Home Learning Pre-Easter

Easter holiday ideas and activities

The Easter holidays are just about to begin.  This is a time for everyone to have a rest, relax, enjoy the break from our new 'home-schooling - learning at home' and a time for eating chocolate eggs!  There might be times when you can't think of what to do so the KS2 teachers have put together some ideas and activities for you to try.  These ideas can be found below and there are also some great ideas on the KS1 class pages too if you need more ideas.

Have a lovely Easter holiday and we will see you all back on our KS2 class pages on Monday 20th April.

Bye for now!

Easter Reading Challenge

We have two reading challenges which we would like you to have a go at and share your experience with us all using our year group emails.

1) What are your top 5 reading books you think everyone should read? Share this with us so we can share it on the website!

2) Have a look at someone else’s top 5 reading books, can you read one of them (or more if you like) and let us all know what you thought about this book?

Please share your challenge with us in whatever creative way you like:

• Photographs of you reading
• powerpoints of your top 5s
• audio recordings of you reading
• illustrations from descriptions in books you’ve read
• a review of your friend’s top book
• The ideas go on!

Email your creative challenges in to your year group teacher and let us know if you’re happy for us to share this with everyone on the website. Find out more about the challenge in the video above and check out some of Mr Lether's favourite books in the videos below.

Friday 3rd March

Well done on all of the work you have been putting into your packs! This is the final day on your suggested timetable, so hopefully you will be finishing off the last activities. Don't worry if you have not been able to do everything - everybody will have a different plan and experience working from home and it is ok to be flexible around that. We just need to be realistic and do what we can. If you have lots left to do, prioritise the spellings and the graphs/charts/mean work in maths, as we will move on in these areas after Easter.

Remember, next week would be your Easter holidays, so take it easy and have a look at some of our recommended Easter activities which will come out to you shortly.

You could email in some photographs of your creative tasks too!

Year6bps@welearn365.com

Thursday 2nd April

Good morning everyone,  how has it got to Thursday?  This week seems to have gone really quickly. Not much to say today apart from you are doing brilliantly!  It is a tricky time for everyone and to be at home without seeing your friends properly is really hard.  I have been lucky to catch up with friends by phoning, texting and writing which has been great.  I hope, that with your parents, you are able to catch up with some friends too. 

We have really enjoyed seeing photos of you working, creating and exercising at home and reading your emails.  If you haven't done this already, can you please send an email to us, just so that we know you are ok and also for us to say hello back to you.  

You will find us at: year6bps@welearn365.com

Have a good day,

Mrs Swanwick and Mr Lether

Wednesday 1st April - April Fool's Day

Good morning everyone - hope that you are all ok

The 1st April is usually the day when people play harmless jokes and pranks on each other.  For me, I usually put a 'believeable' fact on the whiteboard or write the day in a silly way but this year it doesn't feel right as there are more serious matters that people are thinking about and so many people have decided to forget about it this year. 

However, I did wonder where the name April Fool's Day originated from so have done a little early morning research and here are a few theories about it for you to consider:

Theory 1 - It is connected to poetry

On the Newsround webpage it said that "Some have argued that a story told by early English poet Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century - where a fox plays a prank on a rooster (who is almost eaten because of it) - is the first reference to pranks taking place on the first of April."

The poet doesn't actually directly refer to April 1st because in the poem, he says 32 days "syn March began", which people have said is "32 days since March began" which would be April 1st.  But those who don't believe this theory say he was just using confusing words to make fun of people in the poem.

Theory 2 - It is linked to the calendar

Some believe the tradition started because of events in the calendar.  Renewal festivals date back to Roman times which were a celebration at the start of a new year or season, when things went a bit topsy turvy/upside down.  

March is the time of the Spring Equinox, so people think the joker tradition could come from this, as the beginning of spring and planting flowers was considered the start of the new year.  So rather rather than celebrating the New Year on 1st January like we do today, those who celebrated it as Spring began were considered to be fools and had jokes played on them.

Theory 3 - Fishing in Europe

Some of the earliest records  about 1st April are from France and Holland in the 1500s and, because of this it might be that the tradition spread from countries like France to the United Kingdom. In some parts of Europe it is known as April Fish Day.  Some people think this is because there are a lot of fish in French streams and rivers around 1st April, and they are easy to catch - foolish fish! It soon became a tradition to play tricks on people on April 1st too.  It is still a common trick in France, and elsewhere in Europe, to attach a paper fish to somebody's back on April Fools' Day, and also to give chocolate fish as gifts.

