Hello and welcome to the Year 6 page. This academic year, 2019-2020, we have two year 6 classes: 4a who are taught by Mrs Harker and 4b who are taught by Miss Styles.
Throughout the year, our teachers will be updating this page with all the exciting and fun events and activities that we are doing.
Click on the images to view more.
Today (15.3.19), we held our second family breakfast. It was very popular and it was lovely to see so many families enjoying breakfast together.
See below for pictures of both family breakfast sessions.
Whilst learning our model text, ‘Beowulf and Grendel, monster of the night’, we read that outside Heorot (the Great Hall of the Danes) something evil was rising…
We instantly went to uncover some evidence.
We found fur, scratches, a sword, a shield, crooked teeth, an eyeball, scratches and fresh blood.
We are really improving our monster descriptions in our defeat the monster stories.
We have been investigating how we can use a lever to lift a heavy load. We found out that if we move the fulcrum closer to the load it can be lifted with less effort.
To celebrate National Storytelling Week, we invited local storyteller, Taffy Thomas MBE, to school. We also invited parents and carers along and we enjoyed selecting tales from Taffy’s tale coat. We particularly enjoyed solving Taffy’s riddles; he left us with his riddle book which we will share during assembly.
In Science, we investigated whether the size of the parachute affects the speed at which a Lego figure falls to the ground. We discussed how gravity pulls the man to the ground but air resistance acts against gravity. We found out that larger parachutes have greater air resistance, therefore they fall at a slower rate.
We are so proud of the non-chronological reports which we have written following our novel study of ‘When the Mountains Roared’ by Jess Butterworth.
In the book, Ruby discovers and tries to uncover a group of poachers. We have really enjoyed researching the species and we are delighted with our final drafts.
Near the end of autumn half term one, we held our annual school council elections. In Year 6, the children were asked if they wanted to run for the role of a school councillor and if they did, they prepared a written manifesto and campaigned for a week by creating posters and making badges to hand out plus other creative ideas. In a whole-school assembly, the children then read aloud their manifesto and then throughout the day, all children in Monkwray had the opportunity to vote in a secret ballot. Mrs Harker and Miss Styles then counted and verified the votes and the year 6 school councillors for 2019/20, as well as those in Year 3,4 and 5 who were voted for in their classes, were announced in our Day to Dazzle assembly.
In November, the school council and Miss Styles, were invited to the official opening of Whitehaven Harbour’s Sea Bin. On Tuesday 5th November, the school council walked down to the Harbour Project building where we heard from the organisers and some of those who had funded the Sea Bin and then we watched a video about its importance, why it is needed and who first thought of the idea. After this, we walked along the harbour to where the Sea Bin is positioned and we watched as the ribbon was cut and the Sea Bin was officially declared to be open and running. It was very interesting to watch the Sea Bin in action and we even cheered as we watched a floating sweet wrapper successfully being sucked in to the bin and out of our sea!
As a result of this visit, the school council worked with Miss Styles to create a presentation that they used in a whole school assembly to inform the rest of Monkwray about the Sea Bin and they are currently running a poster competition to help promote the importance of the Sea Bin.
As a part of our geography study of coasts in year 6, we went on a local coastal walk and we observed the evidence of erosion both visible from the harbour and Kells area. Mrs Banks lead our walk and was able to explain to us about the change in landscape that she has noticed over the years. We also discussed and considered the impact of this erosion on humans. As a part of this, we used our iPads to create news report videos, explaining that we were on location in Whitehaven and explained about the cause and consequences of the erosion that we could see.
In autumn term one, our class book and our focus text in reading lessons was The Boy at the Back of the Class. We thoroughly enjoyed this story and through this book we were introduced to lots of new characters, ideas and also a fruit that most of us had not tried before – pomegranate. In order to help us better understand the gift that the main character gave to their new best friend, Ahmet, to remind him of his home, we tried pomegranate seeds and were happily surprised at how delicious they were!
Throughout the autumn term, we have been working with Mrs Kenyon to learn how to play a variety of brass instruments: trumpet, cornet and trombone. Mrs Kenyon comes in to school every Wednesday morning and both year 6 classes join together to learn how to play. We have been having lots of fun ‘tootling’ as our brass teacher calls it and we are working extremely hard towards our end goal – to be able to play ‘Jingle Bells’ for the Christmas events in school at the end of the year.
Following the excitement of last year’s Quidditch day, Mrs Harker arranged for another Quidditch tournament day which was enjoyed by all, just as much as last year. The day began with a whole-school assembly where the rules of the day were explained, all of the children were split in to four groups and each group’s house captains were chosen. Each captain then had to wear the Sorting Hat and were sorted in to their Hogwarts’ Houses. Next, it was time for the games to begin!
Each class had a session with the Quidditch coaches where house points were earned. These were then totalled and the final scores revealed in the whole-school assembly at the end of the day where the winning team were awarded with the coveted house cup!
Recently, in November, we enjoyed a coaching session with a skateboarding instructor. We started by revisiting some of the skills that were shown and practiced in last year’s session and then began learning new tricks. The skateboarding coach commented on the fantastic amount of resilience and determination that all of the children displayed with learning, and then mastering, their new skills and tricks.
In the week beginning 11/11/19, we began to learn the choreography for the official Danceathon for Children in Need routine. This year’s dance was to the song “Never Had a Friend like Me” from Disney’s Aladdin and we had lots of fun learning the different moves and actions. On Friday afternoon, the whole school joined together in the hall for the final performance.
In September, all of year 6 attended a science show at Lakes College which was organised by the British Science Museum and was themed, “Out of this World!” Following our space topic in year 5, we were all really interested in this theme and were able to show everything we remembered from our science lessons by answering questions and we also learned a lot more, including what life is like in space for astronauts and about launching rockets.
As a part of our current RE enquiry, “Do all Christians have the same beliefs and practices?” we went to St Begh’s Catholic Church where we were able to explore the church and compare this with St Peter’s, the Anglican church where we at Monkwray go to celebrate Harvest Festival and our Christmas Carol concert, among others. Fr. Cenydd spoke to us about some of the main differences between Catholic and Anglican churches and practices and also about a lot of the similarities.
