Year 6
Friday 5th June – First Week Back…
First of all – thank you! Thanks for making our first week back together so enjoyable. I had a great time seeing you all again and it sounds like you had a decent time too seeing your friends in school and having a bit of a laugh – oh and doing some learning too! Thank you for following the social distancing rules – I know it can be difficult but you did a great job of sitting apart in class, trying hard to not touch your face and washing your hands thoroughly before and after every transition. It’s tough, I know, but you did it! As a result, you kept yourself and others safe, so thank you and well done!
Thank you again for the attitude to learning you brought to school with you. It’s been tricky being away from school for 10 weeks so you’re bound to forget some things. It was such a great experience for me this week, seeing you lot as great learners recognise where your understanding was a little rusty, then face up to that challenge and accept the fact that you got something wrong and tell yourself that you noted the mistake and didn’t want to let it happen again. That’s what brilliant learners do! You are brilliant learners!
Whichever day you were in school this week with your small group, you did the same learning as the other children who came into school on different days. Home learning activities are the same for you all too. They are as follows:
Maths – the calculation sheet I handed out
Science – Animal classification profiles for two animals of your choice – just like the ones we looked at in class. Kingdom, phylum, class, order etc
History – research education and learning in Ancient Greece
Reading – The First News crossword and comprehension you were given.
Four learning activities for four remote learning days out of school. All of the remote learning opportunities were practised during your contact day in school then you took the activities home in a plastic wallet. Please make sure you have a go at them and bring them in with you next week on your contact day in school. If any parents of the small number of children who didn’t come in, would like a home learning pack for their child, just get in touch via telephone or email with our Office Team. There have been a couple of requests so far and I have made sure the learning pack was ready at the office when the parent/carer pulled up outside.
So enjoy the remote learning activities, have a lovely weekend and I’ll see you again next week. Look after each other and keep yourselves safe,
Mr Hankin
Week beginning 18/05/20 – Mad about Maps!
Monday 18th May
First login to Discovery Education (Espresso) as usual then follow:
Key Stage Two – Geography – Maps & Mapping. Remember this page – it’s our basis for learning today.
Click on ‘What are Maps?’ then watch the video.
Next look at ‘What we can learn from maps’. Follow the colourful buttons on the right through the different activities and answer the questions.
Next return to the ‘Maps & Mapping’ page, click on ‘Create a Village Trail’ and watch all of the videos showing what another school did to create a map.
Finally Go back to the ‘Maps & Mapping’ title page and similar to the last activity, follow the ‘Making a town map’ link to see how other children constructed their map.
My Mam bought me a map when I was 11. I love that map – I’d be lost without it.
That’s it for today. More ‘mapping madness’ tomorrow…
Tuesday 19th May
Today’s website to look at is BBC Bitesize. Look at Key Stage Two Geography here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zbkw2hv
then explore all of the links: mapping the world, latitude and longitude, time zones, maps and contours, keys and symbols.
Take your time – you will need these skills to apply to your learning for the rest of the week. Enjoy!
Did you know that the Police force in Yorkshire had all of their maps stolen? They are currently looking for Leeds…
Wednesday 20th May
First up today, have a look here:
https://osmaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/
Find your house, find our school, then follow your journey to school, noticing all of the landmarks along the way. Next find The Raleigh Estate where we spent time on residential (it’s over the river from the Royal Naval College near Dartmouth.) Find the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London. Do you remember walking across Westminster Bridge when we visited there? Get used to seeing all of the symbols you learnt about yesterday. See how many symbols you can find on the map then check your understanding of them.
Next find some other locations that interest you – it could be the BBC Studios or a particular football stadium or even a place you like to visit with your family.
Can you see how the Ordnance Survey maps are different to other maps you have seen? What is the difference between Ordnance Survey maps and Google maps? What about the difference with Google Earth? Write your observations down…
Thursday 21st May
Today you are putting the learning from this week so far into practice. Think about your house and garden. You might have a ground floor, maybe even a garden or your family might live on a different floor, maybe a first floor flat. You may even have a house with more than one floor or storey. Today, choose a specific floor and map it. Using everything you have learnt this week, draw the map to an accurate scale. You will have to work out an appropriate scale first, considering the size of paper you have. Make it as accurate as possible – you will have to measure lots of objects – does anyone have a tape measure you can use to help you? Good luck!
