Category Archives: Year 6 Blog

Macbeth

In English, we have been focusing on Macbeth, a famous play by Shakespeare. Since starting Macbeth, Year 6 had studied the complicated language that was used during the medieval times when Shakespeare was alive, and have tried to pick the story apart, bit by bit.

As we neared the end of the story, we acted one of the most famous parts, that is known as: ‘Out damned spot!’ There were either groups of three or four and these groups each acted out this part of the play, which included a Gentlewoman, a Doctor and Lady Macbeth (Macbeth’s wife). It took us around two to three days to practice (and add as much emotion as we could), and some groups even showed their acts to the rest of the class and they gave feedback on whether or not the actors’ version of the play suited the rest of the story.

After having understood the characters in this tragedy, we ended up making designs for the backdrop of our Leavers play, which were meant to signify what type of people Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were, using signs and symbols in our drawings. Some of these designs will be used for the background in the play.

Soon we will decide our parts and will begin to practice, in order to be ready for the actual play. Overall, Macbeth is the perfect play to study for the Leavers performance that Year 6 will be doing near the end of the year. All of the class are enjoying this experience and really look forward to doing the play as it will be one of the last big memories that we make as a class.

Please confirm that Tuesday 11^th of July is the date of the play. If there is any reason that you cannot make it, please let us know.

English:

This week, we have been closely analysing Act 5 Scene1 of Macbeth.  Lady Macbeth is being observed sleepwalking by her maid and the Doctor.  This was in the real Shakespearian language.

RAF Flying High:

Mission: Transport teachers and books back into a recently flooded Crowmarsh Gifford School. You need to consider how much fuel and how far you need to travel, you also need to consider the weight of teachers and books. Can you complete the mission?

Chinook and Puma

In the chinook, we got to sit in the cockpit where we found out what all of the buttons do and that during a normal flight every button is used…..that’s loads!  It even has a  GPS and Sat Nav.

We also needed to find out if the weather would affect our mission.  Also what we should do if we needed to evacuate the helicopter in a survival situation.

Jamie Oliver

Half of us went to visit Jamie’s Italian in Oxford where we learnt about food allergies and intolerances. We also got to eat a bowl of Jamie’s yummy pasta.

English:

In English this week, we have been writing diary entries from the view of Lady Macbeth. To begin with, we were able to work in small groups to generate a writing plan, using ideas from others in the group. This gave us the chance to hear how the ‘tone’ of the writing came across; we could be sympathetic or angry or a mixture of both. The main focuses for the whole class have been: accurately using punctuation, Using similes and metaphors to shape text, effective sentence variety and creating a depth to our work. Also to properly form our work we tried reading it aloud as if we were speaking it – this had happen in the corridor!

Many people have created excellent pieces of work which have achieved high praise from Mr Silvester.

Science:

In Science this week, the topic of natural selection has been continued. Earlier in the week the class’s main focus was on the evolution of the whale. Later on this week we used this as a template to construct an explanation of natural selection. We will be continuing this project into next week before we start studying the theory of evolution.

Swimming gala:

This week there was The South Oxfordshire Schools Swimming Gala Finals. Due to the fact that we qualified for this event, 11 Crowmarsh students competed representing their school in an appropriate manor throughout the time they spent competing. The boys came 5^th and the girls came 4^th.

English

 We began a topic news video report on the alleged murder of King Duncan by Macbeth. In groups we discussed and drafted our scripts taking into account how we wanted our characters to react to each other; what information we need to give over to our viewers and how we wanted the end result to appear. This involved using all the ipads in school and recording our ‘pieces’ to camera. Once all the separate clips were captured we transferred them onto the school laptops to edit. We had fun showing each of the finished News Reports to the class and what brilliant reporters and interviewees we are.

Maths

 We have generated our own questions to investigate; this has been restricted to collecting raw data from everybody in the class. We needed to think about the most efficient and effective way of collating the data, representing the results ready to analyse. Once this was done we generated a graph and a pie chart,,, complete with fractions!

Memories of our time at Crowmarsh School

In our free-writing time we are putting down all our memories from out time spent at school. This has been a great thing to do thinking back to all the fun and fab times we’ve shared.

