Holly Hill Primary and Nursery School
Swans, Year 6, 2021/22
Welcome to Swan class!
Welcome to Swan class! My name is Miss Fretwell and I am the teacher in Swan class, supported by the wonderful Miss Wilson. On our class page you will find daily pictures of what we've been up to, so that you can see what we've been learning! We hope that you love seeing everything that we get up to!
Key information:
- P.E will be on a Tuesday afternoon, but please make sure that the children keep their P.E kits in school all week for if we decide to squeeze in an extra session.
- New spellings will be given out every Monday and then tested the following Monday.
- Please feel free to use reading diaries to communicate any messages, but for anything more urgent then you can contact me through the school office. I will sign reading diaries every Tuesday.
- For homework, the children are expected to read 5 times a week at home, practise their spellings and practise their times tables (most enjoy to do this using our school subscription to TTRockstars, login details for which are stuck into reading diaries). Please record reading in diaries, or in Year 6 the children can record their own reading and have a parent sign it.
10.06.22 Wear Yellow for Winnie day! Thank you so much for your generosity in donating to this cause very close to Mrs Cordon’s heart. Swan class were so engaged when learning about Winnie’s story and their empathy was admirable.
10.06.22 We used ink to create a skyline of a local piece of architecture.
09.06.22 A practical science lesson learning about levers and how they can help lift heavy objects!
08.06.22 We’ve started PE with Miss Bateman and are learning cricket skills. Today was all about selecting the appropriate throw based on distance.
07.06.22 We’ve loved using the Boomwhackers in our Music lessons - we’ve been using chords to improvise a melody!
Fun at the park post-SATS!
Y6 did a First Aid course! We learnt how to carry out CPR in case of an emergency.
Jubilee Party - Ice creams
Jubilee Party - Face paints
Jubilee Party - Picnic and games
Jubilee Party - Fairground rides
trim.B3C37D69-0F64-422A-B1FF-B6DA3B84A986.MOV
trim.0759470E-5117-42A8-9E3A-072FF237324D.MOV
trim.622B62C7-482D-47FB-81A6-9B38C91A01DE.MOV
trim.D47F6565-0BFB-490B-BCD9-6ACBC2D20C86.MOV
trim.CD0B12BB-ABC2-4056-939B-D5335F96A85D.MOV
trim.F4F57015-17BE-4879-B44E-ADB756E6E2FA.MOV
trim.CB0E5DF3-96C2-4C43-93E3-F9071F2D32F8.MOV
Jubilee Party - Band and decorations
trim.6A8D897C-4F62-467E-A9F6-2076F6E3AF36.MOV
26.05.21 We had an amazing time at our Viking workshop! It was so amazing to see the learning we’ve been doing in the classroom brought to life. Thank you parents for helping us to fund this wonderful day!
17.05.22 Testing our parachutes to find out which design makes the slowest falling parachute!
16.05.22 We’ve been learning about how the Viking and Anglo-Saxon periods overlapped. We also played a Viking game on the iPads to learn about trading!
03.05.22 We’ve been doing a scavenger hunt! We read a text and Miss Fretwell gave us the answers, but what was the question? We had to find them hidden around the room!
29.04.22 Who said revision was boring?! Not us! We’ve been playing ‘4 in a Row’ with fractions operations and trying to beat our partners!
28.04.22 We’ve used the iPads to complete our end of unit assessments for last half term. We tested how well we’d remembered key knowledge and did fabulous!
26.04.22 We loved our visit from White Post Farm, thank you so much FOHH!
Have a fabulous Easter break Swannies! 💓
23.03.22 A 40 second clip of the 20 minute SPAG lesson, which the children said was their ‘best SPAG lesson ever!’ We learn the KS2 grammar content using songs. Today, we practised filling in the missing lyrics to remember the key lines from each song!
18.03.22 Well done to our fabulous hero this week - Lacey! Lacey is our hero, because she has written a wonderful poem about Grendel using kennings. She even did a dramatic reading in the role of Grendel to the class!