Friday 22nd May
Today, take your mapping skills outside and map a public area. Maybe you want to map a walk you go on with a parent/carer. Maybe you take the dog for a walk somewhere – estimate some distances with your adult, record them then construct the map when you get home. How about Sandringham Park? There are enough different areas of the park to make it interesting. Just like yesterday, make it as accurate as you can. Obviously with bigger distances to measure today, it won’t be exact but use your maths skills to estimate distances then construct the map properly when you get back home.
It’s half term next week so no more activities from me for now. If you are looking for other things to keep you busy next week, make sure you continue reading and recording in your R&C book, continue to play Prodigy to practice your maths and revisit any of the numerous activities we have shared over the past six weeks or so. Missing you all and fingers crossed we can continue our learning together soon…
Mr Hankin
Week beginning 11/05/20 – Glorious Gardens and Captivating Creatures!
Morning all! DISCLAIMER! Don’t worry, before we start, you don’t have to touch a minibeast at all for this week’s activities! In fact, you can do the whole week’s learning from a completely safe distance!
Monday 11/05/20
Today’s learning is all about how we can group the range of different plants and animals there are on our amazing planet. Have a look here:
http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/thezone/animals/animalid/index.htm
…and explore the questions in red to find out all about classification. Next, use the internet to find out what you can about Carl Linnaeus and present your biographical information into the booklet of lined paper (if you have any space left!) How much information can you find out about him?
Finally, I’m sure you have discovered these titles by now: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species
What are they? What do they mean? Look at the first letter of each word and come up with a way of remembering the order they go in. Here’s mine:
King Philip Can Only Fry Green Sausages.
Enjoy it!
Tuesday 12/05/20
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is an amazing organisation. They help look after the birds we have in this country and provide essential information to people who want to do the same. Have a look here:
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/identify-a-bird/
It’s a bird identifier. Guess what I am suggesting you do? Yes… identify the birds in your garden. See how many birds you can find today – it may be from your bedroom window or in your garden (if you have one) or even on a walk if you go out with a parent/carer for your daily exercise. They can join in too because toucan play this game (oh dear.) Record all of the species of bird you find. Who can see the most species? Have fun…
Wednesday 13/05/20
Design your own classification key to identify different types of sweet. Choose your favourite sweets (about 10?) then start recognising the differences between them. Does each one have something unusual or special about it? That’s what you could use to help someone identify which one you are talking about. Do they fit into groups? Which groups could you put them in?Look at this key about minibeasts to give you some ideas of what it could look like:
https://www.schoolsofkingedwardvi.co.uk/ks2-science-year-4-1a-living-things-classification/
Design your classification key for your sweets then get someone at home to try it out…
Thursday 14/05/20
Yesterday you designed a classification key for your favourite sweets. Today let’s take our learning outside into your garden or local outside space with a parent. We are going to find minibeasts and classify them. Look for around ten different creatures, identify them and sketch them (or take a photo – smile please!), recording their key identifying features (number of legs, wings, appearance, habitat and so on.) Design a classification key that will help someone to identify a minibeast they were uncertain of. I hope the weather is okay for you today! From talking to others on the ‘phone over the past few weeks, most people have been having a go at the activities but not necessarily on the day they are set for – that’s perfectly fine! You could save this activity for a sunny day…
Friday 15/05/20
You met some new friends yesterday – your minibeast neighbours! What was the most unusual minibeast you found? Were you particularly fascinated by any of them? Today we are going to find out everything we can about one of the minibeasts. Remember this information? kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Use it as a basis to start investigating your creature. Which kingdom, phylum, class etc does it belong to? What is its binomial latin name? What is a binomial name? Find out! Sketch your creature. Label all of it’s features that make it different from its cousins. What are the features that set it apart, that make it able to be classified separately to other minibeasts? Remember our learning about each of us being unique – well your minibeast certainly is! Collect all of your information about your tiny friend in your lined booklet.
Enjoy!
