and our ICT skills to make promotional videos for Gilwern. The results are incredible, and we will be sending them off to Monlife for them to look at. Our ICT are every growing as we have been learning how to programme and debug the Microbits we are lucky enough to have in school. All the children are confident in using loops and inputs, creating their own mini animations on them. We have now begun our new topic “Lights, Camera, Action” which will culminate in the end of year production. This is such an exciting time for Year 6 as they audition for parts and start learning lines. Literacy also has a film focus, as we have watched an animation and created character profiles, analysed themes and delved into how suspense is created. Numeracy has had a real-life focus as we have compared the difference between credit and debit cards, balanced bank accounts, compared jobs to salaries and budgeted for a month on a given salary (including rent, food, bills etc). Authentic learning in action in our classroom this week. In forest school, the challenge was to make camouflage dens than could fit one person – some were grander than others! Finally, for expressive arts we have studied the history of animation, how it all began, the advancements of CGI and made predictions of where we see the future of animation. 

8.4.24-19.4.24 

It has been a whirlwind of a fortnight since we have come back from the Easter holidays.  This has been the culmination of our topic of Beast Creator with lots more science and even a poetry competition. In literacy the children have researched and written balanced arguments on the topic of deforestation, using the skill of point, evidence, explain.  The essay’s they wrote were wonderful, showing their opinion as a conclusion but really understanding how it is possible to see both sides and provide evidence to support their theories. Numeracy has seen the children consolidate their learning on reflective symmetry and then explore line and rotational symmetry. We then looked at time intervals and timetables, culminating in planning a return journey from Monmouth to Cardiff in time for a show, using current bus and train timetables. For science, we have been learning about cells, how they are constructed, what their function is and why we need them. After studying what blood is made up of, we even managed to make our own blood using some very unusual ingredients! See if you can work out what they are from the photograph. This is the last term for our year 6 children, so we have begun to talk about transition, with the new Head of Year 7 from Monmouth Comprehensive coming in to chat to the class about their new school. The children asked so many fascinating questions. Lots of fantastic teamwork was on display during Commando Jo as we followed the next mission set by Levison Wood – how to retrieve a limited amount of food from an area with unstable ground. To end the week, we finally managed to attend the cluster netball and football tournaments that had been postponed before Easter. The children all behaved wonderfully and showed real sportsmanship – da iawn pawb.

 

Spring 2024

11.3.24-22.3.24  

Wow! Here we are at the end of the spring term and year 6 have had some fantastic experiences such as World Book Day, Comic Relief and British Science Week. Our literacy has seen the children researching and writing their own travel blog on the Galapagos Islands, using google sites to make their own website. They look so professional, and the all the children worked hard to maintain their writer's voice, use an informal tone and embed images and links.  To add to our technical skills, we were very lucky to have a visit from Technocamps who showed us how to programme microbits. The children loved this session and are already looking forward to using the microbits we have in school after easter. Our forest school session even had an ICT theme this week, as the children wrote and debugged algorithms for shapes they made using sticks. For science week, the children designed their own experiments to investigate how animals have adapted to their habitats. In numeracy, we have honed our skills on division in order to calculate the mean average and used four and six figure grid references to track the journey of Darwin’s shit “The Beagle”.   Year 6 loved collaborating with year 2 and 2 to create lego habitats for Comic Relief and created a class book about themselves during World Book Day.  To celebrate Easter, we were invited to join all the local churches in Monmouth for the Easter Experience.  The children visited various churches where a section of the Easter story was acted out. This prompted much discussion and lots of reflection when we returned to school – many thanks to all those involved. Many of our children attended a netball competition this week, you all played wonderfully and were a credit to the school. Many thanks to all those parents who were able to make it to the talk about our upcoming residential. A kit list and medical form has been sent out via schoop, which I would be grateful if you could complete by the 8th April at the latest. Have a happy and restful Easter, Pasg Hapus. 

