Holly Class Day 3, Year 6, 11/6/21,
Holly Class have enjoyed their final day at Grenville House. They have had an amazing 2 and a half days and we are very proud of them! They will soon be heading back to school on the coach.
What a busy week in Ebony Class!
This week we have been #geographers. As a part of our topic – ‘Hola Mexico’, we researched the similarities and differences between their physical and human geography and ours in the UK. We then presented this information in fact files.
We have also been #scientists. As a part of our topic, we looked at the way the Mayans built the Temple of Kukulcan. They observed the sun and built the temple so that it looked like a snake was climbing down the temple. We then reminded ourselves how shadows were made and experimented with how shadows change when we change the angle and distance of the light source. We observed and measured the changes.
Finally, we have been continuing to develop as atheletes. We have been working on key skills including: shot putt, discus, hop, skip and jump. This week we were developing our hurdling skills – in very heavy wind!
I hope you enjoyed reading about our week.
In Ebony class we are at the end of our literacy unit. This unit has been inspired by the book Holes by Louis Sachar.
In the story, our main character is sent to a camp as a punishment for a crime he says he did not commit.
The final outcome of this unit is to write a letter to a judge to try and get him to do something about the despicable conditions at the camp.
We would love to be able to send the letters to the actual judge, but as this is a fiction book that is not possible. Instead, we are going to send the letters to Louis Sachar to show him what his book has inspired.
For those of you not familiar with S.O.L.E. (Self Organised Learning Environment), it is an approach to learning.
In Year 6, our topic is currently called ‘Hola Mexico!’ and in it we are learning about the impact of the civilisations of South America on us and the rest of the world.
This week, one of our objectives was to look at a location in Devon and Mexico and compare and contrast them.
Because we were following a SOLE approach – we were able to make our own decisions about our learning.
To start with, some of us decided to use google maps to learn about locations, some of us thought that google earth was more helpful whilst some of used search engines to find useful websites.
Once we had collected the information, we then had another choice – how to present our learning.
Some of us created slideshows, some of us created websites, some of us made posters and some even made a documentary!
This is self organised learning in action and it creates a wonderful range of quality outcomes.
This week in Ebony class, we were learning about some new vocabulary for our ‘Holes’ topic. We introduce these words using CIP (Communicate in Print) which is an approach that matches symbols to words to help us remember them better.
Usually, when it comes time for showing our understanding, we write sentences.
This time, we decided to think about, and plan, our learning.
The class were given time to plan what they would do. Once they had done the work, the class were given time to look back at their approach and evaluate it. When using the metacognition cycle, it is important to give the time to evaluate so that we know if an approach works for us or not.
To start our topic ‘Hola Mexico’, Ebony class made fruit cocktails.
To start with, we had to remind ourselves how to safely use a knife. We learnt about using ‘the claw’ to hold items safely, making sure the knife was sharp and how to be safe generally when cutting and holding a knife.
After that, we has some time to plan what was going to go into our drink. We had a range of juices to choose from as well as a range of fruits. Some of us took a risk and chose fruits or juices we were not sure we liked.
Once we had chosen, it was time to peel and chop our fruits ready for the drinks. Then we added the juices and finally a bit of lemonade to sweeten it all up.
When we tried our mocktails, some of us did not like them, so we spent time evaluating our plan and thinking about what we might do differently next time.
When we came back from our daily mile, we were shocked to find that the devices had gone on strike!
As a class, we had to decide how we were going to get them to come back to work. We thought of some reasons including: promising to look after them more, using them less and making sure they get charged.
We thought that we may need to use emotional language and present a strong a argument.
We then had a go at writing letters to persuade the devices that we do deserve them!
This was our elicitation task, we will be using this to indentify the skills we need to write a high-quality presuasive letter.
Why not ask your child if they managed to get the devices back off strike.
In Ebony class, we have been celebrating the end of the war – V.E. day!
Today, we have been preparing for our street party to celebrate the end of World War 2.
