• y6 newsletter autumn 2013.pdf

We had a visitor, Mr Bellwood, come to Ireland Wood to help us discover all about stories from Ancient Greek times. It was ace!

Mr McVeigh organised a Y6 Hockey Tournament with St Margaret's School, Horsforth.

As part of our work on balanced arguments, we took part in a debate, chaired by our MP Greg Mulholland. 'This house believes children should wear uniform to school'.

We have worked hard creating news reports that are concise, clear and correct. Can you spot our 'interview quotes'?

We spent our whole day doing 'Number' and Maths activities. Much fun was had measuring the length of carrots and weight of potatoes we had brought in! Well done to Oliver and James - winning vegetables! We also explored our new IWPS Maths Trail...here are some snaps of our day!

We all came out to welcome Santa!

One activity we have really enjoyed in Guided Reading has been emailing key authors we have been reading. And we have had some replies!
Here is an email from Anne Fine, after we finished 'Diary of a Killer Cat'
Dear Everyone,

    What a lovely email to get! Thank you so much for getting in touch. I’m really glad you had a good laugh reading about Tuffy. He’s based on a completely impossible cat that my daughter nagged me into getting.

    What school are you? If you let me know, I can send you a poster of Tuffy so you can admire his beauty whenever you have nothing better to do.

    With love to you all, and thanks to Mrs Amos for choosing my book in the first place.

    Love, Anne   

We then received a mountain of posters from Anne Fine, which she had autographed, so we put them in the classroom and the hall.

Next, we emailed an author called Margaret McAllister, whose book 'Threads of Deceit' had been read by the Tuesday Guided Readers:
Dear Lorin, Codie, Sajad, Lewis, Kai and Trinity
 
Thank you for that lovely and well-written e-mail, which came as a very pleasant surprise!  I’m delighted to know that you enjoyed Threads of Deceit so much and felt inspired by it.  It’s a few years now since I wrote it.  Sadly children are still trafficked into slavery, but now I think we’re more aware of it now, and some governments are working to stop it.
 
Your school may have some of the books on my website -  My Guinea-Pig is Innocent, Black Death, and The Worst of the Vikings might be in school.   My newest books are FAWN and A HOME FOR TEASEL which are animal stories.  (I’m Margi McAllister on those ones!)  If you like dressed up animals, try THE MISTMANTLE CHRONICLES.
 
Whatever you read, I hope you continue to find books that you love and that inspire you.  I love the way you read and discussed the book together.  Books are more fun when you can share them with someone.
 
Enjoy half term!
Very best wishes
Margaret McAllister

And finally, we emailed an author who usually writes books fro grown-ups. He's called Alexander McCall Smith and the Wednesday group had finished reading 'The Ice-cream Bicycle'. He emailed this:
Dear Solomon, Josh F, Dylan and Ciahn,

I am very sorry that it has taken me a little while to reply to your
message, but I have been away in the USA and in Botswana and I am only now
catching up with my e-mails.

I was delighted to hear that you all enjoyed reading 'The Ice Cream
Bicycle' with your teacher, Mrs Amos. It was very kind of you to take the
time to write to tell me how much you enjoyed the book - I really am very
grateful to you.

If you ask Mrs Amos to send me the address of your school, then I will
arrange to send you some signed books as a little thank you. Keep up the
reading!

With best wishes,
Alexander McCall Smith

And we've had another email saying he has signed and sent some books! We are very excited!

Year 6 has been very lucky to have a local poet, James Nash, come along and do some workshops with them. We are combining the Headingley Literacy Festival theme of 'Survival' with our topic for this term 'Could I sleep on a river bed?' Watch this space for some exciting writing.

We were lucky enough to have Flight lieutenant Rich Hartley, formerly of IWPS, come in to see us and tell us all about being a member of the Dambusters' Squadron. An inspiring way to end our half term.

Didn't we 'ave a lover-ly time the day we went to Aysgarth (Falls!)?

A beautiful day - where we gorge walked, zip wired and canoed...hoping for a good night's sleep!!!

What a fantastic day to end with! Thanks must go to Katie, Olly, Adam, Dan, Terry and the team at Low Mill.

Even though we've had those pesky SATs this week, we've managed to fill the rest of the time with 'fun' activities...this was the Y6 effort to improve the school garden....

Yay! They're over....and we had a Pizza Party on Friday afternoon to celebrate!

To keep us all calm and focused, we spent most of our SAT afternoons making our own mascots (for luck!) or extra long athletics sessions.

Reception children were lucky enough to host the eggs and chicks earlier this term, so we went to have a look...

In the week after SATs, Ludo and Hannah came in to provide us with some cycle training. We also got a menthion on our school