26.2.24-8.3.24  

Year 6 continue to amaze me with the wonderful work they are producing. For the Eisteddfod, all the children turned the Welsh myth of St Govan into a narrative poem and the results were fantastic. They needed to follow a syllabic pattern, rhythm and rhyme to retell the story and they all worked incredibly hard. Congratulations to Nia who won first place and became the Bardd and to Harry as the musician of the Eisteddfod. Our literacy now has a new text focus, “What Mr Darwin Saw” by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom. This is an extension of our previous text, looking at our topic through the eyes of Darwin. The children wrote a text message conversation between Darwin and a relative and have planned travel blogs for the Galapagos Islands. The art for the Eisteddfod was to create a new Welsh mascot. The children investigated what they thought a mascot needed (mass appeal, Welsh colours, friendly features) and then created their own.  What a wonderful job they did, we even had a selection made using 3d modelling software.  Our numeracy has focussed on perimeter and volume with lots of practical work.  For forest school, we braved the rain to test our knot tying skills. The children were tasked with using natural material and their knowledge of knots to create a shelter for our class teddy “Bear Grylls”. They were truly amazing, some even having movable front doors! The children thoroughly enjoyed designing and planning their own investigations into natural selection based on Darwin’s studies of finches. They were given a selection of equipment from which they needed to create their own experiment to investigate the question “How have finches evolved over time?”. They are looking forward to using their methods to complete the investigation next week. The whole class was split in half this week for our Commando Joes session, with a focus on patience and resilience as the key skills. Using only the equipment from the CoJo box, the two teams had to build a covered tunnel from one end of the hall to the other to rescue each other – it definitely took team work! We were also lucky to have PC Norman visit us to talk about the structure of the police and listen to a message by the commissioner, Happy Mothers Day to all the special mothering figures who look after such special children. 

5.2.24-23.2.24

Welcome back to the second half of our Spring term. Before half term, we had an extremely busy time in all sorts of ways. For literacy, all the children wrote and recorded their own podcasts about either natural selection / evolution or an animal specific to the Galapagos Islands. Their work was truly amazing, as they wrote the scripts, recorded, edited and added sound bites to engage the listener. Following some revision for our Nations tests, the children all focussed and gave them their all and should be very proud of themselves. This week our numeracy has a focus on rounding, in particular the place rounding has to play in everyday life and why it is useful.  Linking to our topic of Beast Creator and helping to develop our school grounds, all of year 6 have designed and made a bug hotel to encourage the wildlife. They began by making mood boards, then analysing existing products, designing their own and finally making and evaluating it. The bug hotels they made were outstanding, using all recycled materials. Their woodwork skills increased at a rapid rate during they week as they learnt to saw, drill holes and hammer nails. I am sure the insects are going to love them! This week we have been preparing for our school Eisteddfod by analysing narrative poetry in readiness to write a narrative poem based on the myth of St Govan. We have also begun designing new Welsh mascots and learning the poem “Y Parc” for a recital. Year 6 continue to work with Mrs Cornish on designing and developing the allotment area, designing it to scale using 3D software. Safer internet day brought up some fascinating discussions of what the children would like to see in technology in the future. We had games that could immediately block abusive people and desks that built in solar powered chromebooks! I can’t wait to see these in the future. We have had a wonderful trip to the Senedd in Cardiff this week where we had the opportunity to have a tour of the building, including the Chamber viewing gallery, and then a debate in the Siambr Hywel. It was a brilliant opportunity for the children to see how their roles as Committee ministers in school relate to the roles of the Senedd ministers.

Remember it is not too late to enter the Eisteddfod home learning tasks:

ICT: Use ICT to produce a poster that advertises Wales and the Welsh language

Photography: Produce a landscape photograph that reflects Wales/Welsh culture

Art: Welsh dragon collage or a dragon sketch 

22.1.24-2.2.24

Another action-packed fortnight for year 6 and we welcome Miss Davies, a third year teaching student, to our classroom and school. Our topic of Beast Creator has taken our learning in many varied directions. The children have all made scientific drawings of insects, focussing on scale, proportion and angles and understand the difference between artistic and scientific drawings. They then transferred this skill to forest school where they used natural materials to make anatomically correct insects. In literacy, the children have all researched an animal from the Galapagos Islands that interested them, focussing on their adaptations, habitats, conservation status, diet, lifespan, glossary and a scientific drawing. They then transferred their research to make Darwin inspired sketch book pages, the results were fabulous, and you can see some of them on our X (twitter) page.  We are now in the midst of writing a podcast about an aspect of “On the Origin of Species” - we will let you know when they are ready to listen to.  Our science has involved learning how to classify animals and the purpose of classification. Having completed our pupil voice, the children were keen to design and make bug hotels to place in the school grounds. We have begun with creating mood boards to analyse products that are already on the market and create scale drawings of our own designs ready to make them. Many thanks for all the wonderful materials you have donated to help us with this task. Tag rugby continues to be a very popular lesson and it is fabulous to see how the children are helping each other to master the skills needed. We have paused our gymnastics to focus on Welsh clog dancing in preparation for the upcoming Eisteddfod – check out X (twitter) to see our first lesson! The second mission for Commando Joe’s has now been completed. Using the spy Nancy Wake as a stimulus, the children soon realised that her treatment wasn’t fair, and that teamwork was vital to overcoming adversity. Please remember, our PE days are Thursday (outdoor) and Friday (indoor), and we would appreciate all children having a coat in school each day as we take advantage of outdoor learning wherever possible. Diolch. 