As you can see from the pictures, we have enjoyed getting into the festive mood after all the bombing and rationing.
Check back tomorrow to see how our street party went.
What a busy start to the half term we have had!
We made a big bang (literally) at the start of the week! We pretended that we were children in World War II. We move the classroom around to make an improvised bomb shelter and experienced what it was like to be involved in an air raid.
Some of us felt excited, scared or even claustrophobic. Later on, we watched a video about what it was like for people in the actual war. The video made us realise how serious it was – we heard from an old man who’s house had been bombed – in the raid his mother had died.
We have also been learning about the Windrush generation in our literacy – trying to learn what it might have felt like to move away from your friends and family at such short notice.
In mathematics, we have been learning about measures and converting. We had a really interesting conversation about why road signs still have miles on them!
Here are some bits of our SOLE work – we hope you enjoy them.
We have been working hard in Year 6 this week. Not only have we introduced some new skills (in PE and Computing), we have also been embedding some already known skills.
In P.E., we have been using netball as our focus game. This week we were trying to attract the attention of our team mates – without alerting the opposite time. This can be quite tricky! We were also reinforcing our passing skills – using the chest pass and bounce pass.
In Computing, we have been using data from the voyage of the Beagle to create line graphs. These line graphs showed the distance of the Beagle from its home port.
We have also been applying our literacy skill in our SOLE sessions. We had a may to create a poem about the Galapagos. Here are two examples:
Finally, in Science, we have been studying evolution and adaptation. One part of this involved looking at how a specific animal had adapted over time. One of our favourite activities was our beak investigation. Inspired by Charles Darwin’s research on Chaffinches, we experimented with different tools and seeds to see which worked best.
I hope you enjoyed looking at some of what we have done this week.
This week in Ebony Class, we have been working very hard – especially in our S.O.L.E. .
One of our MUSTS involved observational sketching – inspired by Charles Darwin and his sketch book. We remembered to apply the ‘Austin’s Butterfly’ approach and have several goes – using constructive feedback from other people in the class.
One of our MUSTS was more flexible – we had to learn about the Galapagos Islands and then present what we had learnt. We were able to choose how we displayed our learning.
Some people created short films in iMovie, some people created websites using Google Sites whilst others chose to write the information out by hand.
As a part of our research about the Galapagos, some of us created custom made maps using Google Draw. We used these to plan an expedition around the islands. Someone became such an expert in this that she was able to help others create their own maps.
I hope you enjoyed finding out what we have been up to this week.
Welcome to our new class – Hobeny (A cominbation of Holly and Ebony).
We have had a very busy week this week. We have started following the new lockdown approach and been working very hard.
In our SPaG session we found a new method for trying to rememeber tricky words. This is called the ‘naughty letters’ method. In this method, you write the word out but make the letters that catch you out look different. In my example, some people find spelling the word ‘necessary’ tricky as it can be hard to recall which letters are doubled.
We also looked at simple mnemonics that can help us. For the same word, we learnt the mnemonic ‘one collar and two sleeves’.
Some of the children have been demonstrating their technology skills in SOLE. One of our MUSTS was to present some information about Charles Darwin. some children chose to create a website, whilst others created short video presentations.
We hope you enjoy our work.
In our unit, we have been learning about some of the different types of email. We have read and discussed: spam, complaints, chatty emails and sales emails.
We discussed how the different types of email needed to be written in differing levels of formality.
Here are some examples:
Hopefully, next time we write an email, we will be able to think about the audience and make sure we write in an approriate way!
In Ebony this week, we looked at two interesting websites: https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus and https://www.dhmo.org/ .
The second website was very interesting – it turns out that Dihydrogen Monoxide has been involved in 100% of deaths!
The task Ebony had to do was check that both websites were factually correct. We did this by taking information from the sites and seeing if any other sources agreed (or disagreed).
It was a very useful lesson in being wary of information from the internet and making sure we check our sources.
(In case you have not realised – both websites were spoofs – Dihydrogen Monoxide is actually water!
