Special thanks
Before anything else I would like to say how proud I am of the class this week. We had a visitor (Shirley Clarke) in school on Thursday that in educational circles would be as influential as David Bowie to the music scene. She was over the moon with Year 6 and couldn’t have spoken more highly of the children. Everyone she spoke to was the consummate professional and even those who were not directly involved in conversations impressed with their independence and self-motivation. Just thought you should know.
English
The work has begun to split into a couple of distinct strands this week. The composition work is starting to move some wok into more sophisticated areas, while others are refining their accuracy.
The former is challenging children to develop their work in a more progressive way using context. We are trying to establish rules that will allow written responses to be less abrupt, taking a little more time to build towards a point or question and in doing so, create a more mature flow.
The latter of the tasks requires that children justify every decision made on the page. Is the punctuation correct for a subordinated clause? Does that sentence say exactly what they mean? Is that conjunction actually linking two clauses together? These kinds of questions will help them to get past just completing a piece of work, focusing instead on its refinement and development as part of the process.
The grammar work is slowing now to make more room for the reading skills that we are building, sticking with noun clauses which are quite a deep subject. II expect this to be the focus for at least another week.
Maths
Fraction work is moving forwards into percentages now. We have made a good start and have managed to stir up the water creating plenty of confusion and clarity in equal measures. Early days. We will stick with this for a little while now, making links to the previous fraction work enabling us to move into much deeper problems in the near future.
