Wow, what an action packed two weeks we have had in Year 6!

The beginning of the week commencing the 22nd September was all a little bit of a blur with everyone giddy due to the excitement of the looming residential trip to Dol-y-Moch!

However, we did find time to announce the following achievements this week:

Stars of the week:

Jordan, Michael and Ben J for outstanding contributions to our class debate, which not only earned them 5 raffle tickets, a sweet and a sticker each but also their place in the primary national debate. More details to follow soon but very well done to you three!

Ju-Eun Kang won the outstanding work award for her contribution to a Science lesson where we learned about extinct and endangered species and fossils. Kupa Rabvukwa won the outstanding homework award for his impressive effort! Well done Ju-Eun and Kupa who earned themselves two raffle tickets each!

Once all the hard work for the week was out of the way, Friday finally came! Eager more than ever, we waited with our luggage in the hall for the coach to arrive. Our parents waited outside trying their best not to shed a tear as they too waited for the coach to arrive. We all waited for the coach to arrive… and waited… and waited… and waited… but no coach arrived.

A good hour or two later, it finally appeared! After waving goodbye to our parents, getting stuck coming out of the drive and picking up St. John Vianney, we were finally on our way!

We made it so far with nothing but…

‘Are we nearly there yet?’

‘What time is it?’

‘How long do we have left?’

‘When are we stopping?’

‘I need a wee!’

…until came the dreaded … ‘Miss… I feel sick!’

After the fun and games on the coach, we finally arrived at Plas Dol-Y-Moch in the dark.

From that moment on, our Year 6 trip became one of the most treasured memories shared by us all. Although everyone will have taken away different highlights, lowlights and all the inbetween bits, I can confidently say Dol-y-Moch was a positive experience shared by all, myself included! I am sure Year 6 would like to add their own part about Dol-Y-Moch so I will leave it there for now but I would like to take this opportunity to say how privileged I feel to have spent that time with your wonderful children and watch them grow and become more respectful, responsible and resilient day by day. Amazing.

Easing back into school Wednesday was tough, but made a little easier by sharing hot chocolate, yummy cake (thank you Callum M!) and our DYM memories!

Friday soon came back around, with everyone eager to get home, enjoy the weekend and catch up on some well deserved zzzzzz’s. However before that, Year 6, once again, made us all proud as they acted as responsible prayer friends and impeccable role models as we demonstrated to Reception how we behave in church.

The whole of Year 6 were Stars of the Week this week (Mrs Hartwell owed a lot of raffle tickets and Mr Cooke gave out a lot of sweets!) Well done Year 6!

Outstanding work of the week award went to Henryk for his careful sketch of Paul Cezanne in Art. Outstanding homework of the week went to Jude Scholfield for an excellent poster presentation on the Isle of Wight. Well done Henryk and Jude!!

Friday ended on a high as Year 6 helped Miss Quinn complete her long overdue ice bucket challenge…

I look forward to seeing Year 6 back in school on Monday, after a well deserved weekend break, ready to work their socks off again. I also look forward to meeting parents for the parent consultation evening on Wednesday.

Thank you.

Mrs Hartwell.

Wow… We are now at the end of the third week of our Year 6 journey – time is flying! Like usual, this week was jam-packed full of many interesting and exciting activities!

We started the week looking pretty like this…

… And ended the week all crazy like this…!!

Back in our classroom, we are really enjoying reading Dear Olly by Michael Morpurgo as a class in Literacy, making predictions and discussing if we were right! In Numeracy, we have continued improving our learning of place value and now feel confident in multiplying and dividing decimals by tens, hundreds and thousands! We had a really good lesson learning about the United Kingdom and the difference between the UK, Great Britain and the British Isles in Geography. It was interesting to hear each-others views about Scotland and the vote for independence too! We are going to be focusing more on Wales next week, to prepare us for Dol-Y-Moch, which we are all so excited about (Dol-Y-Moch not Geography) ! We found out today that Mrs Hartwell, Mrs Elkins, Mr Cooke and Mrs Quinn are all coming with us, which made us happy! One more week to go!

On Wednesday, we went to Saint Thomas Mores Church for our joint celebration mass with our fellow faith schools where we were reunited with some of our old Year 6’s. When we came back to school, we were allowed a 10 minute run around because we were so exhausted after working hard all day.

Then … Mr Cooke arrived on the field clutching some important paperwork which caught our eyes!

Reference requests and invites to interviews have been coming in all week! Here are just a few of the happy faces …

(Sorry they are sideways. We need Mr Youson – Get better soon!)

Today we had our superstars assembly, weekly class awards and most importantly the raffle! Congratulations to Cecelia and Callum M, our stars of the week this week. Cecelia won hers for her lovely reading of a bidding prayer at our unity mass. Callum received his for a detailed biography about ‘The life of Callum Manley’. Well done Cecelia and Callum!

Also, well done to Joseph who won the outstanding work award for his excellent effort in Geography and Kelsey who won the outstanding homework work award for her accurate use of third person in her biography and effort in numeracy. Well done Joseph and Kelsey.

This week ended with an announcement about an upcoming competition. Three Year 6 children will be chosen to represent the school in a primary school debate challenge in the Spring Term. To be in it to win it we have to prepare for a debate which will take place on Monday where half the class will be arguing for and the other against our trip to Dol-Y-Moch! Stay tuned for more information!

By Orla O’Shea, Jordan Chatland and Ju-Eun Kang.

A note from Mrs Hartwell to parents/guardians:

I am already so proud of Year 6, who they are as a family and as individuals. They truly are a wonderful group of individuals with a huge range of talents and personality traits, that make me smile every day.

