Year 6 – 20/03/20

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Dear Year 6,

I am very much hoping that this hasn’t just been our final week as a class, but I want to thank you for everything you’ve brought to this class. Thank you for your continued efforts in all your learning – even during this turbulent week, you have shown such high focus during lessons. If we don’t end up coming back before the summer, then I would like to say how much of a privilege it has been to have taught all of you. Please take your kindness, your respect, your wit, your perseverance and your good humour to your new schools and teachers when the time comes in September, just as you have brought them to Pope Paul and to me. Or I might see you all in July; who knows?!

Thank you and God bless,

Miss Donatantonio

 

Here is what we’ve been doing in Year 6 this week.

On Tuesday, the children were put through their paces with an upper-body and cardio circuit training session!  

On Wednesday, our class garden – which will hopefully be a haven for butterflies once it grows – was weeded and planted. Thank you to Evie, Louise and Elysia for providing the plants and seeds for the garden.

Also on Wednesday, the children completed their science investigations which modelled how Darwin came up with his Theory of Evolution after observing that finches in the Galapagos Islands had different beaks depending on which island they inhabited.

On Thursday afternoon, we relaxed with some watercolour painting. Look at the beautiful river landscapes they created:

Today, we began the day with an act of worship outside. Thank you to the four boys who led us in prayer.

We ended the day with our Reception partners, firstly with an act of worship in the classroom, and then a disco!

Year 2 Blog Week 25

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There were plenty of busy bees in Year 2 this week, working hard, preparing the vegetable beds and flower beds. In English, we completed our final piece of writing on The Tin Forest. The children put some wonderful twists in their versions of the story. In Maths, we looked at doubling and halving and the children worked well solving some money problems.

Our clay pots came out of the kiln ready for a splash of colour.

Please see the School newsletter for details on arrangements for daily learning. Packs of books and resources have been sent home.

Wishing you all a peaceful weekend and a lovely Mothering Sunday.

Make sure to keep in contact via the Year 2 class blog and email address.

Take care,

Miss Davey

 

Spring 2 Week 4

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Our caterpillars are growing and have nearly formed a chrysalis. The children enjoyed observing the changes.

 

In PE we have been practicing throwing and catching a ball.

Home Learning – With a ball count how many catches you can do with a partner in 1 minute.

Spellings – short, born, morning, more, score, before, saw, crawl, yawn, August, author, dinosaur

Practise saying the months of the year. Ask questions – What month comes before August? What month comes after March?

In Design and Technology the children designed and made a swing or a chair for the old man in the tin forest. We made links with Geography and field study work by observing the physical and human features in our playground.

 

I will update the blog each morning with learning for that day. I have given children a handwriting book, a maths book, a writing book and an Art book.

Hope you all stay well!

Mrs Carey

Test

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Subject Activity
Maths Fluency questions:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

 

BODMAS

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAgfnK528RA

Questions:

 
English Revision of semi-colons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_O0RN7cup0

Questions:

Q1. Insert a semi-colon in the correct place in the sentence below.

Frank  would  like  to  go  to  Cornwall  next  summer  he  might  also

visit  France  in  the  spring.

1 mark

Q2. What is the name of the punctuation mark used between the two main clauses below?

My sister loves team sports; my brother, on the other hand, prefers individual sports – such as athletics.

________________________________

1 mark

Q3. Insert a semi-colon in the correct place in the sentence below.

There  are  Roman  ruins  near  our  village  they  are

being  excavated  next  week.

1 mark

Q4. Insert a semi-colon in the correct place in the sentence below.

Come   and   see   me   tomorrow   I   will   not   have

time   to   see   you   today.

1 mark

Q5. Insert two commas and a semi-colon in the correct places in the passage below.

Last  Wednesday  we  performed  a  play  at  school  I invited  my

parents  to  come  and  watch.  When  I  first  went  on  stage  I  was

so  nervous  that  I  nearly  forgot  my  lines.

1 mark

Q6. Which punctuation mark should be used in the place indicated by the arrow?

Josh was excellent at languages he spoke French and Spanish.

 

 

  Tick one.
comma
hyphen
full stop
semi-colon
   

 

Week 3: 13th March

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To celebrate Science Week, the children have embraced the concept of dunking biscuits with enthusiasm and to see more about what they got up to, click on the link below.

Science Week Celebration Morning final

We met Vicky Dearing, a lady scientist.  It was really interesting to find out about her work on DNA.

Our brainstorming of ideas for possible experiments to carry out.

Doing our experiment! 

