Thomas Willingale School and Nursery
Spring Term
Week of 3.03.2025
Week 2 and what a week: lessons, cyber safety, showtime and World Book Day!
In Maths this week, we moved on to Measure and have been converting between units of length and mass (how heavy or light something is). This needed our knowledge of multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1,000 so we've had lots of fun with that. We also talked about imperial measure and metric measures which we have had in this country since 1971.
We are getting prepared in English for an exciting piece of writing: a newspaper article about the Opening Ceremony of The Statue of Liberty. So far, we have started our plans so lots more work next week.
On Wednesday, we had a very interesting Cyber Safety Workshop and watched the very powerful film of Becky's Story. It uses a powerful analogy of an open front door-would you allow any stranger into your home? Of course not, so why talk to strangers online? It really made the children think.
The sun continued to shine all week so on Thursday, we had a lovely walk to Davenant Foundation School to watch their production of Beauty and the Beast. It was fantastic and here are some reviews from the children:
'I liked how they transitioned from a Prince into the Beast' Arthur
'I liked how we saw the petals fell from the rose' Lily
'I liked how it looked realistic' Lina
and we all loved seeing Ethan, a past pupil from TWS as Lumiere.
As if that wasn't enough, we then had World Book Day on Friday - Pyjamarama Day this year! We visited Nursery and had great fun, reading stories and playing with the children down there. We walked all around the school and looked at the amazing Doorscapes! In the afternoon, after hot chocolates and cookies, we built dens, read and chilled out - what a fantastic day!
Have a great weekend, we hope the sun continues to shine and see you next week.
Pyjamarama Day
Week of 24.02.25
First week back, Spring 2!
As ever, we have had a busy and fun week.
In Maths, more new learning with ratio and proportion. We worked on fluency and then lots of word problems. We're looking forward to some revision of measure next week: length, mass and capacity.
In English, we have started preparing for our next piece of writing: a newspaper report about the opening ceremony of The Statue of Liberty. We did our own research and watched some fun clips - we have learned so much about it. Next week, we will look at the features of a newspaper and get ready to be journalists ourselves.
We made periscopes in Science, having learned how reflections help us to see round corners and above water (if we're under water!). We were able to spy on adults in the corridors, without them knowing we were looking!
The week finished with an obstacle course laid on for us by Debden Park...it was tough but everyone had a good go. Luckily, the sun was shining so that was great and it was a big end to a busy first week back.
Have a great weekend and see you next week for some more fun learning.
Obstacle Course
SATs meeting for Parents
Thanks to those of you who could make the SATs meeting for parents but don't worry if you couldn't, here is the powerpoint with detail of what we discussed.
Week of 10.2.25
It's been a busy final week in Year 6! Excitingly, we have been writing our Native American myths. So much work has gone into these stories and the children have worked very hard to produce fantastic work - us teachers are really looking forward to reading them!
More algebra in Maths this week: looking at more than one possibility for an answer. For example: if x + y = 7 then there are various answers for x and for y.
On Tuesday, the 11th, it was both Safer Internet Day as well as The International Day of Women and Girls in Science. We celebrated both these days. In Computing, we had a quiz and talked about staying safe online and we then read the story of Hanni and The Magic Window. It was quite profound. The 'window' in the story turned out to be a screen and all that she could see in the virtual world. The story dealt with difficulties if we see something and how it can make us feel. The overarching advice was to seek help from a trusted adult rather than trying to deal with this stuff on your own.
In Science we celebrated some amazing women and learned so much. It is still incredible that so many areas of learning were not open to women and Science can still be a difficult profession for girls and women to be part of but it is truly inspiring to read of such amazing trailblazers from History. We particularly oved learning about the Computer Scientist Grace Hopper who had to remove a moth from her early computer and that's where we get the term 'debug' from!
As if that wasn't enough, the week ended with a Maths zoom meeting called For the Love of Maths on Valentine's Day. We met a computer scientist who told us how maths is part of everything that he does.
What a great end to another great 1/2 term and believe it or not, we are now 1/2 way through Year 6! How did that happen?!
Have a great 1/2 term break everyone.
Safer Internet Day
International Day of Women and Girls in Science
Week of 3.02.25
Important assemblies and Number Day - what a week!
