Today, in the morning, group one started with archery and bushcraft; group two did zip lining, the leap of faith and a climbing wall; and group three did tunnels and stream studies.
After a lunch of assorted rolls, group one did problem solving; group two did bushcraft and archery; and group three did zip wiring, the leap of faith and climbing.
We are looking forwards to our woodland walk and bonfire. See you back at school tomorrow!
By Tom 

Year 6 have returned to school in a positive and upbeat mood. We have got stuck into revising our reading comprehension skills and the fundamentals of grammar ready for the SATs next month.

Both maths classes are working towards the end of the taught units in order to allow some time for revision of the maths curriculum and to fine tune our arithmetic abilities.

We’ve also had the thrill of football and netball matches - with both teams winning. Some Year 6s have started soft ball on Thursday afternoons, and the Reading Pioneers have started a new book. Feel free to ask the Softballers and Pioneers about their activities and if they would recommend them.

We have another couple of weeks of our current topic ‘What’s so special about clouds?’  and will spend the final two weeks ensuring we have answered all of the questions we had at the beginning. Who knows, we may have some budding meteorologists in our midst.

We rounded off our first week in style by participating in a morning of alternative sports. Pendower and Seaton had a go at archery, American Football and capture the flag. The last two sports demanded positive teamwork from all of the children – a challenge they rose too admirably.

Year 6 have returned to school in a positive and upbeat mood. We have got stuck into revising our reading comprehension skills and the fundamentals of grammar ready for the SATs next month.

Both maths classes are working towards the end of the taught units in order to allow some time for revision of the maths curriculum and to fine tune our arithmetic abilities.

We’ve also had the thrill of football and netball matches - with both teams winning. Some Year 6s have started soft ball on Thursday afternoons, and the Reading Pioneers have started a new book. Feel free to ask the Softballers and Pioneers about their activities and if they would recommend them.

We have another couple of weeks of our current topic ‘What’s so special about clouds?’  and will spend the final two weeks ensuring we have answered all of the questions we had at the beginning. Who knows, we may have some budding meteorologists in our midst.

We rounded off our first week in style by participating in a morning of alternative sports. Pendower and Seaton had a go at archery, American Football and capture the flag. The last two sports demanded positive teamwork from all of the children – a challenge they rose too admirably.

Finally, an apology for any confusion around the non-uniform day for Pendower as a reward for winning the attendance trophy. The children can come to school on Friday 26^th April in their home clothes. Well done on having such super attendance. 

The children did not let the early start this morning put them off their activities today! They have had a super day. After unpacking and lunch, Group 1 completed the zip line, leap of faith and climbing wall whilst groups 2 and 3 carried out the problem solving activities.
We were incredibly proud of all the children for giving the zip line a go and lots even tried out the leap of faith!
The problem solving groups impressed us with their determination and communication skills- they did not give up and worked really well in their teams.
This evening, the children have enjoyed their evening meal and spent time in the games room and watching a movie.

Hopefully we will all get a good night sleep ahead of tomorrow’s activities.

Please see below for some more pictures. 

Maths

This half term we will start by focusing on shape before swiftly moving onto money. We will also keep refreshing our arithmetic skills once per week. I can see lots of the children are accessing Times Table Rock Stars at home which is fantastic, please do keep practising at home as this really supports their mental arithmetic. We'd like children to be able to count in 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s by the end of Year 2. Below are some of the songs we use in school to help us. I have included lots here as the homework we send home will touch on all of these at different points so it may be a useful bank of resources to support your child at home.

Counting in 2s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvTcpfSnOMQ

Counting in 3s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_cn87hOCDM

Counting in 5s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EemjeA2Djjw

Counting in 10s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftati8iGQcs

This half term we are learning all about shape. Here are some songs and videos we will watch in class.

2D shapes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zjv39j6/articles/ztpwdmn

3D shapes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zjv39j6/articles/zcsjqty

Shape videos and resources: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zjv39j6

Some other helpful resources:

Sharing (division): https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqbg87h/articles/z6pqh4j

Multiplication sentences: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqbg87h/articles/zbmk239

Using an array for multiplication: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqbg87h/articles/z3tvcj6

Using an array for division: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqbg87h/articles/z9pc8mn

Addition and subtraction (all of these guides and videos will be useful): https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zwv39j6

Fractions (all of these guides and videos will be useful): https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z3rbg82

English

This half term we will start by very quickly finishing off our recounts from before the Easter holidays. Then we will be moving onto story writing once again focusing on Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers.

Science

Our topic this half term is living things and their habitat. We explore microhabitats and lots of different living things so we are excited to take our learning outside as much as possible!

