Year 6 - Swordfish class

Welcome to Swordfish Class

Hello and welcome to Swordfish's Class website page.

I hope you enjoy visiting our page and finding out what we have been learning about.

Swordfish class is taught by Mr Cain this year. If you have any questions or queries then please feel free to email at: dcain@standrews.dsat.org.uk. I will endeavour to respond to your email as soon as possible.

Please visit this website page regularly to find out what super learning Swordfish class have been doing.

WB 10/02/2020 - KS2 Mock SATS

This half-term our topic is...

Who do you think you are? Are you an extrovert or an introvert, a singleton, a twin or even a triplet?

Let's discover what makes you...you!

From your fingerprints and footprints, to your genes and DNA, everything is unique to you. So why do you look just like Mum or Dad, or even Auntie Rose?

Explore the world of human identity and how our unique features can be used to tell us apart from others or help to solve crime!

Remember to love being you! Why? Because there's only one you: you're one of a kind!

WB Monday 3rd January 2020:

Firstly, I would like to congratulate all the Year 6 children for their maturity and behaviour, whilst we had some very special visitors (Ofsted) this week. They were excellent roll models for the rest of the school!

This week, in English, we have punctuated direct speech correctly, discussed the impact of language when describing a setting, and we improved a setting description by including figurative language. 

In maths, we continued with percentages and then moved onto algebra.We explored how to find percentages of amounts, as well as finding one-step and two-step rules. During our weekly arithmetic lesson, we consolidated short division. 

During Art, the children made observation drawings of their hands. We were amazed by their sketching skills. Have a look at some examples below:

WB Monday 27th January 2020:

Please complete both pieces of homework which were sent home on Friday 31st January 2020.
You must learn to spell the selected words, complete some SPAG SATS style questions, as well as the timetable practise and Arithmetic SATS style questions. 

Please hand in by Friday 7th February 2020!

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday:

Home Learning 24th January

Today, children have brought home a letter explaining reading in KS2 as well as a reading record which needs to be filled in. Also, there is a letter asking children to write down their favourite author and book and what they like about the book.  Here's a copy of the letter.

Please complete both pieces of homework which were sent home on Friday 24th January 2020.
You must learn to spell the selected words, complete some SPAG SATS style questions, as well as the times table challenge and division questions. 

Please hand in by Friday 31st January 2020!

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday:

Swordfish learning w/c 20th January 

In our English lessons this week, we have started to explore the ‘Secrets of Platform 13’ book by Eva Ibbotson. We explored the impact of language; inferred characters thoughts and motives; participated in discussions and role play; planned a diary entry and wrote an assessment diary entry piece from the Queen’s perspective. The children really got into role as characters in the role play lesson when acting the moment the three nursery nurses told the King and Queen about the baby prince being stolen! Their diary entries really demonstrated the devastation the Queen felt knowing she wouldn’t see her son for another nine years!

In our Teaching of Reading lessons, we continued to read more of ‘There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom’ which continues to surprise us. We inferred characters thoughts and motives; explained the impact of language; debated and summarised. 

Within our maths lessons, we wrote decimals as fractions; converted fractions to decimals; consolidated our decimals learning and had an arithmetic lesson on subtraction. The children showed great resilience and perseverance especially when converting fractions to decimals.

In science, we started to learn about evolution and created time lines showing how life on earth has evolved starting millions of years ago. Have a look at the children creating their

timelines below: 

Please complete both pieces of homework which were sent home on Friday 17th January 2020.
You must learn to spell the selected words, complete some SPAG SATS style questions, as well as the times table challenge and decimal consolidation. 

Please hand in by Friday 25th January 2020!

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday:

Swordfish Learning w/c 13th January

In English this week, we have been using the story of the Three Little Pigs to inspire our newspaper article writing and used the Three Little Pigs advert as a stimulus for our writing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDGrfhJH1P4). We looked at examples of newspaper reports and analysed their features, practiced using direct and reported speech, planned our newspaper reports and independently wrote a newspaper article. We will be using the newspaper report as an assessment piece and will take some examples along to a DSAT writing moderation later on this month.

In our 'Teaching of Reading' lessons we have started to look at the book 'There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom' by Louie Sachaar. We asked questions about the front cover and blurb; made inferences based on characters; predicted what might happen next in the story and also looked at the impact of language. We also introduced Reading VIPERS as a focus for our reading sessions.

In maths this week, we have continued to learn about decimals. We learnt how to: divide numbers by 10, 100 and 1000; multiply decimal numbers by integers; divide decimal numbers by integers; solved problems using division; and also had one arithmetic lesson on addition.

Our RE lessons this week have focused on actions and consequences. We looked at how our actions can have a negative or positive consequence. The religion we are focusing on in is Hinduism and we looked at how Hindu's beliefs on Karma can have an impact on their daily lives. Did you know the game of snakes and ladders originated from Hinduism and was used to show how life choices can have a positive or negative impact?