This week in Ebony, we have been talking about metacognition.
Part of this has been during our spelling sessions. At the start of the term, we were tested on the first half of our Year 6 spelling list. Then, over the course of the term, we used a ranged a strategies to learn those spellings we did not get correct. This week, we were tested on the same words again. We then compared our results to the results from the start of term.
Most of us had improved, but some had not (or only improved a small amount).
This whole process involved metacognition (or thinking about learning).
To start with we identified areas we needed to improve, then we planned our approach by choosing a strategy that we thought would work and finally we evaluated our approach by seeing how much we had improved.
When we work on the second half of the Year 6 spellings, we will need to look back at our approach and consider if we need to change it or keep it the same.
In Ebony this week, we started looking at algebra. To start with we were looking at simple equations such:
If x=10 what does 2x =?
Later on we looked at more complicated equations such as:
If x=3, b=5, d=10 then what does (x + b) – d =
Someone asked why we learn algebra; the class know I cannot resist a ‘Why?’ question!
In our discussion, we started talking about some of the jobs that use algebra – mainly focusing around advanced jobs in mathematics, science and engineering.
We also spoke about the impact of learning algebra on our brain. It can help with critical thinking skills including pattern recognition, problem solving and reasoning.
We are part way through our writing unit – which is based on writing a biography about a famous internet personality.
One of our sessions focused on using ISPACE openers. ISPACE openers are a way to start a sentence to make it more interesting.
If you would like to learn more about ISPACE openers – follow this link:
https://slideplayer.com/slide/14628222/
We started with a simple sentence, then added an ISPACE opener, then added some higher level punctuation and finally improved by adding some more complex vocabulary.
James Charles Dickinson has 14.2 million subscribers.
Currently, James Charles Dickinson has 14.2 million subscribers.
Currently, James Charles Dickinson has 14.2 million subscribers: his makeup is so popular.
Currently, James Charles Dickinson has approximately 14.2 million subscribers: his makeup is so popular.
Why do we use ISPACE and improve our sentences?
We do this to engage the reader to make them interested in what we are writing. This makes them want to continue reading.
As a part of our topic ‘Tomorrow’s World’ we experimented with circuits today.
We reminded ourselves what a simple circuit was (including series and parallel circuits) and then had a go at building our own.
The challenge was, to create a circuit where we could alter the output. Someone suggested that if we added in a second bulb, this would make the light given off dimmer – altering the output. Someone else suggested adding a second battery to make a motor go faster – altering the output.
Today, in our literacy lesson, we did an activity called ‘mapping the text’.
‘Mapping the text’ involves replacing individual words with symbols or small drawings that represent the word. For example we might replace the word ‘she’ with a drawing of a stick person with long hair.
Here are some examples:
In class, we discussed why we do this activity. This activity helps us to embed high quality writing in our head – but in a different way! When we read high quality texts, we make new connections in our brain to help us remember. When we map high quality texts, we make different connections that also help us remember.
When it is time to write our own texts, we are able to draw on all of the high quality texts to help us create our own high quality writing.
This week (and last), in Ebony class we are covering learning that was missed as a result of lockdown.
One of the things we have been looking at is algorithms. These are basically sets of instructions that can be given to a computer or robot. We used the beebot app, giving the beebot sets of instructions to move about an increasingly complex map without making any errors. Sometimes we made errors and had to re-write our algorithms.
We have also been studying Galileo Galilei and the impact he had on the whole world. We learnt about the discoveries he made, as well as how this information was received by the wider world.
Lastly we looked at some apsects of our solar system including: why we have day and night, how the earth rotates, how the earth orbits the sun and how we are moving through space.
Here are some examples of our work:
In Ebony class, we have been learning about an aspect of british history and how it has changed in the last 200 years.
We chose to study transport.
We used a very detailed timeline to help us identify modes of transport that interested us.
We then created a slideshow (using google slides), or an iMovie (using iMovie) to show what we had learnt.