17.03.22 We used tracing paper to start practising drawing illuminated letters - stay tuned to see our final designs!
15.03.22 We’ve been using kennings to write poems about Grendel and Beowulf!
14.03.2022 - Yr 6 Looking at Digital Forensics - British Science Week
Our fabulous hero this week, Jacob, for his infectious positivity!
11.03.22 We spent the last few weeks designing our own Anglo Saxon inspired brooches. This afternoon, we modelled them out of clay!
10.03.22 In our weekly D.A.A.R.T session with Mrs Swithenbank, we’ve been practising communication without talking! Some found it easier than others 🤐🤫
07.03.22 We had a singing assembly and workshop by Ed from Anchor Creative Education. We use all of ACE’s resources to teach grammar from and it was so lovely for the children to see their lessons come to life!
HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY 🌎 📚
We played ‘Game of Quotes’ … find the funniest sentence in your book to end a scenario card… the best was ‘a note you’ve written that you wouldn’t want your teacher to read aloud in class’ 😄
WBD 2022.mp4
02.03.22 This afternoon, in History, we looked at ordering events in chronological order. Ask us about the Anglo-Saxons!
01.03.22 We’ve been writing job applications to slay a beast for our English text ‘Beowulf’. We listened to some battle music to set the atmosphere! 🧟♂️
25.02.22 We looked at some Saxon arts and crafts in Art this afternoon and had a go at sketching some of the features of a brooch found in one of the burial hoards.
22.02.22 We used the iPads to clarify a translation of the Old English poem ‘Beowulf’ and Miss Fretwell was so impressed with our clarification and inference skills.
08.02.22 The first day we’ve all been back together since lots of us have been poorly. What better way to start our day with some active Maths! We did some weighing and measuring to help us to be able to make estimations.
07.02.22 We turned the micro:bits into compasses!
26.01.22 Gymnastics - we’ve been performing in front of the class today, demonstrating our skills of artistic gymnastics using equipment.
trim.62090176-DB28-41BE-886D-FE10189FEFC6.MOV
24.01.22 Whodunnit?! Today, we wrote active and passive voice sentences - Cluedo style!
20.01.22 We loved having the micro:bits out in Computing this afternoon. We practised our coding skills and transferred the codes on to the micro:bit.
19.01.22 In gymnastics this morning, we explored the apparatus and how to travel across beams.
17.01.22 In English, we role-played interviews to help us get in character ready to write our newspaper reports on the Bluchers!
14.01.22 Matthew is our hero this week for this much-improved piece of writing in the style of our class book, Boy in the Tower.
13.01.22 Identifying features a newspaper report, preparing for our own writing next week!
12.01.22 We loved our first gymnastics lesson with Miss B today- look at our action shots!
11.01.22 We love starting our morning with some SPAG!
10.01.22 Thank you so much to any parents who purchased their a child of Boy in the Tower, we’re putting them to good use!
07.01.22 Multiplying decimal numbers by 10, 100 and 1000. We love practical Maths and getting hands-on in Y6!
06.01.22 We had our first DART lesson today! We talked about harmful and helpful drugs.
05.01.22 Our first PE lesson of the year - gymnastics!
04.01.22 We’re preparing to start our new English text! We watched the trailer to ‘The Day of the Triffids’ to gather some powerful vocabulary. I wonder if this is a clue about our new text?
SPRING 1
HOW TO SAVE THE HUMAN RACE
What do you need to know about this half-term?
We are starting a new English text this half-term. We use this text every day, and it is beneficial for the children to have their own copies. Though we usually provide a photocopied version for the children, having their own copy would mean that they would be able to reference earlier chapters in their writing and experience the joy of reading from a real book. If you order a book from the Wishlist, you can get the book delivered directly to school and leave a note of the name of your child so I can make sure that the book you order is given to them, and of course they can keep it after we’ve read it! Or of course you can order a copy and send it into school with your child. If you aren't able to purchase your child the book, a photocopy of the text will of course be available to them.
We really hope you consider supporting our classroom and would be so grateful if you did.
