FRIDAY

Good morning, Year 6!  The end of the first week of home learning!  Don’t those days just fly by?

ENGLISH

This has been a big writing week and we’ve been loving your work as it comes in.  

Did you know, once Roald Dahl finished a book, he used to leave it months before he reread it.  This way, he forgot what was in his head when he wrote it and read it as everyone else would – with fresh eyes.

See which of these you can edit:

• Speech punctuation.  You should ideally have dialogue to carry your dialogue forward.  Do you have a new paragraph for speech?  Inverted commas?  Punctuation within the speech? 
• Metaphors, similes and personification.  Are you using all of those brilliant poetic devices to make your description sing?  (Oh, there’s some personification right there!).
• Paragraphs.  Pick up a reading book.  Go on.  Now have a look at how many paragraphs there are and how long they are.  Probably there’s quite a lot of paragraphs and they’re not all that long.  It depends on the writer, of course.  Some people like long, description-filled paragraphs.  But sometimes shorter paragraphs can move the story on that much faster… don’t fall into the trap of the massive endlessly long paragraph that never seems to stop.  Like this one.
• Dialogue.  Think back to all the work we did on The Lie Tree showing how what comes out of people’s mouths isn’t always what they really mean.  If your character is furious, does she say, “I am furious!”  Or does she say, something that shows she’s furious?
• Spellings.  Of course, check with a dictionary.

Test on last week’s spellings

Today, it’s time for a spelling test.  So the first spelling is… wait… this isn’t going to work, is it?

For this week, have a look at the paragraphs below.  Look for the words that are misspelled.  If you figure out which letters are incorrect – or which letters are missing – you will find it spells a word.  But which word?!

Here’s the paragraph.

The tiny town was desighnated a “Black Zone”.  Acrid, black smoke billowed over the insignificent houses and merged with the greying winter drizzle to form a sludgy sleet.   Watching from the safety of the hill, she swallowed hard and looked at her papers.  Pictograms, Carol diagrams, transcripts of signalls detected from inside the Black Zone and, above the Queen’s swirly signatore, a single instruction: “Save Them.”

Gosh, that was quite an exciting paragraph.  I wonder what comes next?!

Practise your new spellings

After this, it’s time to look at next week’s spellings.  Look up any words you aren’t sure about.  And look at the sheet showing how to practise spellings to decide how you would like to practise today.

MATHS

https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/year-6/

Have a look at the video Calculating Scale Factors and try the questions.

Other than that, last chance to try the problem solving challenge of the week before the MASKED MATHEMATICIAN reveals all on Monday!  Oh yes!

ART

Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Mario, Sonic… every company has got a cartoon mascot these days!  What would the Parkfield mascot be though?  Perhaps a swallow like on the jumper or a dragon like Dilwyn – or perhaps something completely surprising?

If you want some inspiration on cartooning skills, check out the sites of some of our favourite comics: The Beano (https://www.beano.com/categories/how-to-draw) and The Phoenix (https://bit.ly/PHOENIXQCLUB)

Then, once you’re ready, please let us see your artistic masterpieces!  Remember, with cartoons, simple concepts and fewer lines is better.  Also, try and make your idea really simple and clear.  Bright colours are a plus too!

WEIRD FRIDAY

On Monday, we learned that the way we see is through light waves entering our eyes and being interpreted by the brain.  In fact, our brain decides what we see and how we see it.

You might want to turn the sound down for this video which shows the Munker Illusion.  There are two green circles.  They are exactly the same – but look how they appear different when they’re put next to different colours.  The difference isn’t in the shapes; the difference is in our brains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNw9XSp9Igc

And it’s not just our eyes – what we hear is also interpreted in the brain.  This is the incredibly weird McGurk effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0&t=1s

Enjoy your weekend!