In Ebony we have been looking at fractions in our catch up maths.
So far this week we have multiplied fractions by other fractions, multiplying fractions by an integer and dividing fractions by an integer.
Sometimes we need to create images to help with our understanding.
Can your child explain what is going on here?
This week, the whole of Hazeldown School have been reflecting on what it was like during lockdown.
In Ebony class, we have been discussing some of the learning we did during lockdown, as well as other activites we might have done.
The class have brought in a wonderful range of work they completed during this time. We have been taking this and making a section in our SOLE books.
I hope you enjoy this small sample:
This term we have been working through a gymnastics sequence.
This week we were lucky enough to have someone from TCS come and work with us on our skills.
By the end of the session we had devised a new sequence that included 3 ‘holds’ and 3 ‘travels’.
In Ebony class, we have started a new literacy unit – writing short stories based in the Arctic or Antarctic.
We have used colourful semantics to identify the parts of the sentence. Then we have added details by using expanded noun phrases – these give more information about the noun. You can see an example that someone came up with in the picture.
We have also been looking at using parenthesis to add extra information to a sentence – a lot of us wrote relative clauses about one or both of the nouns in a sentence. This extra information can be put inside brackets, commas or dashes.
For example:
The seal dived out of the water. (quite boring sentence)
The seal – which was escaping from an orca – dived out of the water.
Some of us went even further and experimented with having a comma inside the parenthis:
The sun shone down on us. (quite boring sentence)
The sun (that was brilliant gold, like it is most days) shone down on us.
In Ebony class this week, we spent a day refreshing our subtraction skills. As a part of this, we thought of some of the ways we could represent a single calculation (4648 – 2347).
Here are some of the visual representations we came up with:
Can your child tell you the name of some of these?
Can your child explain to you how they represent the subtraction?
This morning has been the first chance for Ebony class to show off their amazing writing.
We have been studying non-chronological reports in our Literacy unit. As part of this we have looked at a range of high quality texts and learnt new skills to help us make our writing as interesting as possible for the reader.
This morning we got to put it all into action in a big write session.
As you can see from the pictures, we are using a range of approaches to ensure that our writing is of the highest quality. This includes: spell checkers, chromebooks and purple pens.
So far this term the topic ‘Frozen Kingdom’ has really grabbed Ebony class.
We have been studying many aspects of the Arctic and Antarctic including adaption, evolution, climate change and icebergs. We are now looking forward to studying the Titanic and what went wrong.
Some amazing homework has already started to come in as can be seen from the pictures.
What a busy start to the term! It is obvious that the children are glad to be back – they have shown such a great attitude to learning – even in these tricky times.
Here are some of the things we have done over the past two weeks:
We have been revisiting the Compass for Life – looking at our North Star and how we are going to get there.
We have been learning more about the Zones of Regulation and how we can get back into the Green Zone so that we can perform as efficiently as possible.
We have been writing letters to our future selves – explaining what lockdown has been like and how we are feeling about the next year.
We have started our new topic ‘Frozen Kingdom’. We have already started studying icebergs – including a real life example – to see how they act in the water.
I hope you enjoy these pictures.
This week in Holly Class Bubble, we have been very busy – as every week!
As well as making sure that all of our key skills work (Maths, Reading, Spelling and Grammar) is finished, we have been continuing with our S.O.L.E. .
Some of us have been looking at surrealism. We have looked at famous pieces of work, tried to copy some famous paintings and even had a go at automatic drawing. Some of us have been continuing our focus on animals and predators. We have created top trumps cards of our favourite predators – which one do you like the best? The final group have been continuing to look at time travel – planning a time travel book.
I hope you enjoy this fabulous work.
Another great week. We have all been working very hard on our key skills in the mornings. In the afternoons we have been undertaking a range of activities including: designing and writing about our own predator, exploring the science of colour, writing short stories, experimenting with sketching and shading and much more.
I hope you enjoy this range of work.
