Week commencing 15th September 2025
What a fantastic week it’s been in Year 6! From deep thinking in RE to creative challenges in Art, the class has truly shown excellent resilience, knowledge-building skills, and plenty of kindness along the way. It’s been lovely to see those little acts of kindness—a helping hand in a tricky task, kind words of encouragement, or simply a smile shared at the right moment—making a big difference in our classroom community. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights from our learning journey this week:
English: Exploring Pandora with Powerful Paragraphs
Our English work has taken us far beyond Earth, all the way to the sci-fi world of Pandora! We’ve started crafting non-chronological reports on the incredible creatures that live on this mysterious planet. Children have been working hard to include ambitious expanded noun phrases and relative clauses, helping to bring their reports to life with rich, descriptive detail. From razor-winged sky hunters to glowing forest stalkers, the imagination and vocabulary on show have been out of this world!
Maths: Place Value Power!
In Maths, we’ve been diving into place value with a focus on 7-digit numbers, rounding, and even negative numbers. Several children have taken on extra challenge tasks, showing real confidence and stretching their thinking. What’s been even more impressive is the way classmates have stepped in to support each other, sharing strategies and celebrating one another’s successes—a wonderful example of how kindness and teamwork boost learning for everyone.
Geography: Our Local Economy
This week, we explored the idea of economic activity and thought carefully about what drives our local economy. We had great discussions around different types of jobs and industries, but we also reminded ourselves that not everything valuable has a price—sometimes, the best things in life are completely free, like a spectacular view, a walk with friends, or a simple act of kindness.
RE: The Ten Commandments
Our RE lessons helped us understand how the Ten Commandments show God’s power and His love for His people. We thought about how these ancient rules still guide people today and how we, too, can reflect God’s love through small, kind actions—just like so many of you have done this week.
Art: 3D Dog Sculptures
In Art, we’ve been working on our exciting 3D dog project. Using the grid drawing technique, children carefully mapped out their designs and explored the concept of negative and positive space—thinking about how we see and understand shapes in art. The care and focus everyone has shown has been outstanding—and so has the encouragement you’ve given to one another, especially when things didn’t go quite right the first time!
A huge well done to all of Year 6 for showing such a positive attitude this week. Your resilience, kindness, and growing confidence are something to be proud of. It’s the little things—both in learning and in life—that often have the biggest impact. Keep being brilliant, and have a lovely weekend St Martin’s Class!
Week commencing 8th September 2025
What a fantastic first full week back it’s been for our Year 6 class at St Joseph’s! The classroom has been buzzing with excitement, curiosity, and a real sense of purpose as we dive into our learning journey together. From House Captain speeches to scientific discoveries, our children have already shown that they are ready to meet the high expectations of their final year at primary school – and they’re doing it all while living out our REACH values every step of the way.
Resilience in Science
We kicked off our new Science topic – evolution and inheritance – with some fascinating discussions about fossils and the clues they give us about life millions of years ago. The children showed real resilience as they tackled tricky ideas around how characteristics are passed down through generations and how living things have adapted over time. It’s not an easy topic, but their determination to understand was inspiring!
Empathy in RE and with our Reception buddies
In RE, we’ve been exploring the story of Moses and thinking deeply about how God has faith in all people – even when they doubt themselves. We started to connected this to our own lives and how we can show empathy to others by recognising everyone’s potential and believing in them. On Friday, we met our Reception buddies for the first time and helped them at lunch time. The children were great role models listening and reacting to their new buddies for the year, showing real empathy for the youngest members of our school family.
Aspiration in Leadership
This week was a big one – House Captain speeches! We couldn’t be prouder of our candidates. They prepared with care, spoke with confidence, and most importantly, inspired us all with their ideas and vision. Their speeches were truly aspirational – a reminder that leadership isn’t just about a title, but about passion, effort, and believing in yourself. No matter the results, every single one of them is a winner in our eyes!
Confidence in Creativity
In Art, we’ve begun exploring the work of Lubaina Himid, an artist known for transforming 2D artwork into powerful 3D pieces. We’ve started to think about how we can take inspiration from her to develop our own projects. The class showed confidence in sharing their thoughts and responding to Himid’s bold use of colour and storytelling – we can’t wait to see where this takes our creativity this term!
High Expectations in Sport and Study
Our PE lessons have focused on football, particularly defensive teamwork. There was great cooperation, communication, and plenty of enthusiasm on the field! In Geography, we explored physical and human features of our local area, including Stroud and nearby towns, while linking it to historical periods we’ve studied. Whether on the pitch or in the classroom, the children are rising to the challenge and showing they’re ready for the high expectations we have in Year 6.
It’s only the beginning, but already we’re seeing what an incredible group of learners we have this year. They are showing that by using our REACH values – Resilience, Empathy, Aspiration, Confidence, and High Expectations – there is no limit to what they can achieve. Here’s to a year full of growth, discovery, and unforgettable moments!
Week commencing 1st September
Only a 3-day week but Year 6 have started as they mean to go on REACHing in all areas!
Lots of excitement about the Year 6 privileges – sitting on benches, water bottles at places, pencil cases etc.
A few activities that we have done this week are: created/completed some art work for our corridor considering our life now and our aspirational hopes and dreams for the future; written prayers linked to our class saint – Saint Martin de Porres; completed assessments (here we showed great resilience and determination to be the best we could be); looked at the internet and how data is sent over it during computing; and completed a football session in PE – it really has been busy!
Our pictures this week show us pulling faces for our corridor display linked to our hopes for this year and the future - my hope is that these pictures make the class smile every morning as they come in!
I can’t wait for next week – house captain speeches!