Tag Rugby Tournament Year 6 Oxford University Rugby Club May 2017

Team:   Cameron Morgan (Captain), Hannah Millsop, Leah Pellegry, Zak Jones, Peter Clayton-Chance, Billy Carrington, James Andrews, Oliver Millbourn, Grace Hendy, Ruby Keable, Reuben Baroni, Klay Fisher

The Hallowed ground quaked under the pounding of studs and trainers.  Each school represented by their quality sportsmen.  Crowmarsh quickly began to rise up as formidable opponents; winning our first two heats and drawing in the next.  The steady rotation of players ensured that we were performing at our peak throughout the complete tournament.  Making it the Semi-finals; we lost out on a golden try!

Our sincere thanks go to Mr Paul Baroni who nurtured and coached us into becoming this team of triumphant titans.

“On Monday, we did a practice of our leaver’s play: Macbeth. It was the performant of the hurly burly; we had a phase where we face each other (not really) a battle cry (we didn’t make noise) and three clash-of-attacks where only eight people of the class survived at the last clash. At 12:00 cycling people had their lunch early and some stayed in for it and some stayed out for it.

Tuesday was another practice run of the hurly burly in Macbeth. It was the same really. We had lunch after and it was just a normal afternoon PPA with French PE and PSHCE. It was also purple learning week so we did make a purple learning triangle that showed others what we enjoyed what we wanted to do more what we struggled on and what we improved on. Just a normal day.

On Wednesday, we started an investigation about how many dolly steps it would take to walk across one of the side’s in the classroom. We had to do estimates about how many tables it would take to measure one side of our classroom. But one important thing was that we had to draw around our feet then measure the length and the width. And there were a whole range of opinions on which method to use on finding our estimates. And we began our plan to answer the question: Is this a good start to a play? (Macbeth by William Shakespeare). After lunch was another investigation about natural selection. Is it like a fact or a theory after watching the 9 minute video? It is your opinion so there is no correct answer.    Amelia Hughes

Cycling proficiency 

On Thursday, we continued to practice our turns at junctions and looking for other road-users and remembered our ABCD-Air (for the tyres) Brakes, Chain and Drop (To check that everything was attached correctly)-when we were preparing to go. We were also taught how to do right turns.   James Andrews

 Maths

We are developing our skills of gathering and collating data, with the end result of being able to present our information in a clear and well explained format.

Literacy

Having looked at the first few scenes of Shakespeare’s Macbeth we were able to answer a question on our opinion of the start to this play.

Science

How species have evolved by the results of Natural Selection and Common Descent through studying the Ambulocetus (when whales had legs).

Overall, we are preparing ourselves and our work to become Year 7s by considering “Am I using my time effectively?” & “How professional am I?”

“Have you missed us?”

We’ve been very busy focusing on perfecting ourselves and our efforts these last few weeks. This is our chance to shine and show off what we can do.

The week went quickly, just as we had planned it to be, there were no big surprises.  We had the same SATs papers as all the other children our age in all the other schools in the country. There was Reading (this featured three sections and many questions about each), Maths and the two SPAG papers. The first SPAG was punctuation and grammar that followed a similar formula to the Maths. Immediately after, we completed SPAG 2 paper. This time it focused entirely on spelling.

Maths

Find x in a geometry exercise:

English: 

We’ve just started our new topic, Macbeth.  To start off we studied and analysed Act 1 Scene 1.  It featured the three witched ominously discuss the ‘hurly-burly’ and where next to meet.  We discovered that the First Witch was the most likely the most inexperienced and the Third was most wise.  From then on we wondered how the witches would speak, but not by putting on accents, but by deciding the pace, the pauses, and the volume.  Eventually after an hour we cracked it as we are going to perform it as our play.

 P.E.:

 On Thursday, Paul Baroni came and we spent the whole afternoon playing Tag rugby.  The Tudors won, YAY!!!!! Then the class participated in Mr. S’ rounders on Friday afternoon.

It’s been a good week – Emma has made sure we get cakes and fruit juice before do our SATs – Thanks Emma

Maths  

Co-ordinates, we have been completing challenge question work by plotting the points on the axes to establish the exact location. Sometimes the diagrams are not to scale on the 4 quadrant co-ordinate grids; sometimes we need to calculate the co-ordinates by using our knowledge of algebra.

