Year 6: The Meerkats: Blog items
Last week of term, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 15th Dec 2019 @ 10:10pm
Christmas is nearly here. 🎄 We have lots of activities planned this week to get us all into the Christmas spirit.
Making calendars, Christmas cards, Meerkat Christmas decorations, sewing Christmas Meerkats, Christmas maths activities and lots more.
The panto trip is on a Tuesday, it is at an ice rink so please ensure your child has a warm coat, hat and gloves etc.
We have been amazing Meerkats this term and have earned a class compliment. The children are still deciding what to do so more details to follow.
Swimming is on as normal this week.
Carol service on a Friday afternoon.
Christmas Dinner, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 15th Dec 2019 @ 10:01pm
Magnet poster homework, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 10th Dec 2019 @ 6:58pm
Wow! You are amazing Meerkats. I’m sat at home marking your homework and I have the biggest smile on my face. Your posters are brilliant. You have learnt so many facts, found out some new ones and presented them in eye catching and interesting ways. I had to share a few. Well done.
Balancing clowns, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 9th Dec 2019 @ 8:17pm
How can you make the clown balance on a string?
Friction ramps, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 9th Dec 2019 @ 8:16pm
What is Friction? How do different surfaces affect the travel of a car down a ramp? We collected data and found an average for each surface.
Magnet Games, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 9th Dec 2019 @ 8:07pm
Last week we had an amazing time, designing and making magnetic games. We had a dartboard, fishing games and maze games, all with a Christmas theme. We took them down to the Pandas on Friday and played our games together. We had a great time.
Modroc food, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 9th Dec 2019 @ 7:58pm
We started making these a while ago, today we completed them. Here are some photos of the amazing Meerkats and their work.
Magnets, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 3rd Dec 2019 @ 7:19pm
This week has been all about Science so far. We have been exploring magnets. How to they work? How strong are they? What materials are magnetic? What are magnets used for?
We have looked at examples of magnetic games this afternoon and started to plan and design our own Christmas themed magnetic games.
Reading rocket, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 28th Nov 2019 @ 6:33pm
Work has started on our egg box reading rocket, we will post another photo when it has been completed.
Watch this space.
Space rocket day, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 28th Nov 2019 @ 6:19pm
Wow! We had an amazing day on Tuesday thanks to Steve from Starchaser. The children thoroughly enjoyed making their rockets and watching them fly high into the sky. If you were in Longton I wouldn’t be surprised if you could hear their ohhhs and ahhhs!
We went outside to look at the Nova 2 rocket. It has cost £500,000 and 10 years to develop. We are looking forward to seeing it blast off into space at the end of a May 2020.
We made some spaghetti bolognese from expedition freeze dried food similar to that which astronauts eat.
Thanks to all the parents who came along to watch, we hope you enjoyed it as much as the children.
Rockets launches , by Mr Pearson
Date: 26th Nov 2019 @ 8:14pm
Film of the end of school rocket launches
The week ahead 11th November, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 11th Nov 2019 @ 6:38pm
It is a really busy week in the Meerkat tribe this week.
On Friday it is our class assembly so we are busy writing, preparing and practising so we can WOW you.
We have been busy making some sculptures. I’ve not posted any pictures for two reasons;
1. My hands have been too gooey to be able to pick up the iPad! and
2. We want to keep it a surprise till Friday.
During the week our maths work will focus on the 3 and 4 times tables, number sequences and using Venn and Carroll diagrams.
Our English work will be writing a story about an astronaut searching for a planet - our own innovation of Bob and the vanishing moon.
County Hall Visit, by Mrs Fletcher
Date: 10th Nov 2019 @ 3:09pm
On Wednesday members of our school parliament visited County Hall. They listened to a presentation about how Lancashire County Council works delivered by Josh Mynott. The presentation took place in the council chamber. The children were joined by County Councillor Graham Gooch who is also a governor of our school and by County Councillor Jayne Rear who is the lead member for Young People. The children learnt a lot about Lancashire and the work of the council during their visit.
Longton Library Activity, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 4th Nov 2019 @ 5:12pm
Trailblazers Book Club – 11:00am-11:45am, this Saturday 9th November
Our book club aimed at children aged 6-11 is relaunching this Saturday!
This time we are looking at special books that tell us the stories of real people – biographies! We'll read one together and then use the computers to find out interesting things about famous people like leaders, inventors, sports stars and more.
Everybody's welcome – even if you've never been to Trailblazers before!
This event is a free drop-in session.
This would be a great event for year 3 children to attend, we will be looking at writing biographies in a few weeks time. In class we will be focusing on astronauts. Maybe you could get a head start on your research. 
Welcome Back to school, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 28th Oct 2019 @ 7:36pm
It was lovely to see you all today, I recieved lots of holiday passports, I can't wait to read all about your adventures.