Miss Fretwell x
https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/1ZIWHZDDNM9L6?ref_=wl_share
Spring 1 Daily Timetable
You can find our Knowledge Organiser for our new topic by clicking the 'What are we learning?' icon below. We use these in school and the children have them stuck in all of their books, so get quizzing them at home on the key vocabulary and knowledge we're learning about!
Below is a link to our spelling page. Spellings are so important in Year 6 as the children do get tested on them during their SATs tests and we want them to be as confident as possible! We have a new list of words every week and each week we focus on a sound the letters in the words make (like in phonics!)
A Home Alone Christmas
What happens when you get left behind on a school trip?
16.12.21 Check school bags parents - we’ve been working hard today on a card for you all!
16.12.21 Swans and Falcons watched the movie of our class book ‘Holes’ this morning, and we loved it so much it got a spontaneous round of applause!
15.12.21 Well, what another fabulous day! It was party and disco today 🎉🎊
14.12.21 Continuing Christmas week with Laser Tag! 🎄🌟
13.12.21 What a wonderful start to Christmas week! We had a cinema-style viewing in the dark of all of the classes Christmas video and we loved them all! Then, it was PANTO time! We can’t wait for more festive fun tomorrow! ⛄️🎄💙
06.12.21 What a wonderful coincidence - the snow arrived as soon as we finished our first assessments! It is assessment week this week, but that doesn’t stop us getting out and having fun in the snow! ⛄️
03.12.21 Our hero this week is Freya, for her amazing Maths work on fractions. Well done Freya!
02.12.21 Testing our own versions of Victorian punishments - of course they had to be carried out in silence!
01.12.21 To divide by a fraction, here’s a tip, keep, change, flip!
30.11.21 This afternoon, we practised progressing between 4 chords - we found the G chord tricky! Next week we are going to be learning different strumming patterns, so we got familiar with playing all 4 chords today slowly.
WEDNESDAY 24TH NOVEMBER 2021
REMOTE LEARNING
Good morning! Part 1
Part 2
Timetable 24.11.21
After watching the video, have a go at answering these questions:
22.11.21 We had a Guided Reading challenge today! I turned my whiteboard around and answered the questions for the lesson myself and the children had to try and get the same answers as me! They were amazing at it, and lots had written exactly the same thing!
19.11.21 Well done to our wonderful hero Tyler! Tyler is our hero for his resilience and determination in Maths!
19.11.21 This afternoon, we tested whether changes were reversible or irreversible. We used methods like filtration, magnetic attraction and sieving!
18.11.21 Introducing… The new Swan band!! This is only our second ukulele lesson and I’m beyond proud of this amazing bunch. We still have some tuning practise to do with the ukuleles but we now know 3 chords and can transition between them! 🎶🎶🎶
16.11.21 A little glimpse into our English lesson - skimming and scanning to find details about characters from the text.
15.11.21 Over the last week, Swan have been exploring the themes of segregation and racial inequality in Guided Reading. Over the summer holidays I went slightly Amazon crazy ordering books for our class, and I’m so glad I did, because we had so many lovely books linking to this theme that we’ve been able to enjoy too! The two books in the pictures below have been our favourites to read about some inspirational little leaders in black history. The poem in the picture is ‘Caged Bird’ by Maya Angelou, which we explored today!
12.11.21 We carried out investigations to see which materials dissolve in water and whether temperature affected the speed at which materials dissolve. We had lots of fun!
11.11.21 For Remembrance Day, we took part in a webinar about the events of World War One.
09.11.21 Swan had some struggles when it came to repeating similar ideas in their writing and talking about the same thing in different places in the paragraph, so we cut up the sentences and re-ordered them ready to copy up in best!
08.11.21 The Proud Cloud so far today, and it’s only lunch time!
04.11.21 We used chapters from our book ‘Holes’ and identified things we could see, hear, taste, touch and emotions characters could feel. We’re preparing for our setting description writing tomorrow. Stay tuned!
03.11.21 The excitement of opening the brand spanking new ukuleles and seeing which colour you got! 🎶
Listening to some music with ukuleles in while we draw and label the parts of our ukuleles. What a wonderful lesson!