History

This half term we are learning all about The Great Fire of London! The children are beyond excited about this topic and cannot wait to learn all about what happened, why it happened and how it happened. 

Our trip to The Box in Plymouth

On Friday 19th April we went on a school trip to The Box in Plymouth. The children were brilliant and their behaviour was exceptional! They listened intently to our guide and loved each and every exhibit we went into. They listened and asked questions and it was a joy to watch how enthusiastic they were. 

The second part of the day was an artist workshop focusing on sea life sculpture. The children explored plankton and noticed how different it all looks. They discussed how art made them feel and even got to use different materials to design and make their own plankton sculptures. The artist leading the workshop then joined all their sculptures together and this is now hanging up in the classroom if you'd like to come and see it! Please enjoy these great photos from our trip.

English

This half term we having been learning about an author and illustrator called Catherine Rayner. We loved exploring different books she had written, some of them we knew already.

We based our stories on Augustus and his smile. It's all about a tiger who was sad because he lost his smile and searches all over the world to find it. We practised sequencing the story and using ambitious vocabulary to describe what happens. 

We also used story mapping to really embed the sequence of the story and used actions to help us retell the story accurately.

We also used boxing up the text to help us identify the key parts of the story: the opening, build-up, dilemma, resolution and ending. We noticed in Augustus and his smile the build-up and dilemma were swapped around which we found was an interesting way to tell a story.

Firstly we practised re-writing the original story using lots of expanded noun phrases, verbs, adverbs and ambitious adjectives. Then, we made some small changes to the story to make it our own. We finished off this unit by writing our own versions of Augustus and his smile. 

Maths

This half term we have been learning all about fractions. We have focused off halves, thirds and quarters. We found out the half has two equal groups, thirds have three equal groups and quarters have four equal groups. We started by firstly recognising these different fractions by colouring in half of a shape, a third of a shape and a quarter of a shape. Then we started to use our knowledge from multiplication and division to help us divide numbers to help us find one half, one third and one quarter of a number. We used sharing into equal groups to help us.

Geography

This half term we were learning all about cities from all over the world. We started by focusing on capital cities in the United Kingdom before looking at some capital cities from all around the world. We thought about and discussed some key differences between cities and villages. We noticed that cities have more human features and villages have more physical features. We then compared Edinburgh to Cape Town in South Africa and the children thoroughly enjoyed learning about a very different capital city! We have used lots of songs this year to help us with our geography learning that the children have loved listening to. Here are some links below in case they'd like to listen to them at home too.


Continents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6DSMZ8b3LE

Oceans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6BE4VcYngQ

Capital cities of the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvDIZoQLgIE

PE

This half term in our PE lessons we were learning how to use rackets, the children loved this unit particularly when we were able to get outside! The children loved tracking their progress across the weeks and were very pleased with themselves when they were able to start short rallies! Well done Year 2. 

Art

This half term we studied a French-American artist called Nicki de Saint Phalle. We found some interesting information out about her, one thing in particular was that she didn't got to an art school, everything she did she taught herself! The children found this to be very inspirational.

We explored some of her sculptures and used this to help us learn about primary and secondary colours, mixing colours, bold and vibrant colours, strong lines and tints and hues. 

The children thoroughly enjoyed learning the skills when it comes to mixing colours but some of their favourite parts were creating different patterns using a range of colours inspired by a picture of one of her sculptures. The children loved exploring using black to create strong lines and contrasts.

Some of the children even incorporated our English learning and included tiger stripes!

We finished off this unit by creating sculptures in the style of Nicki Saint de Phalle using mod rock. We will finish painting and evaluating these after the half term.

DT

This half term we caught up and finished off our DT project all about food and we looked at fruit kebabs. We started by exploring different fruits by taste testing them and deciding which our favourite fruits were. Then we designed a fruit kebab thinking about our favourite fruits, colours, shapes and textures. Next we made our fruit kebabs before trying them of course! After we had eaten our fruit kebabs, we evaluated them and thought about what we could do next time to improve them.

At the end of our last term we created some superb water colour flower picture.  The skills we practiced came in useful as we took part in a one-off art competition, painting flowers, including roses.. 

We also started our next art theme.  We began with a still life of apples.  We will be looking at impressionism  inc. he work of Paul Cézanne, build to recreating our still life, but in the style of impressionism  

TT Rock Stars (TTRS) will be a big focus over the next few weeks as the Year 4s build up to the Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) in June.  The 'Soundcheck' option on TTRS works in a very similar way to the MTC and we aiming to complete 6 (SIX) soundcheck per week to build up our times tables speed and stamina.  The Year 3s are joining us on our practice journey also aiming to complete 6 soundcheck per week.  Luckily, they have a year before they take the test.

Regards,

Mr Knight