This week, we were fortunate enough to have a visitor in school - Joseph Bower - who came in to work with Year 6. Within this session, the children discussed the current conflict in Ukraine. The children had many questions about this and showed a great level of understanding about the events discussed. The children were able to show empathy and imagine how it might feel to be living in Ukraine throughout this period of time. After discussions and time to reflect, the children composed poems based around this subject. 

World Book Day is always a special occasion, but this year, our Year 6 students took on an exciting challenge: to become authors!
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The Challenge: Writing a Children's Story
To celebrate the magic of storytelling, Year 6 were given just one hour to plan and write their very own children's story. Using a guided structure, they had to choose a character, a setting, a problem, and a resolution to create a fun and engaging tale. From mischievous dragons to clumsy monkeys their imaginations ran wild as they crafted unique stories suitable for a younger audience.

A Special Audience: Year 2 Listeners
But writing was only the first step! Once their stories were complete, Year 6 had the wonderful opportunity to share their creations with Year 2. In a heartwarming paired reading session, our older students read their stories aloud, bringing their characters to life through expressive storytelling.

Year 2 children were completely captivated, hanging on every word. After listening, they shared their thoughts on the stories, offering fantastic feedback and plenty of smiles. Many of them even had favourite stories that they wanted to hear again!

Reflections and Exciting Next Steps
This fresh approach to paired reading was a huge success. Both year groups loved the experience – Year 6 enjoyed the chance to take on a leadership role, while Year 2 relished the opportunity to hear brand-new stories written just for them.

Many of our Year 6 students were so proud of their work that they asked if they could publish their stories! We are now exploring ways to share their wonderful tales.

World Book Day was not just about reading this year—it was about creating, sharing, and inspiring a love of storytelling. A huge well done to all our young authors and their enthusiastic listeners!

In PE, Year 6 have been focussing on dance.  Within these lessons, the children have met the following objectives:

• To demonstrates strong movements throughout a dance sequence.
• To move appropriately and with the required style.
• To begin to show a change of pace and timing in their movements.
• To be able to move to the beat accurately in dance sequences.
• To dance with fluency, linking all movements and ensuring they flow.
• To demonstrates consistent precision when performing dance sequences.

Throughout the 6 weeks of lessons, the children have choreographed their own movements to music, worked with partners to complete a joint piece and have learned a whole class dance. They have been amazing throughout!

Within computing lessons, this half term, Year 6 have created their own web pages. To do this, they had to choose a topic of interest to create their web page about. Using Google Workspace, the children created a site and included copyright free images. After creating their homepage, they then created sub pages that they hyperlinked and then linked to back to the homepage. The completed web designs are fantastic and the children absolutely loved creating them.

Year 6 have been working with fractions for the past 4 weeks! Within these lessons, the children have been learning to calculate but have also been focusing on using their fraction sense to determine whether a calculation is actually needed. This has been quite a tricky concept to grasp but they have worked so hard to understand what fractions mean in all ways possible. On this occasion, the children were rolling a 9 sided dice (twice each) to create proper fractions. Their partner then had to do the same. Using their fraction sense, or a quick calculation where fraction sense did not help, they had to decide which fraction was closest to half. The person with the fraction closest to half scored 1 point. If the fraction was exactly half, they scored 2 points. 

Year 6 had an amazing time at Crucial Crew and learned such a lot about keeping themselves safe. The trip involved the children taking part in different scenarios that required them to think about what they would do in each situation. In total, they completed 8 activities which were: Home Fire Safety, Arson, Bus Safety, Water Safety, Road Safety, Mock Trial, Child Criminal Exploitation and Knife/Hate crime. 

Joseph Bower returned to KPS today to deliver a poetry workshop linked to Remembrance Day. We learned more about the significance of the day as well as the importance of poetry in the Bible. 
We learned about a gentleman called Donald Caskie who is best known for his work in France during WWII. He helped allied sailors, soldiers and airmen escape from Occupied France.
We wrote a class poem about the work that Donald Caskie completed based upon the fact that his code name was Donald Duck. We were then challenged to write our own poems based either on the work of Donald Caskie or another element of war or remembrance.

Donald Caskie
This poem uses the name Donald Duck which was Caskie's code name during WWII.
Desperate to save lives in
Occupied France. 
Never giving up.
Always focussing on saving the 
Lives of the innocent.
Daring to put himself in

Danger to
Use his position to 
Care for others and 
Keep them safe. 

Remembrance
Remember the past so that we don't repeat.
Escaping was possible because of "Donald Duck".
Maybe if we were all nice, bombs would not fall like rain.
Every time there is a war it causes people pain.
Mighty wars continue over the years.
Because of this innocent people suffer
Roaring of guns split children from families
A minute away from death all the time
No need for this.
Can we just be nice?
Ending of wars should teach us a lesson but its 2024 and the guns have not stopped. 

The children in Year 6 have been developing their sewing skills over the past few weeks and have been creating their own drawstring bags. The children have shown excellent levels of perseverance and resilience during this process as well as developing their cutting, pinning and sewing skills. Many of the children have had to adapt their initial designs having realised that their initial designs were too complex. We are now at the final stages of construction and look forward to showing you our finished products.

On Wednesday, Year 6 participated in a Sikh workshop where they learned all about this religion and the core beliefs and values within this religion. The children showed great understanding and respect to our school visitor and had many questions to ask him about his way of life. 

Year 6 had an AMAZIING time at Eden Camp. Firstly, the children's behaviour was absolutely incredible and they represented our school brilliantly. It was a pleasure to take them. Throughout the day, all groups were totally engrossed in the learning about World War II and they asked fantastic questions and gained new knowledge from engaging in this visit. Overall, it was a tremendous day!