Please keep sending them in.
Today we started our Maths unit on subtraction, we had a go at learning some magic tricks in preparation for our English story and planned our 3D food sculptures.
Throughout the week we will
continue with subtraction,
explore our new story about the adventures of Bob on the Moon.
explore subordinate clauses in the text and in our writing
Swimming on Thursday
Metacognition lesson - revisiting and redrafting our writing.
Homophones, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 15th Oct 2019 @ 6:08pm
This week have been exploring different homophones. Today we played a memory game to try and find some different homophone pairs, then we had to make up sentences to tell the rest of our group using the words to explain their different meanings.
Projects, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 15th Oct 2019 @ 6:05pm
Meerkats you truly are amazing. Well done to everyone who has brought in a project. You’re all very creative. We have some along our food theme, some linked to the moon as part of our whole school theme of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing and some which have combined both ideas together. Well done to everyone.
Firework safety poster competition, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 11th Oct 2019 @ 3:04pm
Sorry this is late notice, time has flown quickly and posters need to be in well before bonfire night to be judged and prizes awarded before the day.
Children from any class can enter. Just create a poster showing how to be safe on bonfire night and bring it to school on Monday to be sent off to Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service.
Last year we had an overall winner in school, it would be great if someone from Longton could win a prize.
End of year expectations, by Mr Pearson
Date: 10th Oct 2019 @ 12:01pm
Please click on the link to see the end of year expectations for writing, reading and maths for your child's year group.
A few reminders, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 8th Oct 2019 @ 8:33pm
Just a few reminders.
Next week we will be sending home holiday passports, there are still several children who have not returned them after the summer holidays. Please can you send them in so they can be marked ready for next week.
Projects to be in this week please. Thankyou to those people who have brought them in, I’m looking forward to you telling us all about them.
Next Friday, 18th October we are holding our enterprise after school. The children are going to be decorating shortbread biscuits to make them into Pudsey bear faces. If anyone could spare an hour or so during the day to help out I would be very grateful, please call in to speak to me or leave a message with Linda and I’ll get back to you. I know Children in Need isn’t for another month but we thought this was a perfect opportunity to raise money for a worthwhile cause and to link in with our food and baking topic.
Amazing artists, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 8th Oct 2019 @ 8:21pm
Over the last 2 days we have been focusing on drawing fruit. Yesterday we just used the photographs of fruit and veg faces by Giuseppe Archimboldo. Today we completed some observational drawings of fruit focusing on the inside of them and the seeds they contain.
The detail was amazing, I can’t wait to see their skills in shading develop as we go through the year.
Well done Meerkats.
Maths - smartie graphs, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 8th Oct 2019 @ 8:17pm
Today we investigated my theory.
I think there are fewer orange smarties in a box than any other colour.
We each had a box of smarties, counted up the different colours and recorded our data in a table. From this we drew a bar chart. There was not a conclusive answer, some children had fewer orange smarties than any other colour some didn’t. Tonight I have collated all the results. I’ll let you know the answer tomorrow.
W/c 7th October, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 6th Oct 2019 @ 4:49pm
This week we will be learning
Maths - interpreting and representing data in bar charts and tables.
English - the final group will be making their biscuits and we will be writing out recipes focusing on layout and making sure they use the language features we have been exploring. Conjunctions to create a subordinate clause at the start of a sentence, prepositions, verbs, adverbs.
Topic - this week will focus on art. Looking at the work of Giuseppe Archimboldo, the imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruit, vegetables, flowers and fish.
There will also be some Lancashire crisp tasting, the results of which we will be exploring in our maths lessons.
Spellings this week will focus on words with the spelling pattern ‘ei’ vein, ‘eigh’ eight, ‘aigh’ straight and ‘ey’ they.
Maths - Perimeter, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 6th Oct 2019 @ 3:50pm
This week we have been learning all about perimeter. These are just a few photos of one of the activities we did. Measuring the sides of a shape, measuring art straws to find the matching length to place around our shapes, then putting them in one long line to find the total distance around the shape - the perimeter.
Macmillan coffee morning and book read, by Mrs Catterall
Date: 1st Oct 2019 @ 5:39pm
What an amazing morning. We were completely blown away by the number of visitors this morning. Thank you to everyone who came along to support this event, there was plenty of cake for everyone. The children enjoyed reading with their parents/grandparents, reading with the younger children or sat on a bean bag, taking off their shoes and sharing a book with their friends. Thankyou also to the parents who helped our amazing charity ambassadors and heads team.
We had lots of amazing cakes for our moon/space themed competition. There are some very talented bakers out there. The charity ambassadors had some difficult decisions to make when choosing the winner from each class. The winners were informed in assembly today and prizes given out. All children who took part will receive a special certificate later this week.
We will let you know the total amount once it has been totalled up.