Showing our experiment to Mrs Jane Goring, the RE Lead Inspector from the Westminster Diocese who visited our classroom on Wednesday.

Each morning the have had an explorify activity to examine, discuss and feel that these have tested us on our skills of observation and questioning.  It was lovely to see many of you this morning having a go at Creating a Tree for the Set-point challenge which has come from Hertfordshire.

I will send off the photos of the children’s designs and see what awaits us!

     

 

In Computing the children have continued with their work on Scratch, developing their understanding of how to programme a sprite to meet another sprite and change colour!

In PE with Coach Duggan this afternoon, the class continued to look at fitness.  We had some very capable children doing five strides very capably!

 

Homework:

Mathletics – work on Perimeter

Practise the 7 and 8 timestables.  Use these links to assist you:

https://www.mathschase.com/times-tables/

https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/477/Multiplication-Tables-Check

Reading: please read for at least 15 minutes a day and update your reading log.

Spellings:    Prefixes ‘anti’ and ‘inter’

international, interrupt, intercept, intervene, interject, antidote, antibiotic, anticlockwise, antiseptic, anti-climax

 

Have a lovely weekend.

Year 6 – 13/03/20 (Science Week)

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This week has been British Science Week, so at Pope Paul everyone has been investigating the dunkability of different biscuits: Hobnobs Digestives, Ginger Nuts, Rich Tea and Nice.

Some groups looked investigated whether the thickness of the biscuit affected how quickly it disintegrated when dunked, whilst others investigated density and amount of sugar. We increased the reliability of our results by dunking each type of biscuit three times.

Our results showed that there was no correlation between density and absorption, nor could we conclude that thickness or sugar content had and impact. The Rich Tea biscuit stayed intact for the longest, so we would like to carry out further investigations to get to the bottom of why this is the case.

        

On Thursday, we were lucky enough to do fieldwork with Mr Friedlander from Dame Alice Owen’s School. Using quadrats and magnifying glasses, we looked at the number of plant organisms on the field. The children hypothesised that there would be fewer species the closer we got to the being under a tree, as there would be less light there, in addition to the tree taking most of the nutrients from the soil. The results were not as clear-cut as we’d hoped, but we still identified lots of different meadow plants growing within the grass.

               

This morning, we welcomed Marie from the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control into the classroom, and she taught us about the work they do there, specifically testing vaccines to treat viruses. We learnt about antigens and how vaccines allow the body to build up an army of antibodies which hopefully make us immune to the virus. The children acted out being antibodies that attach themselves to antigens to defeat the virus.

Also this morning, we had our Celebration Morning. Thank you to everybody who took part in the Build-a-Tree Competition – some are impressively stable and balanced, others less so!

 

Also this week, Year 6 participated in the Sports Hall Athletics Tournament at Dame Alice Owen’s School. Well done to everybody for taking part and for representing our school.

What a busy week!

This week’s home learning (due Tuesday 17th March) is as follows:

English ·         Spag.com: KS2 SATs Grammar Test (C)

·         Readtheory.org: please spend minimum 30mins on this
Spellings Words containing the soft ‘c’:

cemetery

certificate

celebrate

necessary

except

December

sacrifice

hindrance

nuisance

prejudice
Maths

Times tables

 (online) Mathletics tasks – arithmetic question

 

Continue to revise all times tables.

Have a great weekend.

Miss Donatantonio

Reception Spring 2 Week 3

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What an exciting week of science learning Reception have had!

The class started the week with a science problem set by Mrs Heymoz. She told the children that she enjoyed dipping her biscuit in her tea, but she was tired of her biscuits breaking apart and dropping to the bottom. She asked the children to investigate which biscuit was best for dunking.

The children had fun predicting which biscuit would be best and they had lots of really good reasons as to why they had chosen their particular biscuit. The most exciting part however, was when the children took part in the practical part of the investigation!

The whole class were astonished to find that the Rich Tea biscuit was the best!

During the week, Reception also joined the rest of KS1 listening to Mrs Worrell (Lucy and Caitlin’s mum in Year 2) explain how she uses science in her job as a nurse.

Reception class also took part in a colour hunt. First, the class coloured in their own strip of boxes in different colours and then placed double sided sticky tape down the centre. Next, the children went outside and searched the schools grounds for natural objects that matched their colours. When they found something, they stuck it onto their chart. The children found out that the hardest colour to match was blue!

Reception finished their week with a special assembly and celebration morning. It was wonderful to see so many parents and grandparents! Thank you for your continued support!