02.11.21 Thank you so much FOHH for organising for us to see some creepy crawlies! We loved it!
01.11.21 And we’re back! What a wonderful first day back. We’ve loved reading our new English text ‘Holes’, we’ve done some practical Maths looking at square and cube numbers and had a fantastic Jigsaw lesson thinking about what ‘normal’ means.
8.10.21 Absolutely love this photo of Year 6 from lunchtime today! Mrs Steed x
04.20.21 This afternoon, we made sledging biscuits, which were taken on expeditions by Captain Scott and his crew!
01.10.21 Sophia is our Hero this week for always giving 100% effort and using her determination to produce a wonderful piece of writing about Captain Robert Falcon Scott! 🦢
Fabulous Science! Ask us about materials that dissolve…
29.09.21 Swan class have been working SO hard this week on editing their Falcon Scott information texts and producing a best version of their writing. We’re almost finished - here’s a preview!
27.09.21 We kicked Jigsaw off with a game of ‘Blindfolded Treasure Keeper’ and talked about what our goals for this year were.
We also looked at time zones in Geography and tracked the global expedition of Nelly Bly.
The rain stopped, so we ran out into the sunshine to enjoy our Active 15. We had football, tyres and obstacles today!
24.09.21 - In Guided Reading this week, our lessons have all been on the theme of ‘Pompeii’. Today, we looked at the lyrics to Bastille’s Pompeii. I tried to trick the class and read the lyrics as a poem, but they all knew it already, so we had a little sing-along to the music at the end of the lesson!
trim.B59041E2-DA0B-4127-A6C5-A01A614A65E2.MOV
We finished our Place Value unit yesterday, so we thought we’d squeeze in some TTRS practise before we start our new unit on Monday. Swan have worked so hard this week, they definitely deserved it.
24.09.21 Our Hero this week is Sophie! Sophie has been titled the ‘Rounding Queen’ this week for her hard work in our Maths lessons on rounding. Well done for big a super, hard-working Swan Sophie! 🦢
21.09.21 Today was time for paragraph 2 of our Captain Robert Falcon Scott biography!
20.09.21 We worked so hard today and finished all of our jobs 5 minutes early - so we were rewarded with a Just Dance break! 💃🕺
We also had our first handwriting lesson using our new school handwriting programme! We practised our letter formation by drawing around the outlines of pictures.
Then, we put the handwriting into practise to start writing the first paragraph of our biography that we’ll be working in this week! Watch this space for more writing updates.
17.09.21 Swan loved watching our virtual Heroes assembly today, and when our wonderful Swan Emmie popped up, everybody broke into applause! Well done for going above and beyond in your learning this week Emmie. You are a Super Swan 🦢
17.01.21 We’ve been loving Geography this week! We’ve been learning about what the world looks like (we all drew what we thought it looked like, then looked at lots of different versions of the world), lines of longitude and latitude and using these to locate continents on the world map. All in a days work!
15.09.21 You can still do Phonics in Year 6 - and we love it! Today we analysed the sounds of our weekly spellings and added their sound buttons.
14.09.21 We love Maths! I LOVE hearing the children excited for challenge questions in our Maths lessons!
We’ve had the most amazing day today - it was Y5/6 WOW day!
We did ‘Gloopy Glaciers’ with Mrs Balchin!
We made Blubber Gloves with Miss Fretwell!
‘What floats your boat?’ With Mrs Cordon!
Partner talking only in whispers this afternoon- we loved it and it kept us quiet and focused! 🤫
09.09.21 The start and the end of our day - we began with a Taylor Swift remix for our 6 times tables (let’s just say we were humming our 6’s all day long!) and a traffic light quiz to assess our knowledge in DT! Another fabulous day with Swans 🦢
06.09.21 We got stuck into a full timetable of work today - here’s some of our SPAG!
These photos are going on display in our classroom this week, but do you have any idea what they might be for? 🎈
Our first day together! We read a book called ‘The Dot’ all about taking pride in yourself and your work and we created some Dot inspired artwork. Then, we played Taskmaster and had to think outside the box to complete tasks (like getting an Oreo from your forehead into your mouth without touching it!) We had a fabulous day and I already know that Swan class will be amazing!
