Building a motorised vehicles (part 2)

Hi all.

On the 10th of December, Year 6 continued with their project of creating motorised vehicles. The day before, they had created their chassis and was one step closer to making their vehicles.

That day, after maths, our teacher showed us how to make a circuit and attach it to the car. Everyone was raring to go and were all happy when our teacher sent us off. Excited, we all found our vehicles and grabbed the equipment that we needed for our circuit. We had to attach the motor to the batteries and the switch. Some people had two motors and some people had a lot of gearing wheels.

It was really hard for people to stick the circuit onto the chassis because it was so thin and the batteries would not stick on properly. Luckily our teacher saved the day as he was able to give gaffer tape to everyone.

Soon everything was stuck on and people were doing a lot of test drives. Fortunately, most of the vehicles worked.

Hopefully our car will win the race because it has two motors! See our car in action!

Building a moving vehicle (part 1)

Hi all.

On Wednesday, the 9th of December, Year 6 started to construct motorised vehicles. We started by planning what our vehicles would look like from a plan view, a side view & a rear view. In our groups of four, we designed our vehicles, some people did this on the computers and others wanted to draw, and use artistic skills.

In the afternoon, we all found our plans and our teacher showed us how to saw effectively and also his special method of sticking things together. Then we set off to make the chassis and attach the axle. It took a lot of hard work and patience to put it all together. Teamwork was also very important as we had to work out who was doing what and when.

Finally, lots of our hard work and perseverance paid off as we all finished our chassis. We were all excited about putting our motor onto our vehicle. We were all hoping to win the competition and because of this, we were all putting in extra effort.

Do you think that this vehicle looks good and will work well?

This is what our plans looked like. They were detailed and had to include all of the equipment.

The Dangers of Smoking

This week, we have learnt the dangers of smoking and presented this with posters. We used the unique program Activinspire to learn about smoking with a publication called "Puffing life away". We thought about all the possible effects like lung disease and heart attack. Here are some of the dangers:

Lung disease,

Tar build up in lungs, leading to smoker's lungs,

Bad breath,

Asthma attack,

Heart attack,

Senses of taste and smell deteriorates,

Heart disease,

Blood clots,

Coughing and brain damage.



Smoking doesn't just affect you, it affects the people around you due to them breathing in the poisonous Carbon Monoxide (CO). We will put the posters on display when they are completed for all to see.

Year 6 Geography presentations

Today Year Six presented their Geography presentations.

The standard of written and oral work they gave was excellent.

Here are thier boards:

12.10.09

This morning year 6 went down to the infant playground to do some science. We looked at how the heart functions and we acted as de-oxygenated blood and oxygenated blood. After we learnt the cycle of the blood: First, the de-oxygenated blood comes from being pumped around the body. It is currently de-oxygenated because it has given all its oxygen to the mucles. Next, the de-oxygenated blood gets pumped to the lungs and it picks up oxygen from them. Soon after, the now oxygenated blood travels back to the heart and gets pumped around the body once again. Once we had finished outside, we went upstairs and labeled, with detailed descriptions of what the arrows showed, a diagram of the heart.

After break we went to our junior hall to act out Macbeth the Shakespere play. Our teacher then explained the events of the story while some children acted out the main parts. The story is about a young man named Macbeth and he won the war for scotland. He then betrays many of his friends and murders them except from one, Macduff who ends up killing Macbeth. Our teacher drew us a chart of how the characters feel confident to do something but then they lose confidence. Like at the start Lady Macbeth is really confident about killing King Duncan but near the end she thinks that it was'nt such a good idea. Also, Macbeth was'nt very confident at the start about killing the King but his confidence grew throughout the story and nearing the end he was very proud of himself for making the right decision.

First thing after lunch we went into the enviromental area and we had to find the sheets of paper that were put around the area by our teachers. On these peices of paper were some of the main events of the story of Macbeth and we had to put them in order and attach them up with string, still in the right order. Once we had finished that task we went inside to draw a picture, using chalk, of one of the scenes or a symbol to represent the story. Some people drew induviduals but some drew a whole picture with more than one character. Also some people drew a symbol to represent the story such as a dagger with blood dripping from it or a skull that represented death.

We then started up some laptops and went on powerpoint to present one of the themes of the story and what examples were there in the story of that theme. EG: Murder, Macbeth kills King Duncan and Macbeth kills Banquo. Finally we all went to singing assembly were we learn to sing and we learn new songs.

Super Shakespeare

For the last couple days, year 6 have been doing Literacy work on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. On the first day they were put into 2 groups and they acted out the first scene. In this they were split into Montagues and Capulets where they did the first fight between them. They also watched the beggining of the cartoon version and compared the book and the film together.

The next day was an active reading day where they all read the whole book and were given different activities to do. This included:

• Dilemma checkers
  
• Art critics


• Action retellers


• And more.