Our bubble based in Holly class have been working really hard this week. We have had to change our timetable to make sure that we are all able to get the 4 key sessions (Maths, Reading, Grammar and Spelling) done each day.
Even with all of that hard work, we have still had time to develop our SOLE work – which has been very art focused this week. We finished the week having a sketching session out on the playground.
I hope you enjoy looking at our work.
What a busy week!
I am not sure who was more ready for the weekend – the children or me…
We have done such an exciting range of work in school, focusing on high expectations – especially with our presentation. Hopefully you can see that from the high quality of the work from our Year 3, Year 5 and Year 6 children.
We have made leaflets about animals, written and presented Haiku poems, written newspaper articles, planned street parties and much more.
I hope you enjoy looking at all of this work as much as I did.
Mr Evans
What a week!
This week some of us returned to school, I was teaching in Holly class with a range of children. We have all been working very hard on a wide range of maths, literacy and SOLE.
Some of us have been learning about different scales used to measure mass. We have been writing about animals, world war 2 and more!
Our SOLE has been cvery creative with some amazing results.
Here is some of the work from this week:
Have a lovely (hopefully not too wet) weekend.
Not many pictures this week – remember if you are doing something different – please share the pictures so we can all see.
Even though there are not many pictures – I know that lots of you are taking part in amazing learning activities at home. There are lots of people getting immersed in the World War 2 topic and also lots of people taking a lot of exercise.
It has been very encouraging to see so many Year 6 pupils helping other pupils on the chat – thank you for this.
Alice has been taking a lot of walks on Dartmoor – making the most of the wonderful weather.
Beth has been trying her best with her World War 2 SOLE work.
Jack has continued to get great results with his maths.
And finally, Lois loved the ‘mapping the text’ activity we did (although several of you did not like it!).
Have a good weekend – stay safe.
I continue to be amazed by the high quality standard of work from all of the children in Ebony class. Well done.
With our big write alongside SOLE this week, there were some very creative examples of writing. The great scores of the maths demonstrates just how hard you are all working at home – keep it up.
Have a great half term, stay safe.
Here are some examples of the wonderful work this week:
Aiden helped deliver bread around his neighbourhood.
Aiden also went for a lovely ride – so lucky to live where we do.
Emmie managed to capture a lovely photo of the sun at the beach.
Emmie also collected a lot of WW2 resources to help her.
Jack got his lighting certificate from Tubers.
Jack demonstrating his practical maths.
Finally, Lilly went above and beyond. She has applied her learning from our last unit (Tomorrow’s World), and linked it to this unit (WW2) by creating a website for her SOLE work.
It has been another amazing week. It is great to see the effort that the pupils are putting in to their work. I have seen some great maths work – with high scores. There is also some high quality writing – getting ready for our big write next week.
Alongside the more structured learning there has been a wide range of S.O.L.E. work that has been shared with me. The high quality of this work demonstrates the desire for the children to do their best in all learning opportunities.
Beth’s world war 2 timeline.
Beth’s air raid shelter.
Emmie being helped in her learning by her dog!
Fin carrying out scientific flight tests of his chickens.
Lilly experimenting with the fibre optic kit.
Malachy’s world war 2 poster.
Roni’s interview of someone who was evacuated in the war.
Finally, we have an anonymous poem written by a Year 6 child.
I think you will agree with me what a great poem it is.
As the title says – I am blown away by the high quality work being produced by Ebony class. It has been really exciting to move into our new topic – World War 2. I can already see how much some of you love this and below you will be able to see some of the wonderful things being done at home.
We are getting to a critical part of our class book ‘Pig Heart Boy’ as Cameron is about to have an operation. If you have missed any of the chapters they are available on Vimeo ( http://vimeo.com/user/51374297/folder/1849009 ) and Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2nfQWfGKhv93zgE4HddKlxosP6GOLo1A ).
I hope you all have a good bank holiday weekend and stay safe.
Joe’s air raid shelter.
Emmie’s spitfire.