Week beginning 04/05/20 – Food For thought
This week we are learning about keeping healthy by thinking about the food we eat and the exercise we enjoy. These have a major influence on how we feel and on the amounts of energy we have at our disposal throughout the day. This in turn has a huge effect on how prepared we are for play and learning.
Monday
Keeping track of what we eat.
Have a look at the Eatwell Guide published by the British Nutrition Foundation here:
It gives lots of interesting information about the balance of different kinds of food we need to keep healthy: Proteins, carbohydrates, dairy, fruit & veg.
Design a food diary to keep a record of what you eat each day this week. Record everything you eat – snacks and meals and everything! You WILL be surprised, I promise! Next to each food, find out which food group it belongs to – is it mainly a source of protein, carbohydrate, dairy, fruit & vegetable or mainly sugary? I’m going to do it too – I need to watch out for those sneaky snacks and biscuits though! As well as the food you eat each day, make sure you have a column on your food diary for exercise accomplished each day too. What kind of exercise was it, how long did you do it for? If you have a fancy watch or ‘phone app, you can note down how many calories you burnt off by exercising too! Hey try this:
https://healthyeater.com/calories-burned
You need to tell them your height, weight and age (13 minimum) for it to work – it calculates how many calories you burnt off with the exercise activity you did.
Tuesday
Update your food diary… honestly! Don’t miss anything out!
Food investigation – Where does our food come from?
Investigate ten food items that you regularly eat to see where they come from in the world. Banana, chicken nuggets, pizza… there are big concerns about ‘food miles’ where a type of food could be bought locally but supermarkets transport it from miles away, harming the environment by driving it to a store near you in a lorry. The lorry harms the environment by emitting pollution into the atmosphere. I know it’s usually cheaper in a supermarket but go on and prove it – how much does that food item cost in the local shop and how much does it cost in a big supermarket? Is it more expensive to buy fruit and vegetables in a supermarket or in a greengrocer’s? Find out by comparing prices you find online. Record next to the price, the distance the food has travelled – look it up on the supermarket website – it should tell you where the product comes from.
Wednesday
Update your food diary.
Today’s focus – Drinks.
What do you drink? Do you drink water, hot drinks, fizzy drinks or energy drinks? Investigate the amount of sugar that is in a range of drinks – you could do this in a table. What kind of drink is it and what percentage of it is sugar?
Design a poster for primary school children about the dangers of fizzy drinks and energy drinks. What would your advice to them be? We can still have fizzy drinks but there is a better time of day to have them. We need to make sure we are hydrated too: include advice on drinking enough water and the effect of different drinks on our teeth. How can you look after your teeth?
Thursday
Update your food diary
What happens with the food you don’t eat? Can we reduce food waste? What could you do with it? I have always fancied having a pig as a pet but my partner won’t let me have one. My pig would eat all of the leftovers from our meals so it would be good for the environment! What happens to the food you leave or throw out? Where does it go? Do you have a compost bin? How could that help reduce waste? Remember: reduce, reuse, recycle! Plan a strategy for your household – what are your next steps to make sure you deal with leftovers in a more environmentally-friendly way? If you plan to have a compost bin, find out how it works – what mixture of things need to go in there? Can I just put food leftovers in there or do I need other items too?
Friday
It’s a Bank Holiday today so no activities from me, other than to update your food and exercise diary. Enjoy your day everyone and meet you back here next week…
Mr Hankin
Week beginning 27th April – Important Inventions!
Hi all! I hope you enjoyed last week’s music focus. This week we have an overall focus on invention and design but we will be suggesting other activities for you to have a go at alongside this main project. Make sure you’re still reading and playing Prodigy to practise maths skills. More importantly though, remember to spend time with your family – go for a walk, play a game, share an activity and HAVE FUN TOGETHER!
So… What is an invention? I’ve been having a think and I reckon a good description would be ‘a workable solution to an existing problem.’ An invention doesn’t have to have an engine or whirring wheels and pistons. It could be something small and insignificant. The main thing is that it has an improving effect on people’s lives – it makes a job easier!
Monday 27th April
Here are ten famous inventions. Choose 5 of them, research them and find out a bit about each one. You could think about the following questions:
Who invented it? When?