At the end of the lesson they showed the class all of the things that the groups had done in the lesson. The Dilemma checkers found 12 Dilemmas in the time that they had, and answered 10 of them. Some of the questions were:

• Should Tybalt have murdered Marcutio?


• Should the prince have banished Romeo from Verona?


• Should the priest have given Juliet the potion?


• Should Juliet and Paris have been betroved without Juliet's say so?
  
• And a lot more!!!

Getting creative

Hi everyone!

For the last two weeks at Portswood School, year 6 have been creative with their literacy work and homework. Their super minds were set on Great Expectations and Oliver Twist both written by Charles Dickens.

On the 23rd of September they created fantastic playscripts as a guide for their brilliant storyboards. This was all done during the literacy hoursbut they were given the opportunity to use a wide range of settings to take their photograps in the school grounds . They all had to work in pairs and to be a sucess they also had to write a short description about each photo.

Their homework was to write a playscript on Oliver Twist. They were allowed to choose any scene from these choices:

1. Oliver asking for more
   
2. Meeting Dodger
   
3. Visiting Fagin and the boys
   
4. Going on the robbery with Bill Sykes

there was some excellent homework presented on the 28th such as:

Books
Boards

Scripts
Sign post

Thank you for reading our blog and pop in to see some fantastic work.

Year 6 Geography Project

During the past couple of weeks year 6 have been doing a project about natural disasters in the world. We were allowed to choose our groups and we had to choose one topic. These topics were:

Earthquakes in Indonesia

Global Warming

Swine flu

So far we have used the internet to research, looked in starter packs and watched videos on Youtube. We also have found out the six questions that summerise geography. They are:

What and when it happened?

Why and how did it happen?

How did it affect the people?

How did it affect the place?

What are the problems?

what are the solutions?

We will be putting our information on boards and presenting our work to our teachers.

first week in year 6

On the 11th of September the new year 6 was getting used to the big wide world of year six. In maths we started learning how to round to 10, 100 and 1000. After that we had a 20 minute break where we played football. In literacy we read an extract from Oliver twist by Charles Dickens. Then we got a detailed page of a book called Great Expectations also from Charles Dickens. We wrote a shortened version of it. After lunch we did extended writing where we read part of Great Expectations. It was alot easier than normal extended writing. Then we did rallies in tennis for games to end the day.



by 6l and 6s

Welcome back (the first days)

On the 7th September, the new young year 6 pupils were introduced to the big wide world of year 6. Many of us were

We started off learning about place value, in maths. We were all eager to show off our amazing talent and enthusiasm, towards maths. After an exhilarating lesson we were allowed to go out and have a 15 - 20 minutes break. We then came back in with our brains ready for more. We then had tremendous English lesson which involved Charles Dickens and his famous books. We are reading Great Expectations.Our warm up was all on spelling check and root words. After an hour lunch we began constructing our classroom charter :

Always be an honest friend,
Look after your stuff,
Be a good example,
Try your best; be the best!
Think!

Make good choices,

Use IT when we can;and when its right.

By 6L

Be polite and friendly at all times,
keep our work area clean and tidy,

Always work and co-operate with your class/group members,
Show what brilliant role models we are,

Do your best.

By 6S

Then in Science we learned about what makes something living. We remembered the seven things a living thing needs to do to be considered living. A fun way to remember this is MR GRENS

M ovement

R esperation

G rowth

R eproduction

E xcreation

N utrition

S ensitivity

Welc

The last few weeks!!!!

A few weeks ago on friday we had the hall set up for the entire school to enter and buy our produce at the year 5 and 6 Asian market. After an entire afternoon of rapid fire selling each stall had made alot of money on their own and combined we had made over two hundred pounds in a last ditch attempt to make some more money a couple of people at the comicbook stall went onto the playground and sold a few more copies to passing parents picking

up their children.

Last week everyone in the top literacy set finally finished the year 6 section of their reading transition booklet. As a reward our teacher allowed us to start focusing on the story of Beowulf and Grendel, a very gory story that originated over two thousand years ago. To start with we read the first two chapters and drew a picture of the Grendel based on the evidence of his appearance in the re-written version, we then found a way of representing the second chapter using any media we wanted. Many people chose to present the hall of Heorot after the Grendel's masacre, generally in the style of Jackson Pollock.

A couple of weeks ago we had sports day which, for a second year running, Grovsenor house won. In the year races, the year six winners were both ffrom Shaftsbury house. Once all the races were over, everyone returned to the school and many were signed out to have a picnic on the rec.

This week has been none stop concentration on our Joseph performance and it is almost entirely ready to be performed to the parents of the children in years 5 and 6.