It all started with an assembly about site safety from local builders and then, on Wednesday, we had our MIND assembly as it's Children's Mental Health Week. It was very informative, giving us all some strategies to support our mental health. We also heard the story of the Kind and his Three Sons and how important it is to be honest and true to ourselves.
In Maths, we looked back at the papers from last week and all learned from our mistakes. Scaled Scores in general are fabulous and all are making great progress. We then had some new learning this week: parts of a circle and we have started Algebra. Did you know that Algebra is an Arabic word? We look forward to learning much more next week.
In English, as well as going back over the Comprehension paper, we have started to plan our Native American myths. We will be writing them next week.
Finally, Number Day - rain did not stop play: we managed to get ourselves outside to do the many Do Its on the playground. We then paid a visit to Nursery and read some number stories with them and helped them with their Number Day activities. We then looked at tessallating shapes in a crossover between Maths and Art as well as playing Times Tables Battleships, Magic Squares and with the board games that we brought in from home.
A super end to a busy week. Have a great weekend and it’s hard to believe that it’s our final week next week!
Number Day Fun
Week of 27.01.25
Here we are, the final week of January! It was Assessment Week in Year 6, another practice of SATs papers and as ever, everybody worked hard and tried their best. We look forward to seeing the results yet and enjoying our progress.
Once the tests ended, we were lucky to have a PE session on Thursday and the focus was cricket - we practised our batting and bowling and had great fun on a beautifully sunny day. Enjoy the lovely photos.
The weather could not have been more different on Friday when many of us went to a Handball Tournament at Debden Park. Six schools were there and everyone got to play 5-6 matches. We look forward to hearing next week, how we did.
We finished the week with some art, studying the work of John Nieto, a Native American artist. He produced some magnificently vibrant art of North American animals as well as Native American tribes.
Have a great weekend and see you again next week for more Year 6 news.
PE-Cricket
Native American Art
Week of 20.1.25
What a start to the week with an incredibly noisy and vibrant workshop with Rock Kidz!!
All we can say is YASBA-You’re Awesome So Be Awesome! A fantastically enthusiastic message for all.
Rock Kidz
In English, we wrote our explanation texts about dreamcatchers. We used causal conjunctions to add detail and then decorated them, ready for display.
Our new topic in Science is Light, so we modelled how we see things, using ourselves and wool to show how light reflects onto an object and that light then bounces into our eyes, so that we can see.
Finally, in maths, it was a practical week:we looked at coordinates; translated (moved shapes) and reflected shapes in the 4 quadrants.
Week of 13.1.25
Another busy week in Year 6 - full steam ahead with percentages in Maths and boy have we worked hard! So much practice to gain fluency and then lots of real world problems around % discounts. Everyone showed a superb, positive mindset and great perseverance. We have all reached a point where we are happy to move on now and we are looking forward to co-ordinates and translating and reflecting shapes next week.
In English we have continued to learn so much more about the history of North America and the indigenous people: the Native Americans. We have also done some research on Dreamcatchers and are beginning to plan an explanation text about them. We will be writing these texts next week and decorating them too.
In PE, we have continued our work on gymnastics with forward rolls this week, great fun was had by all!
Oh, and in Reading, we worked on a text about Jurassic Park - we watched a tension-filled clip from the movie that matched the excerpt. Once again, Year 6 worked hard and did their best with some tricky questions.
Have a great weekend everyone and we are looking forward to a Rock Star day on Monday!
PE
Maths-angles
Week of 6.01.2025
Happy New Year! A new year and a new term, spring although it’s definitely feeling very wintry!
Our first full week back and we continued where we left off before Christmas with maths-fractions, decimals and percentages and finding a percentage of an amount. Lots of practice this week and more to come next week; we will also move on to problem solving with percentages.
A new term means a new topic in English: North and South America, a geography focus that will promt our English. So far we have learned about the North American continent and then looked more specifically at the USA: located the 50 states and compared the USA with the UK. Do you know how many counties there are in the UK?
We had a new year treat on Thursday with a panto: Beauty and the Beast! It was great fun and a great way to start the new term. Enjoy the pics.
Have a great weekend and stay warm.
Panto...Oh no it isn’t!