I particularly enjoy watching groups of children take pride in planning and leading our class collective worships on a Friday afternoon. Sophie, Joseph and Amie began out special class prayer time last week and Cecelia, Michael and Kelsey continued it with the same reverence and thought this week.

I look forward to meeting you all at the open evening on Wednesday 8th October. Please fill out the attached slip on this weeks newsletter and return to me as soon as possible, no later than 25th September, so that I can arrange appointments.

Secondary school applications also need to be completed online by 31st October.

Please also note, as highlighted on the newsletter, the Year 5 and 6 class due to take place this week is being rearranged.

Finally, I am incredibly excited about our adventure to Dol-Y-Moch next week and hope everyone has a memorable and enjoyable time!

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. Thank you for your continuing support.

Here are some quotes to sum up the first full week of the Autumn Term:

 “This week was a blast! It was jam-packed with many fun and exciting activities, such as Art where we looked at Paul Cezanne and practiced our sketching skills, Geography where we completed KWL charts to find out what we know and wonder and so much more. I can’t wait for next week!” Jordan Chatland

“This week has been awesome because it was our first proper week in Year 6 and we did lots and lots of Maths – Maths is the best!” Finn McDermott

“We started the week with a fantastic art lesson, where I learned how to sketch. On Tuesday we had our fist whole school mass. Gaelic football was so much fun on Thursday and our class collective worship on Friday, lead by me, Amie and Joseph was lovely. Well done to me, Orla J, Cecelia and Finn for being offered the roles of PA to Mrs Quinn and Mr Cooke!” Sophie Caswell

“We have done that many things this week, my head hurts thinking about them all!” Annie Sharman

“I really enjoyed the second week of the school year. We have made an amazing song, which we sung to the school in assembly. We played Gaelic football and a new instrument called the Ukulele with Mr Evans. It was an all-round good week!”
Jude Scholfield

“The second week in Year 6 with our awesome teacher Mrs Hartwell was enthusiastic and really fun!” Amie Lewis

“Overall an outstanding week!” Cecelia Evans

“I have thoroughly enjoyed the second week of term. It has been fantastic to see everyone adapting well to Year 6 and the responsibility this brings, acting as positive role models and generally trying so hard to do their best in everything they do. Well done Year 6!” Mrs Hartwell

*Well done to our superstars this week:

Orla J for acting as a positive role model in church

Jude for super effort!

Well done Orla and Jude! 🙂

*We also wished Lewis a very happy birthday earlier in the week and celebrated by singing to him and helping him eat his sweets!

*Well done Michael for outstanding effort on your autobiography as Michael Morpurgo and also Aoife for a very detailed and neatly presented family tree.

*Our deserving raffle winner this week was Michael! Lets get building our tickets back up this week. The more raffle tickets you earn, the more chance you have of winning!

*Congratulations to those of you have already received jobs and good luck to those of you still waiting to find out.

Mrs Quinn’s and Mr Cooke’s PA’s.

The new Year 6 are here and our first day back was a blast! We kicked off Wednesday by reuniting with our friends and All Souls family in an assembly – It suddenly felt like we had never been gone! Back in our class with Mrs Hartwell and Mrs Elkins, we discussed, agreed and signed a contract of class rules and responsibilities. Next came the exciting part where we were able to share our amazing mathematical board games, that we had made over the summer holidays, with our friends. Mrs Hartwell and Mrs Elkins looked extremely impressed with the effort we had all gone to. The winners of the board game challenge were Roisin and Henryk! Well done!

In other competition news, Kelsey and Callum M were announced as the winners of the postcard competition. Kelsey sent hers from Norfolk and included detailed diagrams to provide us with more information. Callum included lots of detail describing his adventures in the Isle of Wight. Well done!

Kupa, Cecelia, Joseph & Grace H were announced as winners of the homework award. Kupa and Cecelia designed impressive photos which illustrated their likes, dislikes, interests and hobbies without the use of words, whilst Joseph and Grace’s detailed book reviews provided excellent recommendations of books to read.

All competition winners received 5 raffle tickets to enter into our first weekly draw.

On Thursday, Mr Cooke asked us to complete a handwriting test to determine who was ready for a pen license. Friday’s Superstar assembly announced Michael, Ciara, Ben J, Cecelia, Maticia, Roisin, Kelsey and Orla O’Shea as the lucky receivers of their pen licence along with a special handwriting pen which they are really excited to use! The rest of our class are going to try really hard to earn one next time!

We all really enjoyed a whole class discussion Thursday afternoon, in which we were posed with peculiar questions to discuss as a group, such as “Is there more future in the world or more past?” We listened and contributed really well as a class and found the whole experience fascinating – We hope this circle time continues!

Today, our day began by writing prayers to ask God to guide us through this important year ahead. As the sun was shining, we decided to go down to the beautiful prayer garden to listen to everyone say their individual prayer. This shared prayer time was a very special and reverent moment for all of us.

Superstars of the week in our Friday morning assembly were announced as Henryk for his thoughtful prayer and Orla O for being responsible and eager. Well done superstars!

Finn and Michael also received a special mention as they were commended for their effort in a competition we entered in Year 5, in which we had to design a dinner for astronauts in space! We all received a certificate for our entries, but Michael and Finn also received a goody bag for their tremendous ideas! Well done!

So… At the end of our three-day-thrilling-week, which drew to an end with Roisin winning the class raffle, we all feel amazing and excited to see what next week will bring.

Keep checking back for our class song, which is currently at the editing stage, in addition to photos of our first wonderful week in Year 6!

Have a lovely weekend,

Year 6 🙂