Monthly Archives: June 2017

Theme Park Maths

Class Work, Numeracy

This week Year 6 have started a super new project called ‘Theme Park Maths’. It’s a stimulating project that develops the childrens’ critical thinking and creative thinking skills; both of which are behaviours for learning here at Bells Farm. The children were put into small groups and had to work collaboratively to make decisions and design their own theme park. This helped to strengthen their ability to work as a team, and encouraged them to use a range of mathematical and literacy skills. It was also a lot of fun!

Art Week

Art, Class Work

Year 6 Eagles have had a fabulous Art week learning all about an African artist called Ephrem Kouakou. We studied the techniques he uses, and then had a go at creating our own piece in a similar style. We took photographs of the children and then used various materials to produce individual interpretations of the artist’s piece called ‘Four women in Bloom’. I’m sure you’ll agree…the children have produced some impressive pieces themselves.

Our completed games in Scratch and Kodu

Class Work, Computing

Year 6 Eagles have today completed their game development by creating a game in either Scratch or Kodu. They have also put together some front covers with a PEGI rating for each of their games to determine the appropriate age group for their game.

The project has involved planning, researching, developing and testing each others games.

Here are some of the Scratch games, let us know what you think.

Maisy’s Online Safety Quiz

Paige’s Online Safety Quiz

Mya’s Online Safety Quiz

Game developers

Art, Class Work, Computing, English

In the past few weeks, Year 6 Eagles have become game developers by planning, developing and then testing their games. The children then designed front covers for their games with an online safety PEGI rating provided for the game.

Once completed, the children started to create front covers for their games including key elements, age rating, description, title and screenshots.

The children had a choice of creating one game, based on the following:

The children have demonstrated their knowledge of both programss. Some chose to create a Scratch game and others decided they’d create a Kodu game.

They have nearly completed their games and front covers, on Friday we will have some examples on our blog here.

Eagles creating their games

Eagles creating their front covers

Advantages of being in groups

Class Work, PSHE

Year 6 have been looking at the advantages of being involved in a group, such as: Neighbourhood Watch, a church or a mosque.

We discussed how some groups can give us cause for concern and how we can keep ourselves safe and out of danger.

The children also designed an anti-bullying tree and covered the branches in anti-bullying slogans, advice for bullies and acrostic poetry. Take a look at some of the pictures.

Creating polygon shapes using Logo

Class Work, Computing

During Computing, Year 6 have been using a program called Logo to create polygon shapes; square, triangle and a rectangle. Their maths knowledge was put to the test by working out the angle to form the correct shape.

Eagles also learned about the “repeat” command, which makes it quicker and easier to create a shape. They used “pen up” to move around the screen without drawing lines.

The children then tried creating procedures for these shapes and also pushed themselves to create a house using various shapes. The ‘setpencolor’ was used to change the colour of the line.


Acting out ‘The Barrow Quest’

Class Work, English

Now SATS are over year 6 are focusing on their writing. They have started a new exciting unit called ‘The Barrow Quest’. So far they have studied the first exciting chapter, focusing on how the author engages us and acted out a series of second chapters as well as chosen their favourite. They will eventually write their on stories based on a quest.

Programming a rocket launch using micro:bit

Class Work, Computing

Year 6 Eagles class visited the Samsung Digital Academy (at Harborne Academy) today to build their programming knowledge, this time using a small system called a micro:bit. They used JavaScript editor to program a rocket launch countdown on their micro:bit.

The children found the lesson fun and engaging with Mr Whitehouse, using new programming terminology including “string”, “integer”, “input” and “output”.