8.1.24-19.1.24

Welcome back to the Spring Term! We are refreshed and excited to start our new topic called Beast Creator, under the umbrella school topic of Wonders of the Earth. As you may have guessed, our topic has leaning towards science and technology as we explore animals, habitats and the environment. The children have investigated what happens when you remove species from a food web and how animals have adapted to their environments. For literacy we have started “Origin of the Species” which has been adapted for older children by Sabina Radeeva. We have begun making glossaries of words, inferred meaning from the beautiful illustrations, researched Charles Darwin and analysed the themes of evolution, variation under nature, struggle for existence and natural selection. Finally, using all this knowledge, the children have created their own book using the app book creator. Our first Commando Joe’s mission involves the British spy Nancy Wake, and we have completed mission one which focussed on resilience. Our maths learning has been on ratio, proportion and area and using Minecraft education the children have been able to apply their understanding of area to draw floor plans of their ideal homes.  For forest school we wrapped up warmly and made quadrants to investigate the plants and animals we have in our local area.  The children have really enjoyed our new PE topics of gymnastics and tag rugby – check out X (twitter) to see some incredible leaps! Working alongside Year 5, thanks to the help of Mrs Cornish and Mrs Marsh we are planning some outdoor transformations to the area between our classrooms, watch this space to see how it develops. Finally, our ICT this half term concerns spreadsheets and how to programme them using formulae. This will come in very handy when we need to analyse data in our science.  With the weather having turned colder, please can all children have jumpers/coats/hats/gloves etc in school every day so we can continue to make the most of our fabulous outdoor grounds. Diolch. 

27.11.23-8.12.23

Dosbarth 6 have had another busy two weeks as edge closer to Christmas.  In keeping with our topic “Who do you think you are?” all the children have researched and written their own autobiographies focussing on their memories, achievements and influences. It has been lovely to see the creative ways these have been written and displayed, really showing who they are as individuals. In readiness for our Christmas enterprise project, our maths has had a focus on percentages which they have then used to calculate the potential percentage profit they will make from their items. Using these prices, the children have finalised designs and set sale prices. I foresee a Dragon’s Den future for some of our year 6 children!  We also spent time analysing the census data from 1841 and 2021, with the children choosing the categories to investigate such as the number of 0-9 children in both documents. It was fascinating to see the results which the children then drew in graphs, suggesting reasons for the difference in population, such as better health care and travel opportunities. We were extremely fortunate to take part in the whole school tree planting, working alongside year 2. As well as providing much needed trees to the environment, it was wonderful to see the close teamwork between year 2 and year 6.  Forest school saw our children whittling wood to create sculptures of themselves using potato peelers. Huge perseverance was shown by all the class as they attempted to define the features and ensure a lifelike appearance.  In health and well being we have been perfecting our hockey skills of passing, dribbling and stopping the ball, culminating in some very tense and exciting matches with very tight scores. They have also been channelling their inner musician by appraising jazz and blues music and learning to play a piece of music by Burt Bacharach.  Thank you for all your support this term and we look forward to seeing you at all the Christmas activities. 

24.11.23

With Christmas drawing ever closer, Dosbarth 6 continue to be super busy in their learning. Our literacy has seen us focus on letter writing, drawing on the motivations of characters and using colloquialisms to centre their writing in a specific time and place. Dosbarth 6 have a newfound love of fractions through simplifying them, adding and subtracting them and converting them from improper fractions to mixed numbers and vice versa.  They also spent time in their numeracy lessons studying the census data for Trellech from 1841 and 2021, identifying trends and patterns of ages and gender and graphing the results. It was fascinating to listen to their ideas as to why these changes may have taken place.  Expressive arts saw the culmination of all their hard work on sculptures as they made Giacometti inspired wire sculptures. The results were incredible, showing such a range of emotions and movement.  To help us delve deeper into our topic of “Who do you think you are?”, Katie Churchill came to share with us some of the artefacts she has unearthed in Trellech during her archaeological dig. This gave our topic such a wonderful grounding, with the pupils being able to handle artefacts from the very place they currently live, only hundreds of years old. Diolch yn fawr to Katie for talking to us. Two special days have been marked in our class – Children in Need and World Children’s Day. The class ran a total of 37 miles in their daily mile time, lots choosing to continue through the start of their lunch break, designed and pitched new Pudsey merchandise and reflected on children’s rights whilst completing their blue themed art.  We look forward to celebrating all things Christmas with you over the coming weeks. 