So, an interesting set of theories and thank you Newsround for helping me with this.  Which do you think is the most likely theory?  An interesting discussion or Did you know....? to share at home.

Have a good day and don't forget to drop an email to us if you haven't done already.

Mrs Swanwick and Mr Lether

Tuesday 31st March

Good afternoon everybody,

Sorry for being a bit late with our daily post - not sure where the morning has gone!  It has been lovely to see some of you doing your work with photos sent to us or school and also hearing from you via our class email address.  If you haven't managed to get in touch with us yet to say hello, then please do as we would love to hear from you

Year6bps@welearn365.com

We will aim to get back to you within 2 days during usual 'school hours'.  I have already said hello to quite a few of you this morning  which has been great as we are missing you.  It is good to hear that you are working through your learning packs, adapting how much you do each day to keep you busy but also taking responsibility for your own learning and what you can manage.  You have also been very creative: cooking, drawing, mini DT projects and exercise! 

Please remember to keep up with mathletics and ttrockstars too - It will be good to keep up with this over the Easter break if you have any spare time!

Take care everyone 

Mrs Swanwick and Mr Lether

You can contact us via our year group email address:

year6bps@welearn365.com 

Monday 30th March

Good morning everyone and we hope that you had a good 'weekend'.  It was a bit strange for us; we had other things planned, as we are sure you did, and suddenly we had to stay at home.  The Swanwick family have decided that as far as possible we won't do any work at the weekend to help make it a bit different - laptops and school books away!  We  enjoyed watching a film together, all doing our exercise and last night we did a family quiz with grandparents and cousins - lots of facetime fun but it worked!  What did you do to make the weekend different from a 'school day'?

This week we are busy planning our topics for after the Easter break and finding out what will work best via photos, videos and ensuring that is will be accessible for you at home - it will be different but it will be ok!  Once we have finalised this, we will post on this page and then set a week by week timetable as we go along.

This week, keep to the timetable as much as you can.  You now have the email address to contact us in Year 6.

Hope that you have a good and healthy week - remember your daily exercise!

Mrs Swanwick and Mr Lether

Friday 27th March

Good morning Year 6. We hope you are getting on really well with your packs and are making the most out of your home learning. By now, you should be up to the activities on day 5. Remember to tick off of highlight the activities on your timetable as you go along so that you know which ones you have completed. Your timetable might look a little like this at the moment:

You may notice that some tasks have not been highlighted. Some of you might be the same, as maybe you needed help with some of them, or maybe you've been taking part in the art challenge; there could be many reasons. So, if you have any gaps, it might be a good idea to go back and complete them first before moving on, particularly with the graph work in maths, as each one follows on from the rest.

Try to use today to get everything up to and including day 5 complete and then remember to enjoy some rest over the weekend!

PE with Joe (and some other active ideas)

I hope that you have been enjoying PE with Joe on youtube or you have been staying active in other ways. Sometimes motivating yourself to remain active every day can be difficult, but it is so very important. I sometimes find that if I am repeating the same or similar exercise activities, I can lose motivation and am less likely to take part. So, here are some other ideas which you can use to keep acitve:

• Go for a walk, jog or bike ride with your parents as part of your once daily out of home exercise.
• Visit the 'Yoga with Adriene' youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/yogawithadriene This is a channel which I regularly use. She pitches for a whole range of ability, but has a few specific sections for kids e.g. her rainbow yoga.
• Another Yoga channel: cosmic kids - https://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga 
• BBC supermovers have linked with the Premier League to share lots of ways to learn actively: https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/supermovers 
• Just dance is easily accessible on youtube. Why not also try to learn a dance from a song you like. Just search the "[song name]" with "dance tutorial" after it. There are lots online. Here is one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yd9igy5atk 

Why don't you send in any other ideas which you might have had in the comments section at the bottom of this page. I would love to share them with everyone else!

Music

We have a Charanga topic ready for you to access from home after the Easter break. In the meantime, have a look at this brilliant music game available online:

https://www.incredibox.com/demo/ 

Thursday 26th March - another sunny day!

Good morning Year 6, and yes, another sunny day.  We really miss not seeing you all but the sunshine makes it all a little bit better for us all.  We hope that you had a good day yesterday, I did the word challenge too - here are some of the words that I made, I am sure that you found more:

CIRCUMSTANTIAL - a, at, am, ant, arm, art, aim, circus, man, main, mail,rain, rail, rant, stain, strain, tan, tail, trail, train, unit, until

SIGNIFICANT - an, ant, in, nit, tin, tag, fig, fin, sign, sift, saint, stain

DISAPPEARANCE - appear, disappear, appearance, dance, sap, seep, sear, seen, spear, spin, span, space, pear, peer

ART CHALLENGE

Mrs Warren has created an amazing Bridgetown Primary Art Challenge which can be found on twitter and instagram.  Each day there is a different theme with ideas and inspiration to help you create your own artwork on this theme.  Yesterday the theme was 'LEAF', today it is WATER and on Friday it will be PORTRAIT.  Please ask an adult at home if you can have a look  - maybe others in your home will want to have a go too.