How did they invent it? Was it deliberate or an accident?
What was the problem that existed before the invention?
How successful was the inventor to begin with? Did the invention work straight away?
What was the original invention like? Big, slow, not very efficient?
How long did it take to develop the invention to a stage where it could be used in everyday life?
Printing press
Light bulb
Airplane
Personal computer
Vaccines
Automobile
Clock
Telephone
Refrigeration
Camera
Tuesday 28th April
Use Espresso to find out about inventions – type ‘invention’ into the search bar in Discovery Education Espresso and away you go! Just read, explore and discover!
Wednesday 29th April
Find out about an invention of your choice. Which invention of the last two days really interested you? Maybe it wasn’t one of those and you want to find out about a different one you haven’t read about yet. It’s up to you! Research the inventor and their invention in lots of detail. Collect your information in your lined booklet.
Thursday 30th April
Now it’s time to create! Think about a problem in your own life. Something that is inefficient or takes a bit too long to do. Every time you do it, you think ‘oh no, not that again – it’s a real pain!’
Design your own invention to make this area of your life a bit easier to manage. Your design can be as true to life or as fantastical as you would like to make it. Draw your design, label it, write some detail about how it will work around your diagram. Where are the problems with your design? Can you come up with a way of ironing out these problems so your invention works more efficiently?
Friday 1st May
Convince your parents through a Dragon’s Den type presentation that your invention is a good idea, that it will indeed work and that it could save other people lots of time in their lives too. If it will, your invention will be worth investing in because it could make someone a lot of money! Here is a clip to watch, where an inventor presents their own idea to the Dragon’s Den team:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whqogxqrWNA
Good luck and remember to let me know how you get on – did they invest in your idea? Good luck and be convincing by including lots of detail. Think of the questions they might ask before they ask them and make sure you respond to them in advance…
Week beginning 20th April – Musical Madness!
Morning all! Hope you are all well?
Bit of a change in plan for the activities this week: The whole week’s activities will appear here today and they all share the same theme – music. Don’t worry, there is enough scope for you to continue to explore and bring your own tastes to the learning and to follow your own lines of inquiry. If you want to explore more than I have suggested, feel free – that’s what the internet is for. Go off and seek answers to your own questions and find a different angle to research… Other than these activities, don’t forget to keep reading and recording your reflections in your Reading & Contact book. For maths, keep playing Prodigy! It’s great fun and you should be able to boss all of the questions they ask you to answer – we’ve covered them all in class.
Monday 20th April – Today it’s all about finding out about the structure of music. Use the BBC Bitesize website and explore all of the different options on the main page here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zwxhfg8
Tuesday 21st April – Again today, we are finding out about the technical side of music. Use your Espresso login and explore the Key Stage Two music pages. Have fun!
Wednesday 22nd April – Today we are going to explore different forms (genres) of music and give our opinion about them. I would like you to use the internet and your parents’/carers’ music collection and have a listen to some different kinds of music. What do you like? What do your parents/carers like? Ask them! Explore the following genres for starters and build a page (in Word or on paper or some other means) to record what you think. Maybe you could build a fact file for each musical genre – when it started, where it originated, famous artists, which instruments it uses, what you think of it, and so on. Start with these styles: blues, rap, rock, classical, soul, country & western, world music, gospel, reggae and dance. There’s ten to get you going! Involve your family and ask them to share with you what they like. Good luck and enjoy!
Thursday 23rd April – Now it’s time to focus. You explored lots of different musical styles yesterday but which was your favourite? Today is your chance to explore what you like. Maybe you want to explore a particular genre of music or maybe you want to specialise even further than that and focus on a particular artist. You choose! Choose what you want to focus on then design a poster, telling your reader (explanation) all about that musical style or artist. Include lots of detail and be an expert – you will need to include dates, facts & figures, precise information and pictures to make sure you keep your audience informed and entertained. I can’t wait to do this one – I’m sure you will enjoy it too!
Friday 24th April. Now it’s time to create our own music. You know what you like and you appreciate other musical genres so let’s use that and make our own. Here’s three websites to explore and try some different techniques out:
https://www.incredibox.com/ – I had loads of fun with this one, especially putting the different items of clothing on the characters to build my own track.