Cakes and Story

Today we have finally finished our digi blue children stories. It was very hard but we enjoyed adding sound and creating the scenes.For each scene, when adding sound, we would always make mistakes beacuse we would start laughing.

In addition Year 6 have made cakes with ingredients they bought from a visit to Waitrose. We made the cakes all by ourselves and we were even taught how to make icing. The cakes have been made for a cake sale and the money raised will be spent on a digital video camera for yr3/4. Everyone thought making cakes were fun and we all got stuck in making. Everyone enjoyed themselves. We enjoyed every single part (apart from washing up and cleaning)! We have made approximately 230 cakes in one morning. The cakes will cost 20p each and we hope to make enough money to pay for a digital video camera for Year 3 and 4 to use.

Beacuse we needed money for ingredients our teacher checked that we weren't going to spend to much and let us use his money. Since we have done this we will need to pay our teacher £37.50. This has taught us about buisness for we will need to make at least £38.

Everyone enjoyed the day and we would all like to have more cookery lessons.

The Non-Residential Visit

On June the 8th 2009, a small amount of children came to school- not because they were ill but they were on a school trip, in Bude (for the whole week!) However, it is not really fair if the pupils in Bude had all the fun so, instead of the standard numeracy and literacy, the children who didn't go to Bude got to design a t-shirt for the pupils leaving Year 6. To succeed in this lesson, the children split in groups of 3 or 4 and chose a place to take a picture of. Then they planned what it was going to roughly look like and who was going to be in it. Of course, they showed this rough sketch to the teacher who then decided if they were ready or not to take pictures of the selected place. When the teacher said it was ok, they went where ever they needed to go. But, it wasn't as simple as taking a couple photo's, no. What they needed to do is take photo's all over the area staying in one place! To make this easier, they had to spin around slowly and take pictures looking down, then normally, then to the sky. This was extremly creative, this made me glad that I didn't go to Bude.

Once they finished, (which most groups done after break) they had to take pictures of people in the posses they want them to be in. Most groups took pictures of both staff members and the people not in Bude. Once everyone has finneshed taking their photo's, they merged the photo's into on picture on the t-shirt. Right know the t-shirts are beng made for the Year 6 leavers. I think this made most people very excited to get there t-shirts back.

After lunch, the childrens got into different groups to plan a stop motion film we are going to present to the infants. We had to choose a children story, and if they wanted to do something made up, they first had to write a script for it wich some groups did. After they chose the story, they had to paint a back ground for the film wich took most of the afternoon but it gave us just anough time to play basketball. The rules were first team to score stays on and the team who canceeded the goal comes of for another team. There were three teams wich made it easy to know who was coming on when there was a goal. This was so much fun, I lost count of the points but I think everyone had a lot of fun for a day. For the final half an hour of the day, we did singing assembaly wich I think calmed down after a really fun day.

However, we still were excited because we have had (and played) the Nintendo Wii in our classroom. On the Nintendo Wii, we did a contest to see who could get the highest score on Wii Sports bowling it was pretty close but there was a winner, I know everyone can't wait for more Wii contest.

Egyptian Location Study

Today Year Six have researched Egypt for their production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We had a big piece of black sugar paper to present our research but we had to make it look eye-catching beacuse they will be put up in the corridors.

In our reaserch we had to research geographical features (for example research on Cairo), education in Egypt, land usage and economy and produce. The task was very hard and it was difficult just to find a readable map. Some of our points were comparing Egypt to Great Britain.

We have found out that Egyptian houses are very different to the houses in Great Britain- their houses are joined and some are placed on top of each other!

I enjoyed it very much and would like to do a lesson like it again.

Egyptian Location Study

Literacy

Today, in Literacy, we were writing out our film storyboards in neat on our secondary school transfer booklets. The storyboard was to represent how we would film the opening of Abomination. Although the booklet only said to write the storyboard, our teacher gave us the oppurtunity to film the opening for ourselves.

The recording was fun and even though we did'nt get to go with who we wanted to, everybody had a good time. My group even had a boy dress up as a girl and recorded him to show to the rest of the class (Iwould'nt have liked to be him)! There were some slight problems as the videos could'nt be put together on a certain program but we quickly resolved that and the films/photo stories were soon finished!

Although my group was filming, four of the other groups were creating photo stories and everybody agreed that from the ones we watched they all managed to tell the story well.

As we have now finished this activity I hope that the other activities will be as fun as this has and the ICT being brought into literacy was a good idea too!

assembly and maths

Today we saw an infant assembly telling us about what they had learnt and how different people help us. A good example of this is the fire brigade and the coast guard.I found this assembly very intresting.

Afterwards we got to do maths where we had to create a car using £10,000. We had to find out how much it would cost to make and decide how much we should sell our cars for to make as much profit as we could. make.