English & History

We have been writing our final draft diary entry about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.  Each draft has been a great opportunity to focus on a different target such as; develop the report to include more of a character’s response or to use a diarist’s voice.

“The tremors from the angry gods: I was praying for them to stop, forgive us but they wouldn’t listen to our pleas; they never did.

Everywhere I looked buildings were collapsing, people were panicking, screams echoed through Pompeii.  The gods were laughing.”

 Science

How do we know if there was ever life on Mars? Fossils which have helped trace an almost continuous source of life. Rocks are formed in many different conditions such as volcanism, ancient mud (which would indicate water) , ancient tar and ancient mudslides.

“Tomorrow you will be resuming your search for life, this mission to Mars will be another attempt to find evidence of ancient mud or mudslides which could take imprints of animals.”

We have also been looking into the different types of volcanos. These are mainly classified by the type of lava produced; Strato (composite), Shield, Cinder Cone or Lava Dome.  Each has very unique characteristics.

 PE

A remarkable day today for us at the Hockey County finals at Tilsley Park.  The play was tough, every school worked so hard.  Team Crowmarsh, headed up by Captain Peter Clayton-Chance, played incredibly well and earned a very respectable 4^th place.  All the players should be so please with themselves having worked so hard as a united team.  Sports Blog to follow next week…..

Here are the links to the E-books that Year 6 have made. The illustrations were created using the Brushes app and then the books put together using the Book Creator app.

Berry and the Candy Factory  https://vimeo.com/210037098

Candy Land  https://vimeo.com/210037201

Cheeseland  https://vimeo.com/210037362

Destroying the Universe  https://vimeo.com/210037409

Fleecy Finds the Lost Puppy  https://vimeo.com/210037599

Jerry went to Space  https://vimeo.com/210037714

Max on Mars  https://vimeo.com/210037820

My Alien  https://vimeo.com/210037935

Owl’s Space Adventure  https://vimeo.com/210038070

Paddington in Space  https://vimeo.com/210038295

Shiva and Friends, Adventures in Space  https://vimeo.com/210038398

Snake’s Space Adventure  https://vimeo.com/210038510

Space Bear  https://vimeo.com/210038624

Space Mouse  https://vimeo.com/210038706

The 3 Little Pigs  https://vimeo.com/210038787

The Great Interstellar Goose Chase  https://vimeo.com/210039005

Tiggies Adventure into Space  https://vimeo.com/210039113

Under the Sea   https://vimeo.com/210039205

Maths  

Maths this week we’ve been problem solving by looking for the area of parallelograms by identifying the right angle triangles hidden within the shape and replacing them to make rectangles.  Deconstructing the shape makes it so much easier to find the area once all the various different components have been calculated.

We have also just started to look more deeply at co-ordinates.

English & History

We have been combining these two subjects by writing a diary entry about personally experiencing Mount Vesuvius’s eruption.  We had to consider and include, for our grammar the use of semi colons, dashes and colons.  While for our effective sentence structure development we have been focusing on our openers, subordinate clauses and shaping the text to become a ‘b’ and not an ‘a’.

IPad

In iPad work we have been finalising writing our e-books and then reading them to younger years such as Year R (reception) – they really enjoyed the stories with pictures and being read to by us.

Maths  

We have been doing a variety of different mathematical operations to help us change from one type of problem to another as efficiently as possible.

Also we have been looking at area and perimeter.  Can shapes have the same area but a different perimeter?  We have been drawing different rectangles that all have an area of 12cm’.

We have also been playing with parallelograms and turning them into rectangles and triangles in order to find out their area.

English

The marking groups have all now been completed and the next stage is to self-assess and self-evaluate our pieces of writing. In this process we have taken a sentence and edited it for development and expansion to arrive at a much more effective sentence in our writing.

We have also been combining our English work with our history work by using the known facts about Mount Vesuvius erupting to write a diary entry.  We had to imagine we are on a boat in the Bay of Naples, watching the eruption and describe the events as they unfold.