BeepBox is an online tool for sketching and sharing instrumental melodies. It gives you the option to choose from lots of different instruments and layer them onto the arrangement page to play simultaneously and make a tune. It’s great fun again!
Through the App store – Song Maker is a free app that allows you to take samples of instruments and put them together to create your own song. On this app, you can also record your own sound effects to add.
Have fun everyone! There are some great activities here to explore. If you really enjoy them, spend even longer on them and become an expert. Have a good week, miss you all,
Mr Hankin
17/04/20
Good morning – hope you are all well. Shame about the rain outside but that doesn’t matter where we are going! Today we are off to Baltimore in the United States of America to have a look around the National Aquarium. It’s an amazing place and the web tour has a lot of interactive features so you can guide yourself around and find out more about the creatures there. Here is the link:
https://aqua.org/media/virtualtours/baltimore/index.html
Don’t forget to use the ‘view map’ and ‘explore scenes’ banners at the top of the page to find new creatures and areas of the building. Once you have had a good explore, pick one of the amazing animals you were interested in and explore that species further, just like you did with the platypus yesterday. Draw it, find out about what makes it special, its diet, its natural habitat, how are numbers of your creature in the wild? Is it endangered? How big is it? Find out as much as you can. Enjoy it!
We will be thinking about music next week – what you like, what the people around you like and who are the key performers of that musical style…
Mr Hankin
16/04/20
Morning all!
I hope you enjoyed looking around the Smithsonian in America. I have another great activity for you today.
The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is a strange, unusual creature. What can you find out about it? Why is it unusual? Which other species is it related to? Does it have any similarity to other species? Find out what you can about its habitat, diet, how it feeds its young, its appearance and so on. Pretty strange, eh?
Collect what you find out into your lined booklet and draw it accurately. Imagine you are Charles Darwin seeing this strange creature for the first time. Use the internet to help your research. Here’s a link to the Natural History Museum website to start you off:
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-platypus-puzzle.html
Good luck – enjoy it!
Mr Hankin
14/04/20
Hi all and welcome back!
Hope you have all had a brilliant Easter break, apart from not being allowed out or seeing anyone other than your immediate family. I can’t wait to get back to school and see you all again…
Anyway, a lovely activity for today to get you back into learning. I think you will love it…
Go to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in America and take the virtual tour:
https://naturalhistory2.si.edu/vt3/NMNH/
spend your time having a look around and listing the names of all of the animals you can see. Don’t forget to visit the cafe and see humans eating in their natural habitat! Use the on-screen map to help you move around and don’t forget to look on the different floors (look at the top right of the screen.) How many different species can you find?
Good luck and enjoy!
Mr Hankin
27/03/20
Day 5 learning (Friday 27/03/20)
And so to the final day’s learning before the Easter break. You should have recorded four 20-minute reading sessions this week into your Reading & Contact book. If you followed the advice we talked about last week, you would also now have finished your holiday home learning (an extra hour each day this week.)
So onto today’s learning… but first a joke. Why didn’t Pythagoras like chips? Because they were made in Ancient Grease.
Erm. Ok then. Visit the Discovery Education Espresso website and log-in with the username and password you were given (you put it on the back of your Reading and Contact book on a sticker.)
Click on these options: Key Stage Two – History – Greeks – events
Watch the video clip – What was the importance of the Olympic Games?
Next, explore the link to the right of the video clip: Special Report – Olympics
Activity
Use the biggest sheet of paper in your learning pack to present your final draft of a poster about The Olympic Games. You should research it first and collect your information into your lined booklet. Compare the two versions of the Olympics: ancient and modern. Tell your reader about when they started, why they started, the different events, the clothing worn, the location, how often they were held and so on.
There isn’t an extension activity today – just spend longer researching your poster and drawing better pictures of the different events. This should take a lot of time today so it’s just as well you have finished your holiday home learning and this week’s reading! As usual, do your best.
Enjoy the Easter holidays as much as you can but remember, the most important thing is to follow the rules and keep yourself and others safe. I’ll be back after Easter with more learning and even more jokes! (Groan!) Bye for now… Mr Hankin