We have to make at least £1000 profit on each car we sell. Finally our teacher checked our work so then we filled in the success criteria based on what we thought we had done. I found the session very fun, and yet challenging for my brain.

Abomination Photo Stories

Today in Literacy we finished making our Abomination photo storys. We had already taken our photos the previous day and then we had to put them into photo story and edit them. To do this we had to first had to download our pictures to photo story. We then added text to help tell the story. Penultimately, we added speech using mircophones and finally we added some music to fit the story. We have enjoyed making our photo storys because it gave us a chance to use our schools digital cameras, microphones and advanced programs called photo story and movie maker. These were some pictures used in our photostory:

Literacy: Movie making

In the past few weeks, Year 6 have been doing a transition unit on a book called Abomination, by Robert Swindells. As one of the units, we were asked to create a storyboard about Abomination this can then to be turned into a movie.

In the morning, we learnt about all the types of camera shots like extreme close up and mid shots. This came in useful when we were filming in the afternoon. After that, we were given a sheet with four quadrants on. Each quadrant had a different picture in including an eye, an ear, a camera and a face. These represented four aspects of film;what was seen, what was heard; camera positions and character emotions. We watched a short animated film called 'Lifted' that featured an alien getting his abducting licence. We wrote what the film used in each quadrant and after everyone had finished, they were handed in to the front and we discussed what a film needed to be successful.

During the afternoon we began storyboarding our film in six frames and an overall description of the beginning of the novel. The groups took a long time to storyboard! After a long time planning groups were sent off to find the perfect location for shooting. The enviromental area was a popular choice for the beginning scene as the hill suited the act of Taylor Hill perfectly. A few groups were asked to film but most were asked to represent the story by taking pictures of the scenes that they had storyboarded.

I think that the lesson was a good change to normal literacy activities and there should be more lessons like this as they are two subjects in one. Literacy and I.C.T!

Today's maths lesson!

Today in our maths lesson (The first lesson of the day) we had to do an investigation called 'Four Slide'. It involves addition and organising your numbers in systematic order. We had to organise our work as a tree diagram so it could be easier to read. As you can see to the right, there is a picture of how the tree diagram was started. It was an investigation so we had to make an observation and a prediction and afterwards check if your prediction was correct.

We had to create a tree diagram to show our findings of the investigation. On the left, there is a photo of my tree diagram of showing all the possibilities to move the counter, through four slides. There was a sheet with a 3x3 grid on it filled with the numbers 1-9 and we had to find all the possibilities to make a sequences with the counter starting on the number 5. For instance 5, 2, 1, 4, 7 is a sequence and these were the rules:

1) You can only move your counter up, down, left or right not diagonally.

2) You couldn't move to the number you were on before but you could come back to it later. For example, the sequence 5, 6, 5, 2, 1 would be breaking rule No.2 but the sequence 5, 6, 9, 8, 5 would be appropriate because you are allowed to use the same number but just not together

I felt that today's maths lesson was a bit easy but I am looking forward to tomorrow's lesson as it will be a challenge because Part 2 of the investigation is 'Five Slide'. There will be a lot more possible outcomes to find and theories to test.

The rules of the blog...

The Porstwood Blog has been set up to allow children from Year Six at Portswood Primary School to reflect and comment about their experiences in the classroom.
Everything that you see written has been written by them. All their writing is proof read before publication but apart from checking for sense and spelling it is pretty much unaltered. The photographs are all taken and uploaded by the children themselves and what is chosen to be snapped is their own choice.

The rules for writing on the blog given to the children are:
1) Write your blog, letting everybody know what has been happening in school.
2) Do not include any names (pupil or teacher), even your own.
3) Include photographs of things not people.
4) Do write well - remember your writing is representing the whole school at large to the whole world, if they want to read it!
5) Be honest. People want to know what you think of things, but be fair. The Internet is not the place to air your bad feelings!
6) You must have your work read by an adult before it is published. This adult must be a teacher from Year Six and not a supply teacher.

Afternoon Artwork

This afternoon, during our art lesson, year 6 worked on our 3D stages (and their backdrops) that we had started to work on yesterday. For most of us it was a short task because we had nearly finished yesterday. Also, most of our designs were fairly simple making it an even quicker task.

Because we are preparing to perform the play "Joseph and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat", at the end of this term , it was an enjoyable task since I felt that my work was contributing to the end of term project. Moreover, to make the task at hand even more fun to do, we created a structure made of straws to support our backdrops.

Once we were satisfied with our finished product, we then moved on to create small stage props that were also drawn and painted onto other parts of the model. Overall, I thought that all of the 3D stages were very colourful and would all make an excellent backdrop for our performance.

On the other hand, I thought that it was fairly difficult to construct the supports and they took too much of the time that I could have spent sketching or starting to paint my backdrop. However I still managed to finish my painting and I am pleased with the final painting I produced today.