We have been focusing on fitness in our indoor PE sessions and used a variety of circuits to improve our fitness.

Swordfish Learning w/c 6th January

This week has been a very exciting week in Swordfish class. 

We started the week off by having a day focusing on our school vision: #making a difference for good, with each other, for everyone, in our community. We created booklets showing how we can make a difference in different communities including: home, class, school, local, national and national communities.

On Wednesday we started our topic of ID. This kicked off with us arriving at school to find that our classroom had been trashed so we spent the day investigating the crimes of vandalism and theft. We learnt how to take fingerprints and identified the types of fingerprints. We used our skills to identify the culprit as having an arch fingerprint. The children spent the afternoon making fingerprint art whilst also interrogating the adults in school. Needless to say their detective skills were excellent and led them to identify the culprit as Mrs Lombard! Check out the pictures below showing the crime itself as well as the investigation of the crime.

The children completed a topic baseline quiz demonstrating what they already knew about our topic. In English, children used our topic impact day crime as inspiration for their writing. They sequenced the events of the crime and completed a police report using cohesive devices. Look at some excellent examples below.

In maths we have started to look at decimals this week. Children completed an elicitation task and learnt how to represent decimal numbers up to three decimal places and multiplied numbers by 10, 100 and 1000.

Autumn 2 Topic:

Let's travel back 5000 years to the dusty realms of ancient Egypt. Cruise along the Nile, entering a world of mysteries and curses, mummies and kings. Find out about life on the river's fertile banks, discovering Egypt and its fascinating culture. Unravel the secrets of ancient tombs, using historical sources and age-old artefacts. Find out about powerful pharaohs and grandiose gods! 

Now open the doorway to ancient Egypt - who knows what treasures you till find?

WB Monday 9th December 2019:

What a wonderful penultimate week to the Autumn Term. The festivities have begun due to Year 6 organising their own Christmas Carol Service, which will take place on the 19th December 2019. It was amazing to see so many pupils beaming with confidence and wanting to sing a solo part for our performance. There will be some tears I can assure you! 
We also went through our most recent SAT papers, and identified our areas that we need to develop and we also set ourselves aspirational targets for the next mock SATs in the new year. 

Home Learning

Please can you learn the lyrics for your Christmas Carol Service.

Home Learning

Please remember to complete the Position and Direction home learning by Friday 13th December 2019. 
You can practise using Mathletics and TT Rockstars. For reading, we would like you to read for pleasure every day and discuss this reading with your class teacher next week.

 Spellings 

Friday 29 November 2019

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday:

The spelling focus this week: adding suffixes begging with vowel letters to words ending in -fer.

WB Monday 6th December 2019:

This week, in English we have continued to learn about writing news paper reports. On Thursday, we pretended to be newspaper reporters and reported on the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb discovery. In maths, we have explored position and direction. We learnt how to plot co-ordinates on the first quadrant grid and four quadrant grids as well as shape translation and reflections. The children were really excited about science this week! We investigated reversible and irreversible changes. They were amazed when they made observational changes, during the flying tea bag experiment. Take a look at the video below to be amazed!

Please remember to complete the Fractions (multiplying) home learning by Friday 6th December 2019. 
You can practise using Mathletics and TT Rockstars. For reading, we would like you to read for pleasure every day and discuss this reading with your class teacher next week.

Friday 29 November 2019

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday:

The spelling focus this week: adding suffixes begining with vowel letters to words ending in -fer.

WB Monday 29th November:

The children showed perseverance during their mock SATS this week, and were able to apply their learning from class. In maths, we continued working with fraction: finding fractions of amounts and finding the whole from a given fraction of an amount. In English, we have used cohesive devices linked to the timeline of Tutankhamun's tomb discovery and drafted a introduction paragraph for a newspaper article. In Science we explored the solubility of a range of materials and carried out a fair test. In Religious Education (RE), we have created images demonstrating different parts of the Lord's Prayer and answered questions about the parable called The Parable of the Great Banquet.

Please remember to complete the Fractions (multiplying and dividing) home learning by Friday 29th November 2019. 
You can practise using Mathletics and TT Rockstars. For reading, we would like you to read for pleasure every day and discuss this reading with your class teacher next week.

Friday 22nd November 2019

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday:

The spelling focus this week: words ending in -ably

London Trip Wednesday 20th November 2019

This week has been a fun filled week in Swordfish class. The main highlight being the trip to London on Wednesday to visit the Tutankhamun treasures at the Saatchi Gallery and the Ancient Egypt section of The British Museum. Visiting the Saatchi gallery and seeing the real treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb which were over 3,000 years old really was breath-taking and brought our Pharaohs topic to life. This was an excellent trip and the children's beahviour was excellent. Check out the photos of the exhibition and some TripAdviser reviews we wrote after the event below.

In other areas, we learnt how to multiply and divide fractions by integers and multiplied proper fractions in maths. In science, we grouped materials according to their properties. In topic, we researched Howard Carter in preprartion for our London trip. 

WB Monday 15th November:

A fun filled week with many exciting events (The Book Show, Pantomime and Children in Need). Firstly, everyone had an amazing time at The Book Show; watching Michael Rosen perform some of his most famous pieces of writing.

On Thursday, the children were so excited to watch the pantomime performance of Dick Whittington.

As well as all this, we have been working hard in English, exploring non-chronological reports and we even wrote our own based on Tutankhamen. In maths, we have been adding and subtracting fractions.  

Friday 8th November 2019

The spelling focus this week: words ending in -able

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday 15th November:

Super Swordfish Learning wc 4th November

This week we have emursed ourselves in our new topic 'Pharaohs'.  We started the week off my completing a base-line quiz highlighting what we already knew about the ancient Egyptians. We also learnt about Eqyptian hieroglyphics, can you crack the following coded message?

During our English lessons we have started to look at non-chronological reports in preparation for our assessment write about Tutankhamun next week. We have learnt about the language and layout features of a non-chronological report. Also, we have researched Tutankhamun; wrote sentences containing parenthesis; and used headings, subheadings and bullet points in our introductions.

Within our topic lessons, we have looked at the location of Egypt and its physical geography; the timeline of Ancient Egypt; and who Pharaoh Akhenaten was.

In our Maths lessons, we have learnt all about fractions this week including how to find equivalent fractions, how to simplify fractions, and how to order and compare fractions with different denominators by finding the lowest common multiple.

Our teaching of reading text this half term is 'The Wind in the Willows.' We made predictions what the book was going to be about based on the front cover and blurb. We also predicted what animal the author was talking about based on a description. We also performed the poem 'Duck's Ditty' from the beginning of Chapter 2. Well done to Isla, Isobel and Willow who sang their performances! 

This half-term we have Mr Andrew teaching our class Project Touchline. This week the children played tag rugby games and demonstrated our school value of love within these games.

Teaching of Reading Text:

Autumn 1

The children will be involved in a journey through space, exploring beyond the sun: the magnificent blazing star at the centre of our Solar System. They will also investigate the eight planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. As well as all of this, they shall take a closer look at the Moon, a celestial body that orbits Earth. 

Exploring space is probably the greatest adventure that humankind has ever undertaken. 

Are we alone or are there other life forms out there?

WB Monday 14th October:

What an amazing penultimate week in Year 6! In English, we have been reading Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl. It is an extremely funny and engaging text and we can't wait to find out if the Knid breaks through the glass and gobbles up Charlie, his family and Mr Wonka. We have used the text as a stimulus for identifying figurative language, writing a character description and writing dialogue, which moves the action on. In math, we have looked at long division, factors (including common factors),common multiples and prime numbers up to 100. Also in Science, we have explored the day and night cycle and created presentations. We can't wait to show you our super stargazers learning next week at the showcase on: Thursday 24th October 2019, at 2.15pm, in our classroom. We hope you can make it! 

Friday 18th October 2019

The spelling focus this week: words ending in -ant

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Thursday 24th October:

Please remember to complete the Maths Operations (short and long division) home learning by Friday 18th October 2019. You can also practise using Mathletics and TT Rockstars. For reading, we would like you to read for pleasure every day and discuss this reading with your class teacher next week.

Use these examples to help support you with your homework.

Monday 14th October 2019

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday:

The spelling focus this week: homophones

Super Swordfish Learning WB Monday 7th October:

In English, we have been exploring cohesive devices, as well as reported and direct speech. We also completed our first independent writing piece, which was a newspaper report about Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. In Maths, the children have been using their persevering skills with short and long division. We are slowly getting there! In Science, we have investigated the moon and how it orbits the Earth. Finally, we really enjoyed celebrating #HelloYellow Day by wearing yellow items of clothing to help raise awareness for mental health.

Monday 7th October 2019

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday:

The spelling pattern this week: words ending in the sound ‘shus’ with a spelling of –cious

Please note that children will now be given a paper copy of spelling home learning to complete this week. This home learning will incorporate the Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check spelling technique.

Home learning Friday 4th October (due 11th October)

Please remember to complete the Maths Operations (addition, subtraction and multiplication) home learning by Friday 11th October 2019. You can also practise using Mathletics and TT Rockstars. For reading, we would like you to read for pleasure every day and discuss this reading with your class teacher next week.

Super Swordfish Learning WB Monday 30th September:

This week in English, we have been looking at newspaper articles. We unpicked the presentational and grammatical features, then revised how to use relative clauses, passive verbs and parenthesis, as well as researching Apollo 11. This is preparing us for our independent writing session next week where we will be writing a newspaper article based on Neil Armstong's first step on the moon. In maths, we have been exploring three of the four operations (addition, subtraction and multiplication). In science, we researched how the planets orbit around the sun and how long they take to orbit the sun.

Remember: Next Thursday 10th October is #HelloYellow Day. Letters have been sent home and the letter is also posted on the 'Latest News' section of our website which can be located under the 'Parents' drop down tab. Children can wear something yellow with their uniform (or all yellow) that day! We will be talking about ways to try and stay positive and talk about the importance of being/staying mentally fit and well as well as being/staying physically fit and well.

Monday 30th September 2019

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday:

The spelling pattern this week: words ending in -tious (pronounced 'shus').

Home learning Friday 27th September (due Friday 4th October)

For maths homelearning this week, remember to complete the place value sheet including comparing and ordering numbers, rounding numbers and negative numbers by Friday 4th October.

Also, remember that you can use Mathletics and TT Rockstars to improve your maths skills.

For reading, make sure you are reading a range of texts for pleasure, ready to discuss them with your class teacher next week.

Super Swordfish Learning wc 23rd September 2019

This week in Swordfish class has been full of exciting learning.

In maths we have learnt how to order and compare numbers up to ten million; round numbers within ten millions; and calculate with negative numbers.

In RE we have been looking at creation and deciphered Psalm 8 by creating images to link to the text.

In handwriting we have continued to practice our joining of letters focusing on our lead ins and outs of letters.

In Cornerstones, we have created our own aliens and explored making models of the solar system using spherical objects.

In our PSRE lesson, we looked at our school value of 'trust' and how we can show trust within our classroom.

In English we have planned, written and performed our space poems. Look at the images below to see how we incorporated our poetry learning with physical exercise!

Spelling Home Learning Monday 23rd September 2019 (due Friday 27th September) 

The spelling pattern this week: words ending in -tial (pronounced 'shul').

As part of this weeks home learning, please learn these words ready to be tested on Friday:

A huge well done to the following three children that completed the extra spelling challenges for last week's spelling home learning: Isobel, Bethany and Kacie.

Super Swordfish Learning wc 16th September

Miss Moreton and myself are so proud of how hard our Year 6 pupils have worked this week whilst completing their mock SATS; they showed excellent perseverance. On Wednesday, we had a fantastic ‘Impact Day’ to celebrate our topic: Stargazers. The children were very lucky to have a special visitor come into the school with a Planetarium. They got to experience star gazing and explored constellations, along with travelling into space to experience a closer look at the planets and moons in space. It was mesmerising! Have a look at some of the great pictures below.

Home Learning Spellings Monday 16th September due Friday 20th September

These are the ten spellings that we need to learn ready to be tested on Friday:

1) accompany

2) disastrous

3) marvellous

4) opportunity

5) system

The above five spellings are words taken from the Year 5/6 spelling list. Can you think of any synonyms of any of these words?

6) special

7) artificial

8) official

9) beneficial

10) superficial 

The above five spellings are linked to the spelling pattern this week: words ending in -cial (pronounced 'shul'). Can you think of a clever way to remember these spellings?

Swordfish learning w/c 9th September

This week we have focusing on our school and class expectations. We have looked at our school vision and cretaed a booklet showing 'making a difference for good, with each other, everyone, in our community.' We have been practicing our letter formation in handwriting; writing a narrative to showcase our current writing skills in English (based on the book of butterflies: https://www.literacyshed.com/butterflies.html); problem solving linked to place value in maths; and drawing and painting skills in art. We have been promoting a reading for pleasure ethos in our class and the children have had opportunities to do this throughout the week.

Home learning

Please remember to complete the maths home learning crossword by Friday 20th September 2019. You can also practice using Mathletics and TT Rockstars.

For reading, we would like you to read for pleasure every day and discuss this reading with your class teacher next week.

Swordfish Learning w/c 2nd September

This week we have been getting to know each other so have being doing lots of 'All About Me' activities. We have learnt about our families, hobbies, school and recapped our school values 'love','trust' and 'perseverance'. The children created their own posters demonstrating the St Andrew's Way of the 1, 2, 3 Star system:

Spelling:

The National Curriculum for Years 5 and 6 expects children to be able to:

• Use further prefixes and suffixes and understand the guidance for adding them (such as –able and –ible)
• Spell some words with ‘silent’ letters (such as knight)
• Continue to distinguish between homophones and other words which are often confused
• Use knowledge of morphology and etymology in spelling
• Use dictionaries to check the spelling and meaning of words
• Use a thesaurus

By the end of Year 6, children are expected to understand and be able to meet the challenging spelling demands outlined in the National Curriculum. Children’s knowledge is assessed through a grammar, punctuation and spelling test that children sit in May as part of a week of national tests.