The link are:

Instagram - @art_at_bridgetown_primary

Twitter - #bridgetownartchallenge

Hope that you all have a good day,

Mrs Swanwick and Mr Lether

Wednesday 25th March

Good morning Year 6, how are you all doing?  We have been lucky to have some sunshine - hope that you have been able to get some fresh air either in your garden or for your one session of exercise outdoors.  Mr Lether has been out for a run each day and since Friday Mrs Swanwick has either done a run, a walk or a cycle and last night a family pilates session!  Hopefully you looked at Joe Wicks (The Body Coach) yesterday - he is so enthusiastic and a great start to the morning.  Hope that you get on with today's learning tasks; you will enjoy reading the Titanic text.  If you want to read a little bit more the following website are interesting:

https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/history/general-history/would-you-have-survived-the-titanic/

This week so far you have had spellings with the suffixes -tial, -ant and -ance.  An extra fun activity is a family challenge.  How many words can you make from the letters in each of the following words:

circumstantial - significant - disappearance

I have posted a few examples for circumstantial.

Hope that you have a good day,

Mrs Swanwick and Mr Lether

Tuesday 24th March

Good morning everyone,

We hope that you had a good day yesterday and learning at home home was quite enjoyable!  We were both busy getting used to our new teaching routine too.  Mr Lether did a great job of doing the IT bits - thank you from Mrs Swanwick!  Today you have plenty of activities to do and I am going to go through yesterday's GPS activities and give you a few marking tips.  Hope that you managed these well.  Below are your activities for today. 

Don't forget the Joe Wicks exercise youtube livestream each morning.

This was yesterday's PE lesson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz0go1pTda8

Have a good day,

Mrs Swanwick and Mr Lether

Hello and welcome to our new Home Learning page for Year 6

Good morning Year 6,
We hope that you had a good weekend.  We expect that you spent time with your families talking about new routines and what your home learning days will be like.  You already have worked planned for the next two weeks, with today being Day 1.  Try and do your work Monday – Friday and make weekends a little bit different for now.  Each day we will try and post messages, reminders, photos and even videos so do log on each day.
Take care and look after yourselves.
Mrs Swanwick and Mr Lether

Mrs Swanwick's desk space is looking tidier than usual; Mr Lether's is under constuction (he chose the wrong time to start decorating!). What is your home learning space set up like?

Year 6 Home Learning suggested timetable and daily activities - March 2020

We hope you are enjoying your home learning packs for your child to support them at home over the next two weeks during this time. Should in the unfortunate circumstance of an extended closure, more details with regards to home learning activities will be sent to you through school communication. This would be for work following the already planned Easter break. Please keep an eye on the usual communication methods: text service, emails and the school website.

Below is a suggested timetable and timings for learning at home.  We are suggesting that the activities are done throughout the normal weekdays as we would cover in school.  The activities are based on revision and some new teaching.  In these cases, using the resources, they can work fairly independently but may need a little guidance/ talk through.  We have selected activities that are accessible at home and do not require research or excessive internet use for the time being.

Additionally, websites such as twinkl and classroom secrets (which we regularly use to support our planning) are all offering free resources to support parents and children learning from home during school closures. Please have a look at the following links if you would like any resources additional to those which we are providing.

https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resources/keystage2-ks2/ks2-class-management/school-closure-home-learning-classroom-management-key-stage-2-year-3-4-5-6

http://classroomsecrets.co.uk/home-online-learning/

Also, please keep a regular an eye on the school website and our year 6 page for any updates. We may provide additional learning tasks or link any other free resources which become available during the closure.

https://www.bridgetown.warwickshire.sch.uk/year-6-3/

Suggested timings:
Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling – 45 minutes
Reading – 20 minutes
Maths – 60 minutes

We also suggest that you spend some time each day doing something creative – art, music, DT, sewing – we will add more ideas to the website if we need to.

Please also be mindful of the importance of daily exercise, we know that this could be difficult but we are sure that you can be creative – yoga, steps, garden sprints….take care but try and get some exercise in! Here is Joe Wickes for some indoor exercises as a starter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3LPrhI0v-w