Welcome to Class 6 - Badgers

The Wizard of Oz

Photos courtesy of Mrs Hatswell :)

Kent Police Open Day

Sports Week: Olympic Medals

Sports Week: Taekwondo

Sports Week: Skateboarding

Sports Week: Rhythmic Gymnastics

Sports Week: Archery

Class Trip to Rye

Sports Week: Boxercise

Residential Trip - Day 3

It’s all over! We had a wonderful final day. We had to drag the children out of bed this morning after the previous day’s exertions! After breakfast and packing up our things we started with a mini-beast hunt. We built a bug hotel and one group found a newt! Next, the boys’ group smashed the camp record with their amazing teamwork in one of the problem-solving challenges. The other two groups tackled the obstacle course. After lunch, we visited the shop to make some deliciously irresponsible impulse purchases, before heading to the zip wire to end the trip. 

Fluffy Pink Unicorns Assemble!

We still have lots of fun activities left, but this morning we had to pack up all our things ready for our departure at 4:00pm!

Residential Trip - Day 2

It’s amazing how much you can fit into a day if you all get up at 5:30 am! We’ve done climbing, archery, orienteering, aeroball, the 5g swing, a scavenger hunt and an obstacle challenge. News that we had not been scheduled a disco put some of the girls in a mutinous mood, until Mrs Garrett managed to sweet-talk one of the administrators. I type this, wallflower-style, from the corner of a darkened room as the children bounce around whilst chanting along to Livin’ on a Prayer. After the disco, we are competing in a Scrap Heap Challenge! It has all been amazing - but thoroughly exhausting. Surely they’ll sleep beyond 5:30 tomorrow! 🤞🏻

Residential Trip - Day 1

We’ve had a great first day and have packed lots in already. We played a game of rounders when we arrived and a few games of Werewolf. We found all our rooms and made our beds! One group had a go at the climbing wall, while two groups tackled some fun problem solving activities. We had a lovely meal earlier, before a friendly game of basketball, and we are now doing a mini-Olympics featuring some crazy relay races. After all this, I’m certain that all the children will be asleep as soon as their heads hit their pillows! 

Fun Week: Local Walk

PE: Football

Easter Bonnets

Arts Week: Our Doors

Art Week: The Courtyard of a School in Sheldwich

Lamb's Heart Dissection

On Wednesday, we examined some lambs’ hearts. We felt the weight of them and identified the different blood vessels, before slicing them open to see inside the four chambers and find the valves between the atria and the ventricles. The children were surprising unsqueamish about the whole thing and everyone joined in in some way.

PE: Hockey

In our outdoor P.E. lessons, we've braved the cold to practice our hockey skills. We have practiced dribbling, tackling, passing and shooting. Consolidating our skills with lots of small mini-games.  

PE: Gymnastics

This term we have been exploring different ways of balancing and transitioning into and out of those poses. We've all been wowed by how talented many of our class mates are!

Computing - What's inside a computer?

To conclude our term on Computing Systems and Networks, today we took apart some old computers to see what parts they contain. We identified the motherboards and CPUs (central processing units), the RAM (random access memory), the GPUs (graphics processing units) when they weren't integrated and the storage (either hard disk drives or solid-state drives). We disassembled as much as we could and then, when we'd found everything, we put it all back together again!

Royal Engineers Museum Trip

Class 6 had a super trip to the Royal Engineers museum in Gillingham. In support of our First World War History topic, we took part in three workshops. In the first we learnt about life in the trenches on the Western Front, visiting the replica trench and handling real First world War trench artefacts to try and work out what they were. In our second workshop we made two poppies, one to bring home and one to place on the memorial inside the museum, before holding our own two minutes silence. In our final workshop, we learnt about local WW1 flying ace James McCudden and the medals he was awarded. The children used clay and craft materials to make their own version of one of James' medals. We also had free time to explore the Museum's many exhibits.

STEM Week - Animation

Our take on the Movie Magic theme for this year's STEM Week was to make our own movies! We began by watching some old Aardman Animations productions like Morph and Creature Comforts. Using an app called iMotion on the iPads, we all tried a few different techniques for making animations: using inanimate objects, plasticine and finally drawing on a white board. The children then spent some time storyboarding their ideas and were given free rein to make whatever animations they wanted. Take a look at the video below which brings together the amazing, creative animations that all the groups produced. If you're squeamish about cruelty to plasticine, you may want to look away at a few points!

STEM Week - Static Electricity Workshop

We were lucky enough to be visited during STEM Week by Viggo's mum, Rose Hummerstone, who is a secondary school physics teacher. She ran a special interactive session for Class 6 all about static electricity. We started out by finding out about what static electricity is through some discussion, demonstrations and online simulations. After that we used gold leaf electroscopes to measure the amount of static electricity we could generate by rubbing plastic rod and other objects with a fabric cloth. Finally, we had great fun experiencing the hair-raising power of the Van Der Graaff generator. We had a brilliant afternoon and can't thank Rose enough for coming in to work with us.

STEM Week - UK Bebras Challenge

All the children, from Year 2 up to Year 6, entered the UK Bebras challenge this week. This is a national online computational thinking competition. The children had to solve a number of tricky logical thinking problems in 40 minutes. Children achieving a score in the top 10 percent nationaly will be invited to enter the Oxford University Computing Challenge. You can try some of the previous year's questions here: UK Bebras 

STEM Week - Virtual Reality Workshop

To support last term's Science learning about Earth and Space, Year 6 did our VR experience about space. It was amazing to feel like we were zooming through the solar system to get a close up look at all the planets and many of their moons.

PE: Stronger Futures

This term we've been joined by Total Sports for some P.E. sessions centred around well-being. This week we were playing dodgeball while consciously tuning in to our emotions to consider how we feel and how others feel during the game. It was great fun and fascinating to step back and examine our own elation and frustrations.

Halloween Fancy Dress Fun Run

Computing - Remote Controlled Robot Racing

The ended the term by turning the classroom into a racetrack! The children used the Bluetooth connections between micro:bits to code one micro:bit to send signals to a second micro:bit in the robots. Those signals could then trigger the different motors in the robots. The children all coded their own team's robots and controllers, so some were set to different speeds, and had different control designs for turning and manoeuvring. Next we raced them in pairs and timed the winning robots in each heat. The robots had to travel through two gates and to the finish line. George and Ethan finished first, completing the course in a very impressive 17 seconds!

Victorian Exercise Drills

Inspired by some old film of Victorian children doing their exercise drills in P.E. lessons, we had a go at coming up with some moves of our own for the whole class to copy!

Computing - Robotics

We've been testing the ultrasonic distance sensors on the :Move Robots and writing code to make them automatically avoid obstacles. One group got a greater-than sign the wrong way round and their robot sped up when it got near something!

Irish Dancing