A very busy week here in Year 6 Zephaniah, but it has been lovely to really get into teaching our first topics of Year 6. I am so pleased with the children’s enthusiasm and hardworking attitudes, which I am sure will continue over the year!

In English, the children continued their work on autobiographies, re-reading the first part of Floella Benjamin’s life in Trinidad in preparation for their own writing. They examined how she spoke about the key events in her life, before creating our own comprehension questions based on the text.

In Maths, we have continued working on our place value knowledge, looking at rounding numbers, negative numbers before doing the end of topic test to practise everything they have learnt. We then moved on to our new unit based on addition and subtraction.

In RE, we were introduced to our new topic which saw us looking at all the different faith communities in our local area. On our walks to school we may come across a Greek Orthodox Church, the Mosque, a Catholic Church, the Uxbridge Road Tabernacle as well as several Church of England Churches. We discussed how Shepherd’s Bush is a very diverse area and there is not one set religion. We are lucky, as the diversity means we can learn from all the different groups of people.

Sadly, we were unable to hold our House Captain presentations today. but we have rescheduled them for Friday 29th September. Deadline for presentations to be in is Wednesday 27th. Any questions, please let me know.

Finally, as I am sure you are already aware, next week we are off to PGL! This is very exciting and will be a really fun trip. A packing list has been sent out, please remember to bring a spare outfit that you don’t mind getting wet/muddy for when we are raft building. Also, please don’t forget your sleeping bags! We will be heading off at around 11am on Monday 18^th and will be returning just after the end of the school day on Friday 22^nd. We will keep you posted with journey updates, in case we get stuck in some traffic.

Regular updates will be sent on a WhatsApp group so that you can see what we all get up to. It is set to be a great week.

Have a lovely weekend.

Miss Marchant

Welcome back and welcome to Year 6 Zephaniah! I’ve heard many lovely stories of your summers full of exciting adventures, so I hope you are well rested and ready for the chaos and fun of the new school year and final year at St Stephen’s. The first week back is always very busy for the pupils, parents and teachers and before you know it, it’s Friday and the first week is done.

So far this week, we have talked about our hopes and aspirations for the year, created self-portraits and discussed how having a growth mind-set will be critical to succeeding. Despite it being the first week back, we have still managed to include a little bit of Maths where we started looking at the place value of numbers to one million.

We have hit the ground running with our other subjects too, looking at learning how to work together in RHE and our heritage in Computing – a busy start to the term!

I am excited to be back teaching and am looking forward to the challenging yet fun work ahead – the pupils tell me they are too. As you may know already, the children are expected to sign their homework diaries every week on Fridays as this will prepare them for next year. The children also need to read every evening (even if only a couple of pages) and if you could sign saying they have done this, that would be great.

Finally, we will be having our house captain elections Next Friday 15th. Each house will have four Year 6 Captains who will help lead their houses in certain events and activities. Candidates will make a presentation to their Y6 Housemates on why they should be elected, which will presented to all of the lower years. Votes from each house will then be collated. This will take place next Friday afternoon, so they might like to start planning now – email any supporting PowerPoints to me on z.marchant@ststephensce.lbhf.sch.uk or upload to Google Classroom. Below is a job description and a few ideas that might help.

House Captain’s Job Description

• Each House will fundraise for a specific charity. In the presentation you should put forward your recommendations for your chosen charity and ideas for fundraising.
• Lead regular House meetings
• Help to organise your House for certain school events i.e. Sports Day
• Representing the school at particular school events i.e. Grandparent’s Day
• Acting as a role model for your House/ School
• To meet regularly with the Headteacher
• To present House Captain Awards at the end of the year.
• Any speech or talk they give should be no more than five minutes.

Admin

• Gymnastics is on Mondays and PE is on Thursdays. Please come in wearing PE kit for the whole day.
• Homework will be set on a Monday and a Friday – please see the homework section on the class page for more information on this.
• Library sessions are on Fridays (please encourage children to bring and change books).
• Water bottles must be brought in every day.

Please feel free to email me with any queries or issues and I’m looking forward to teaching this class again, I know we will have a great year.

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Marchant