With half term in sight, 6CC are in full space story mode. For the past three weeks, year six have been studying narrative as text type with a focus on the final frontier. Each member of our class has planned, written and critiqued their own writing along the way (along with teacher support) leading up to a week where they must independently conclude their story. As a class, we have focused heavily on getting the basic punctuation and spellings right as well as learning to adjust sentence length for purpose and effect. I have been very impressed with their descriptive language, understanding of speech punctuation and their choice of figurative language. Ace effort guys!

Nearing the conclusion of our topic on place value and number in maths, this week we have been using counters to help us find factors and multiples of numbers in maths. When feeling confident enough to move their learning to a pictorial and abstract representation, the class then set about exploring common factors and multiples in separate lessons before identifying highest common factors and the lowest common multiples. A fantastic week by these enthusiastic, curious set of young mathematicians! Onto the next… ➡️

Continuing our topic of place value, 6CC have been learning about negative numbers in maths this week. Following an initial lesson learning how to cross zero and find the difference between a positive and negative number, our crew needed some further support to bring them fully up to speed on the strategies we used so what did we do? We hired 10 voluntary maths specialists who were willing to consolidate their own learning by mentoring their peers. After supporting their ‘student’ through the basics, the student-teachers introduced their pupils to negative numbers but in reasoning and problem solving contexts. Sterling jobs, guys!

On Monday, 6CC began the hook week of their first expedition this year, To Infinity and Beyond, centring around the idea of space. Inspired by both the scale and complexity of our universe, the children decided to build their own model solar system with pairs working together to create their very own papier-mache planet. Apologies to parents for the mess but I think it goes without saying our crew had a lot of fun covering their balloons with gluey mixture!

After listening to a short extract from H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, our crew set about using the descriptions and the illustrations in the book to design and create their own alien machines using watercolours. As you can see, the children endeavoured to use the style of the illustrator to good effect and the final creations were fantastic. Well done, 6CC!

On Tuesday afternoon, year six enjoyed a phenomenal surprise of meeting some of their footballing heroes. George Miller, Jon Taylor, Roshaun Williams and Max Woltman of the Doncaster Rovers 1st XI stopped by NJS to get involved in a short games session before answering some of our crews burning questions. I think they were very surprised with some of the children’s competitive attitudes and skills, might prove significant come their next match!

In their first week back, the children of 6CC have truly impressed showing a bucketful of enthusiasm, teamwork and confidence; over the course of the week, they have taken part in a wide variety of activities, ranging from lung busting capture the flag to hilarious drama games. Despite the novelty of the activities, the children have out their best foot first and now cannot wait to begin their first expedition of the year… more on that later! 😉

And its like they’ve never been gone! Our new year sixes have hit the ground running in their first day back and have spent the day developing both their character and relationships with their new crew members. Well done to the new 6CC children who approached every challenge with tenacity and worked well as a united team to overcome the day’s challenges. 👌🏼💪🏼

On Thursday, NJS welcomed back parents and carers to our annual summer sports day after two years of waiting! In the morning, years 3 & 4 enjoyed their time in the sun taking part in track and field events dotted around the field with plenty of spectator support! It is worthwhile noting our fantastic year 6s supported by leading the field events where they offered useful coaching tips and encouraged lower key stage 2 to try their best!

In the afternoon, years 5 & 6 took to the field – the last time year six’s took part in sports day with parents/carers present, they were in year 3! Most had their chance to run the track whilst our crews cheered them on from the sidelines. As always, a big thank you to our support staff, our supportive parents/carers and to Mr Chadwick for organising the event. May the hot weather continue! #SportsDay

6CC have begun their week with some Star Wars coding after an extremely hot weekend. All enjoyed taking control of BB-8 using code to dictate his movements and avoid the evil Sith hunters. More to follow on this coding adventure!