10.11.23

Year 6 continue to impress me with their creativity, kindness and enthusiasm for learning. Our last week before half term saw us sharing the school with visitors and the whole class showed what a credit they are to the school with the way they spoke and shared their learning so maturely.  Our literacy saw us delve deeper into the novel “Wonder”, writing a diary entry as if we were August using the skills of show not tell, fronted adverbials and figurative language. The results were amazing with the children using the writers voice so effectively.  In maths the children created their own super athlete by testing, timing and ordering the skills of hand/eye coordination, agility, speed, strength and dexterity. We then analysed the food needed to fuel a super athlete and calculated the different foods we could eat for the recommended daily calorie intake. We have also been finding fractions of amounts and simplifying fractions using our knowledge of factors.  For science the children continued their learning of the major organs of the body by creating green screen movies, projecting the major organs onto their bodies and describing the functions. We then looked at how we are made up of 46 pairs of chromosomes and made our own reebops (imaginary animals) using a random mix of chromosomes from each parent – the results were fantastic! Year 6 have investigated the advantages and disadvantages of kidney donation, both for the patient and the donor, discussing the issue in an extremely sensitive manner. Forest school saw us making sculptures of ourselves using natural materials and for PE we have begun learning how to control the ball in hockey. Da iawn year 6, keep up the amazing work. 

20.10.23

Llongyfarchiadau dosbarth 6 on leading our harvest service last Friday so beautifully. You all spoke clearly and confidently, helping us to reflect on how we can ensure we continue to enjoy harvest by helping to tackle climate change. Year 6 have continued to immerse themselves in the topic of “Who do you think you are?”, completing our work on expressive arts for this half term and moving into the AOLE of science and technology. Over the past two weeks the children have researched and written information leaflets about Treacher Collins Syndrome, the condition which the main character suffers from in our novel “Wonder”. The children approached the subject with great sensitivity and maturity which was wonderful to see and produced some fabulous work. We have also written poems under the title “I am, I wonder”, showing the diversity within our class and how we are all unique. Numeracy has focussed on multiplying numbers using the grid method, ordering and comparing numbers and then calculating the mean of a set of numbers.  Following on from their work sketching figures, based on Alberto Giacometti, the children have created armatures using foil and then plasticine. They adapted their figures to show different movement and emotion and the results were incredible! They really brought their characters to life in so many different ways. As well as getting to know ourselves emotionally, where we come from geographically, how we move artistically, we have now started to learn about ourselves physically. The children have created fantastic annotated sketches and written all about the functions of the major organs in the human body.  There were many gasps at the length of the small intestine! Forest school gave us a chance to try the Japanese art of Hapa Zome which gave us all a chance to focus in the unseasonably warm sunshine. Finally, during ICT we have been experimenting with a green screen and learning how to layer images over a video. 

6.10.23

Year 6 have continued to delve deeper into their topic of Who do you think you are?  In literacy we have begun our new novel called “Wonder” by R.J.Palacio, about a 10 year old boy who has facial differences and his journey starting school. The children have begun to analyse the main characters, their motivations and research the condition the young boy has in order to write an information leaflet about it. For numeracy, we have focussed on using the concrete, pictorial, abstract approach to really show understanding of subtraction and its relationship to addition. We have also studied factors and what makes particular numbers unique. We have compared the difference between wants and needs and justified why they are either a want or need and created our own drama sketches to show the domino effect our behaviour can have upon others. We have begun to study the work of Alberto Giacometti, a surrealist painter and sculptor who specialised in figures. To continue with the theme of our topic, the children have also been writing about themselves in Welsh, extending our sentences and giving our opinions. We have now finished our four weeks of swimming lessons and the children have made wonderful progress.  Homework will continue to be set on google classroom and spellings will be uploaded to the year 6 google drive, starting from this week. Any work you can do to practice these is much appreciated. Many thanks. 

                                                                       

22.9.23

Year 6 have been incredibly busy with our new topic of “Who do you think you are?”. It has been wonderful to see everyone getting to know themselves both mentally and physically. For literacy we have come to the end of our first book “The Barnabus Project” by the Fan Brothers which is a wonderful book about self acceptance and friendship. They have all used extended noun phrases, metaphors and their senses to write adventure stories extending the book and used inference skills to delve into the characters motives. We have researched our family trees, some going back four generations, and investigated the impact of where they have come from geographically on ourselves. Whilst getting to know ourselves better we have examined the rights we have and then diamond ranked them according to we think are the most important. Year 6 are fortunate to have access to their own courtyard and we are busy trying to revamp it, making it a relaxing space to work and be mindful, whilst also creating a sensory garden. Using their addition skills, all the children have been adding up costings of what they would like to see in it. We have been very fortunate to have been given lots of seeds, pots and even an outdoor light, but if you have anything else that you would be happy to donate then please get in touch. For national coding week, we had a very interesting lesson discussing the ethics and bias of artificial intelligence and training an Ai bot to work for us. Thank you for engaging so much with our homework, it is lovely to see all the class so enthused.