Follow the Yellow Brick Road

This morning, Year 6 had a brilliant time watching the pantomime production: The Wizard of Oz. Excited, elated and thrilled, the children enjoyed the fabulous acting, amazing sets and the thrilling modern twists to the story. What a fantastic start to the new school term.

Circles

In Numeracy this week, Year 6 were illustrating and naming parts of a circle. We looked at the relationship between the diameter and radius and learnt about how the diameter is twice the radius. The radius is the distance  room the centre of the circle to the perimeter (circumference). The children had to accurately draw  circles with a set radius, semi circles, quarter circles and concentric circles. 

The Life of Nikola Tesla

For the past two weeks, Year 6 have been researching and writing about the life of Nikola Tesla. Writing a biography of the famous scientist, using a variety of different types of biographical materials and online resources.

The main grammar focus has been relative clauses, perfect form of verbs and modal verbs. 

Tesla who is often called one of history's most important inventors, one whose discoveries in the field of electricity were way ahead of his time and continue to influence technologies today. Despite his accomplishments, however, Tesla died penniless and without the accolades that he would ultimately earn over a century later. 

Translation

This morning, Mrs Gradley's group were drawing and translating shapes on the first quadrant and four quadrants of the co-ordinate grid. The children used vectors to show the movement of a vertex, left, right, up or down. 

In class, the children had a choice of activities to complete. Some used the my maths app and worked through the lesson and worksheet; others completed chilli challenge tasks and mastery challenges.

CSI Road Safety Workshop

Many people are unaware that the number of fatalities amongst young people caused by road accidents are higher than deaths from other external causes, including those that receive much more publicity from the media. Last half term Year 6 took part in a workshop to teach clear road safety messages effectively and consistently, using drama to help the children understand and manage risks.

The children were investigating a fatal road traffic accident and had to question witnesses and ask inquiring questions to solve the incident.

Spring Toys

In science this week the Year 6's enjoyed experimenting with energy. 

First the two classes looked at Galileo's ball experiment, where a ball is passed down a tube of plastic.

When suspended at the top of the tube, the ball has potential energy. When the ball is released it transfers it's potential energy into kinetic energy, movement of the rolling ball; sound energy, hearing the ball roll and heat energy, as the surfaces of the ball heats the tube. Once all the potential energy has been transferred into kinetic, sound and heat energy the ball will come to rest.

The children then did their own experiments with spring toys.

Melisa said "When the toy is compressed it has potential energy."

Chloe concluded "When the toy goes 'pop' the potential energy is transferred into kinetic, sound and heat energy."

Hampton Court Palace

Excited with the anticipation of the chance to see where Henry VIII once walked, the Year 6s approached the Palace.

After touring the palace, each class enjoyed an interview with Henry's top laundry woman to try and procure a job in Tudor England. She told the kids all about the different jobs in the castle including the gongscourer... A job when children are dangled down the toilets (holes running through buildings like chimneys) where they are expected to scrub the excrement from the cesspit at the bottom.

  

Luckily the children had no pies to bribe the laundry woman, and so they were all sent away without a job.

Overall the year 6's enjoyed their trip, it was a fascinating place to learn about the history of England.

Tick-tock goes the clock...

Ever wondered how they alter the time in Elizabeth tower, so Big Ben chimes on time? Well this week in science, the year 6 classes have been investing how the weight and length of a pendulum affects the speed and quantity of oscillations that a pendulum makes.

After choosing their tests, the children set up their pendulums and recorded the length. After counting the number of oscillations (some counted over 500!) the children repeated the activity with a shorter length of string.

Unfortunately, the results in the class varied however we were able to identify the flaws in our experiment as: not counting in time with our oscillations; dropping the weight from different angles and the tables being nudged could have all contributed to differing results.

Ben Green (Palm class) stated "We attached our pendulum to the table to keep it steady." Whilst others in the class held theirs in their hands (potentially causing to pendulums stopping early or oscillating more frequently).

It was an exciting and interesting start to the Energy unit. To answer the question at the start, if Big Ben chimes before or after time, old English pennies are added to or removed from the pendulum in Elizabeth's tower. One penny alone changes the speed of the clock by one fith of a second in 24 hours!