Year 6 had a fantastic time visiting Cleethorpes Academy yesterday this week; they used recycled materials to make a bee, and used pastels to print art work in the style of a totem pole. It was also great for the children to have an insight into secondary school.

Fantastic collaboration during DT this week; children have been working on the design for their light boxes, including the wooden frame, circuit and front design. We have thought carefully about the materials we will need and how to make the light box safely. Next, we will practise the key skills needed to cut and join wood.

This week, we completed our art unit inspired by Paula Wiegmink. Children applied their learned skills to mould, slip and score their clay to create a really effective design based on their earlier drawings. The teamwork, perseverance and reflection shown throiughout the lesson was was fantastic to watch. 

This week, we prepared our final product for our design and technology cooking project. We were able to apply all the skills we have learned around nutrition, food hygiene and safe cutting skills to prepare the fish and chips.

In reading, we have been focusing on giving evidence to support our inferences in reading today by giving quotes and linking ideas across the text.

Debates and balanced arguments is our current focus in writing. We have been working on including cohesive devices to link ideas and formal language throughout. Students have enjoyed participating in our class debate, ensuring they give arguments for and against which are backed up with evidence. We are excited to transfer these verbal skills into our written work next week!

In science, we are learning about electricity including different components and types of circuits. We have been investigating complete and incomplete circuits and discussing whether the current is able to flow and why. To extend our learning, we have been considering how different components, such as buzzers and bulbs, can be made louder or brighter. We have been applying working scientifically skills to make predictions and draw conclusions. 

In design and technology this term, we are focusing on food technology and will be designing a healthy alternative to fish and chips. This week, our aim was to test different food items to allow us to design our product. We tried different potatoes, carrots, sauces, peas and different fish. They were all cooked using minimal oil and salt with the aim of being healthy. It was fantastic to see so many children trying the different foods and explaining if they liked them and why. 

This week, we have started our new creative writing unit based on an extract from 'The Nowhere Emporium.'

Children have been working on using the five senses and figurative language to generate a description of a magical shop. They have shown some fantastic collaboration when thinking of ideas together to help with their independent writing!

In writing, we have been reviewing our grammar learning from this half-term, including using relative clauses, subordinate clauses, parenthesis and fronted adverbials. 

We worked in groups to try to escape from the haunted house by solving clues to give us the code for the locked door! Great teamwork and problem solving skills. 

In science, we have been extending our learning on microorganisms by beginning to classify them based on their appearance, properties and positive and negative impacts.

We have also been completing a class experiment to observe the appearance and development of mould on a piece of bread!

One of our key focuses as a class this week has been building our team work and collaboration skills when working in pairs or small groups. 

In English, we have been working together to learn our spellings and recap our knowledge of adverbs, fronted adverbials and prepositions so that we can confidently apply this in our writing. We have been practising this in different contexts, including playing games, completing crosswords, identfying features in texts and discussing when and how featrures have been used.  

This week, we started a Times Table Rock Stars competiton and children have been working very hard to improve their scores and earn points for their team! We can't wait to see who will win when the competition ends next week. 

In our art lessons this half-term, we are focusing on the skills of shading, tone, scale and perspective, producing art work in the style of Pieter Claesz. Here are some great example from this week. I can’t wait to see what our artists can produce with their developing skills. 

Year 5 and 6 students were lucky enough to have Trace from Lab Cocoa visit them this week to support our learning on the Mayas. They even got to paint their own chocolate bar! Children were able to find out more about how and where chocolate is produced, as well as learning about the cacao tree. Everyone got invovled and tried a variety of chocolate, incluiding raw cacao nibs! We begun to learn about the history of chocolate, and will be building upon this in our next history lesson. 

This week, Major Oak have continued their learning about the Mayas in history. To help with their understanding of the important trades that took place during the height of the Maya civilisation, children were split into three groups and traded different goods found in the three main regions of the Yucatan Peninsula (northern lowlands, central lowlands and southern highlands). They showed fantastic team work as they built upon their historical knowledge, as well as considering how the geographical features of each region were reflected in the resources they had. We are looking forward to learning more about the Mayas!

Major Oak enjoyed practising their tennis and circuit skills during their first indoor PE lesson this week. We will be building on our core and motor skills through a variety of multi-sport circuits this half-term as well as promoting team work.

Please remember that our PE lessons will be Wednesday (outdoor) and Friday (indoor) this term.