Elsa’s very creative photograph (cut and stuck on paper).
A painting created by Arlia’s great grandfather when he was a prisoner of war.
Alice carrying out a ‘ph’ experiment.
And finally, Jack working hard on his active and passive voice!
It has been lovely to catch up with so many parents and pupils of Ebony class this week. It is amazing to find out just how much learning has been going gone at home – both traditional learning planned by school and learning through alternative activities.
Jack has been working on his plans for his netflix series as well as being awarded his Certificate of Completion from Tubers.
Emmie has been working hard on her S.O.L.E. – designing a logo using ‘Google Draw’
Rufus has been spending quality time with his new guinea pig.
Alice was part of breaking a world record for virtual camping with the Scout Network.
Over 84,000 Scouts, Cubs, Guides and leaders etc. slept in tents in their gardens.
And finally, Josh has been working hard – not just on his own work but also supporting his sister with her home learning!
Have a great weekend.
Mr Evans
It has been lovely chatting to so many parents and pupils this week. It is very encouraging to hear all of the learning going on at home – whether that is outside on the trampoline or sat at a desk.
Please keep sharing the wonderful things you are doing at home – especially the creative ways you are approaching Virtual School.
Taking advantage of the quiet car park
Something to help focus – kitten time!
Being interviewed for a biography.
In Year 6 we are currently making scripts for a TV show about exercise. Just before half term we wrote persuasive texts to convince people to exercise more. We are now converting these texts into a script for a TV show.
As a part of this we have learnt to make our show clear, concise and correct. Some of us were checking the facts we want to use whilst others were taking elements of our writing and putting them into a script.
Year 6 have had another amazing day with caving, coasteering, canoeing, high ropes and stand up paddle boarding.
We have put together a short video capturing some of the best moments so far.
Enjoy.
We use a wide range of resources and strategies to help us with our ‘Big Write’ (an extended piece of writing we do at the end of the unit). Some of these include working walls, to remind us of specific skills we have learnt; spelling mats, to help us spell our statutory words and resources on display, to remind us to use ISPACE openers and more.
In our books we have a success criteria to help us assess our own writing and C.I.P. (communicate in print) words to encourage us to use higher level vocabulary.
One pupil in Ebony had the bright idea of stick both of those resources together as one flap. This way, we can see both whilst we are writing.
The Hazeldown news reporters have been on the trail of a new story…
Today, Year 5 went on a trip to Torquay Boys Grammar School. We went for the morning to have an experience of what Geography might look like at secondary school.
We learned about the 3 Rs (reduce, re-use and recycle) and learnt some new ones (refuse, repair).
We also talked about recycling and also how much power certain items used.
We had a great morning, thank you to the staff at Torquay Boys Grammar.
Some of the Year 6 pupils have created their own news report:
On Tuesday this week, a group of Year 6 girls went to Exeter to take part in a STEM activity. STEM is a grouping of subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), that is under represented by girls.
At the session we learnt how to use minecraft to code. We wrote a series of instructions that trained an in game character to help stop fires by recognising what was a fire source and what was not.
We also learnt to use Paint3D. This piece of software enables you to create a 2-D object, transform it into 3-D and then see that object in the room with you – this is called Mixed Reality.
Today in Year 6 we were learning some new words as a part of our Literacy unit. For our lesson, we had to write the word (spelling it correctly), find and write the definition and use the word in context.
We discussed why we should use these words and one of the main reasons is to make our writing as exciting as possible for the reader.
Do you know what all these words mean?
To start our new topic ‘Blood Heart’ we were able to explore the human body using AR (augmented reality).
Using a ‘super QR code’ we were able to see the internal systems of the human body over the top of our actual body. We were able to travel down arteries, move around the lungs and much more.
Even Mr Goodenough come and explored with us.
As part of our maths learning, we had to mark some of Miss Tapp’s work.
It was quite tricky for us to see where she had gone wrong – and explain how she had gone wrong.
Here is an example:
