Hotwells Primary School

Monday, 30th March:

Hello Class 6! 

Welcome to a brand new week.  We hope you had a lovely weekend and managed to keep yourselves entertained.  

This week, we will continue with daily English and Maths activities - most of which are things we've already covered so this will be a good opportunity to revisit them. Today's activities are Commas for English and Adding and Subtracting Integers (Whole Numbers) in Maths (to begin the unit revisiting the four operations).  It's great to hear that so many of you are enjoying these as well as exploring different resources available, like the White Rose Maths activities. If you've been using these, this week will be building on the work started last week with Ratio and Proportion.

And finally, don't forget that if you complete any work that you are particularly proud of, you can send a photo or share it with us at class6@hotwells.bristol.sch.uk and we'll be able to share it on our webpage for your classmates to see. More recently, we've been sent some brilliant artwork from Eva and Annisa, which we've added to the Shared Work section below.  Thank you both - we loved receiving these masterpieces - and well done for continuing to do some superb art at home!

We've also updated the History topic questions for you to research below. You can add these new sections to your research project but you may wish to think about how you order your project so different ideas are grouped together! For a creative writing task, which we know lots of you were keen to do, use the information you've found out already to write a letter home from a child who was evacuated during the Second World War - what might they say to their parents or families?  You could also write a diary if you wish. Or, if you want to do something slightly different, why not choose to write as the school teacher who was evacuated with them?  Don't forget to think carefully about the style of your text, making vocabulary choices carefully: children in the 1940s wouldn't have necessarily talked the way children do now! We both look forward to reading your brilliant creative pieces soon!

Mr. Edwards and Ms. Attride 

PS. We are still trying to find the best way to share the next chapter of 'Our Castle By The Sea' - we promise we haven't forgotten! How many of you currently have access to Audible or a Kindle/the Kindle app?

You can also access White Rose Maths Home Learning resources by clicking here. White Rose provide some of the resources we have been using in school, so you should be familiar with how these work.  Each week, there will be a new series of lessons on the website: every lesson comes with a short video showing you to do the Maths and complete the activity, followed by the activity itself and then answers for you to check your work.

You can also access Classroom Secrets Kids for free, although you will need to sign up.  Again, we have used these resources during our Maths lessons and it will be a great way for you to consolidate some of the previous learning we have done in a fun, interactive way.  You can visit the Classroom Secrets Kids website by clicking here.

Thank you for all of the questions you generated for our World War II research project. The next set of questions we would like you to find out have been asked by Sara, Zac and Archie and the link to children's time at school during World War II.  They are:

Did children go to school when they were evacuated? (Sara)

Were there more schools made in the countryside for evacuee children? (Zac)

 What games would they play? (Archie)

What changes were made at school to prepare for life during War? (Mr. Edwards)

Was it just children in England who were evacuated? (Mr. Edwards)

We have also included two additional questions to keep you busy! Remember to be adding these to your World War II projects! There are lots of images available online too, so think about using these to enhance your text! Also, don't forget to rewrite your research in your own words - this is far more enjoyable to read rather than copying and pasting from a website!

Above: Eva has been busy creating these brilliant pieces of artwork inspired by wildlife! We love the detail, particularly the shading on the eagle's beak!  What gave you the inspiration for these pieces, Eva?

Below: Annisa's drawing of a train - with great perspective and use of tone (light and dark)

Above: Lila has produced these superb piece of artwork inspired by our class novel 'Our Castle by the Sea'.  Great work, Lila!

Below: Trudi has used Lucy Strange's novel as a starting point, but told it from a character's perspective.  Well done, Trudi

Class 6 have launched their new Science topic on 'Light' with a practical, hands-on session exploring how light works. As part of this unit, we will become Crime Lab investigators to solve a robbery, using science to eliminate key suspects each session.

During the first session, our budding scientists used light sources to explore how light works. We were also so impressed with the creativity and collaboration we saw during our launch lesson. Well done Year 6!