Next week we will be  learning about plants and growing. Our story focus will be Jack and the Beanstalk.

 

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Theo and Mrs Gymer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Science Week

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Biscuit Dunking

 

Along with the rest of the school, Year 5 took part in putting some biscuits to the dunking test. We worked hard to ensure the test was fair and put measures in place to ensure only one variable was changed. Year 5 had different ideas about the best methodology. Some children wanted to hold the biscuit in place, whilst others wanted to replicate the dunking action. This impacted the results as rich tea was the best in the first condition, whereas hob nob took first place when dunking. Both tests proved digestive to be the worst so we will be keeping them away from our tea in the future!

Eggcellent Eggs

 

Last week, we began our new science topic on living things and began by making observations about eggs. We built on that this week by taking part in an investigation over time. Firstly, we placed the eggs in vinegar and saw it dissolve the shell. As the children knew all about the membrane underneath, they knew why the egg didn’t fall apart with the shell gone. We then explored osmosis. Our now shell-less egg was put into golden syrup. This caused the liquid inside the egg to leave through the permeable membrane, as the syrup has a greater concentration of molecules. We were then able to re-plump our now shriveled egg through osmosis again by putting it into water, which we coloured. The children were fascinated to see the changes and explore why this was happening, so it made it well worth it that our classroom has smelt of vinegar and eggs this past week! Many of the children wanted to run this investigation at home. Here is a link to show you how it is done: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00b1xr5

Visitors

 

We were also lucky enough to have some visitors to talk about science. Fiona’s sister, Ellen, is studying osteopathy and so came to talk about bones and how she is using science in her daily life. Mrs Donatantonio also stopped by. With her job in vaccinations, her talk was particularly topical, and the children asked lots of questions about the cornoavirus.

Celebration Morning

 

It was lovely to see those who could join us this morning. We had a great time creating trees with paper without using any glue, clips or tape. There were some brilliant constructions.

 

 

Wishing you all a peaceful weekend

 

Mrs Lines

 

Home Learning:

Spag.com

Mathletics

Readtheory.org (10 tests)

Spellings (week 2)

 

 

Spring 2, Week 3.

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We are mad about science in Y3 and to celebrate science week we have taken part in many different activities.

We have completed many explorify activities, which has really tested our observation, questioning and classifying skills. Thank you for helping us complete some of these challenges during celebration morning.

Throughout the week the whole school have planned an experiment about which biscuit is the best for dunking. We made predictions and then tested and recorded the results – Rich Tea was the most success at absorbing water!

On Thursday we took part in a scavenger hunt lead by Mr Freelander, a scientist from Dame Alice Owen’s school. For this science activity we had to identify, group and make careful observations of items, creatures and plants in our school grounds.

Throughout the week have learnt about Francis Crick, a British scientist who made discoveries about DNA. DNA is the set of instructions inside every living. To find out more about this we interviewed a Vicky (Mrs Heymoz’s sister) who is a scientist at The Francis Crick Institution. This was very inspiring.

Home learning:

Spelling – forgetting, forgotten, beginning, beginner, preferred, preferring, occurred, occurring, forbidden, committed.

 Science:

Please create a poster showing how sports people or everyday activities, such as opening and closing doors, use the forces pushing and pulling.  Label the pictures with arrows showing the type of force (push or pull) and explain briefly how they work using the forces. You might like to draw the pictures, use photos or cut out pictures from newspapers or magazines to help you.

Reading: 

Please listening your child read and ask them to log their reading in their record.

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Pringle

 

 

 

 

 

Spring 2 Week 3

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This week was National Science Week. We were busy all week being Scientists!.

First we thought of questions we would like to ask about biscuits. Then we received a special job from Mrs Heymoz to find out the best biscuit for dunking. As a class we planned a fair test and found out Hobnobs were the best biscuits to dunk and Nice were the worst biscuits. We learnt about the scientist Donald Palmer and his work studying infections and how germs spread. We sprayed some blue water on paper and watched how the water spread like germs do. Mrs Worrell spoke to us about how she uses Science in her job as a nurse. We did many Explorify activities to develop our explanation and reasoning skills. The parents gave some good reasons on celebration morning.

On Friday, it was lovely to have the parents and grandparents in class. The children loved telling you about their learning and taking seeing you part in the cotton wool and water experiment.

Home Learning

Please write all number bonds to 10 and some to 20.

Please practise reading the real and nonsense words.

Spellings—thief, chief, field, pie, cried, tried, dried, night, bright, light

Have a good weekend.

Mrs Carey