Class 6 had a real treat to start the new term today, when we were visited by writer, actor and director Toby Hulse who led a drama workshop with us, following the work we've been doing in History.

Building on the work we’ve been on World War II, and launching our work on what life was like for those involved in the war, the workshop used oral history clips about the Blitz in Bristol to investigate the question ‘What was the impact of the Blitz on Bristol?’.  During the sessions, we were involved in producing our own pieces of drama inspired by the audio recordings and we enjoyed performing them and receiving critiques from Toby in order to further improve our performances!

 
As well as it being great fun, we saw some great drama in action!  It was also brilliant to see everybody so engaged with local history and keen to contribute! We also loved performing our pieces at the end of the day. Well done, Class 6!

To launch our new History topic on World War II, we have been learning about Winston Churchill and his involvement in Operation Dynamo during the Evacuation of British troops from the beaches of Dunkirk.  As well as looking at Churchill's inspirational speeches, we have also produced these brilliant portraits of our former Prime Minister - with fantastic end results!

We have also looked at the speeches that Winston Churchill gave the country during the war, including his famous speech 'We Will Fight Them on Beaches'.  Using our persuasive writing skills and taking inspiration from Churchill himself, we produced our own speeches to gain the support of Great Britain during the Evacuation of Dunkirk. We identified elements of persuasion used - such as the repetition of a key idea or phrase - and incorporated these into our own pieces of work.  You can read a selection of finished pieces below.

Linking our work in Geography and History topic on the Victorians, Class 6 were set the challenge of creating a Home Learning project linked to the British Empire.  We were so impressed with the range of creative pieces of work produced: these included lots of edible pieces which the class very much enjoyed sampling, collaborative film projects, models and some highly informative PowerPoint presentations! You can see some of our fantastic efforts in the gallery below!

As part of our topic exploring what life was like for children in Victorian Britain, we visited Tyntesfield for a Very Victorian Christmas Experience.  During the day, we learned about several Christmas traditions which originated during the Victorian era, including giving gifts and playing some rather bizarre parlour games.  We also explored the house, where we mixed festive spices in the kitchen, sang Carols around the Christmas tree and in the chapel, learned about the extravagant Christmas meals that wealthy Victorians would have eaten, learned about more Victorian traditions and even found time for a spot of dancing in preparation for the Christmas Ball!  We finished our visit by making our own Christmas Crackers.

Class 6, as always, were complimented on their brilliant behaviour and enthusiasm during the visit and impressed the adult guides with their excellent knowledge on the Victorians. Great work, Year 6!

Year 6 had a fantastic week's residential visit to PGL at Osmington Bay at the end of our first term! We had an action-packed week on the Weymouth coast, which included Jacob's Ladder, Zip Wire, Orienteering, Street Surfing, the Giant Swing, Dragon Boating, Raft Building, the Sensory Trail, Aeroball, a Beach Walk and a Hike!

Every single member of Class 6 was absolutely brilliant and it was great to see people embracing the great outdoors, whilst challenging themselves to go a little further outside of their comfort zone on the activities! Thank you all for making it such a great week; you were all absolute stars!

You can see some of the photographs  below or, to see more, you can visit our Year 6 Camp Gallery by clicking here. 

As part of our history topic on Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Class 6 visited the S.S. Great Britain this week to see one of Brunel's designs first hand. During the visit, we took part in a workshop learning about some of the passengers who sailed on board the ship, explored a range of historical sources (building on the work we've been doing in our History lessons) and found out some more about the many amazing achievements of Brunel himself. You can see some of the photos from our visit below...

We also made some time for a quick spot of dressing up! And what wonderful Victorian passengers we made...

As part of our first week in Year 6, we have been thinking about our aspirations for the year ahead.  'Aspirations' are hopes, aims or goals and are one of our School Values.  You can see what we hope to achieve during our time in Class 6 below... 

We'd love to hear what you think about our Class 6 page or, if you're a member of Class 6,  what you're enjoying doing in school. 
You can do this by leaving a comment below.