The Final Stretch

And so it is, with heavy hearts, we reach the final leg of our journey through Year 6. We have travelled through the valleys and mountains of the Wild West, hitting highs, feeling some lows, but all the while working as a team to overcome everything that our final year at Harrowgate Hill Primary might throw at us.

Which is exactly what we'll continue to do this term. Our SATs have arrived, but we will not let them dishearten us. Beyond them, we have our exciting residential at Robinwood (and a fun three days in school with Miss Robinson for those unable to come!); then, when we return, we'll turn our attention to our Leaver's Production - Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat - with rehearsals starting as soon as our half term break is over; and then, as term begins to fade, like a typical cowboy sunset, we'll think about our Leaver's Assembly and our BBQ - the highlight of every good Year 6 cowboy's social calendar!

As always, if there's anything you need from me, feel free to get in touch - I'm a helpful cowboy at heart and am always happy to lend an ear or do anything I can to assist.

I hope you all have a fantastic end of Year 6 and that you find happy trails when you move on to your next school.

Thanks for being such fab cowboys!

Mr Abbott

Welcome Back

Welcome back to the Spring Term - I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas and are ready to work hard! This term, we will be focussing on Crime and Punishment as our topic, delving into the various laws and punishments dished out for breaking them throughout history, making pit stops in several periods which the children should already be familiar with - Ancient Rome and the Victorian era being two - and some periods that will be new to them - including the Tudors, which we study next term. This trip through history can get pretty gruesome at times as we discover just what the punishment for witchcraft was, and explore a variety of instruments of torture, but the children love all that gory stuff and will be engaged and enthused with everything we do. To complement this, in English we also study The Highwayman (a narrative poem by Alfred Noyes), the Lady of Shallot (by Alfred Tennyson) and the Long Walk to Freedom, the story of Nelson Mandela's fight for equality in South Africa. In Science, we will be looking at the circulatory system, with a close focus on the heart and the lungs, and testing just how fit the children are - I'm sure the answer to that is, of course, fitter than Mr Abbott!!!

I hope we all have a fab, hard working term in the lead up to SATs (only a handful of months away) and that we all thoroughly enjoy all of our learning.

Mr Abbott

Eden Camp

As part of our Topic (World War 2) we visited Eden Camp, a former prisoner of war camp, constructed by Italian prisoners of war in 1940. There are, it seems, no prisoners there anymore, and so the camp has been turned into a museum, using the original huts (in which the prisoners would have been housed) as "museums within the museum", each focussing on a different aspect of the war - both at home and abroad.

The children learned all about life at home - including rationing and evacuation - as well as life on the battlefield, and they even had a chance to experience what it might have been like in a submarine (dark, cramped and wet!). Everyone enjoyed themselves, learned lots and were looking forward to learning even more in their topic lessons!

Welcome To The Wild West

Yeehaw, pardners!!

Howdy, and welcome to the Wild West, the rootin'est, tootin'est class in all of Year Six!

It's your last year at HHPS, and we aim to make sure it's the best year that you've had. Yes, it's your SATs year, and that's mightily important, but it's also the year for making your learning all about fun! In English, we will be reading and making comment on The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and a number of plays by our greatest playwright, William Shakespeare. In Maths, we'll be looking at number, shape, space, data and even a little bit of algebra. In Topic, we will be studying World War 2, the Tudors and Crime and Punishment throughout history, and in Science, we take a close look at light, electricity, animals, plants and evolution! We might even find time to take a trip back in time (sadly, not in the TARDIS) to the time of the Wild West so that we can learn all about cowboys, pioneers and Native Americans.

But, as well as all of that, there's all that stuff that you've been looking forward to being in Year Six to take part in. A trip to Eden Camp, to look at all things World War Two, a possible residential, with all kinds of exciting activities to take part in, and, most excitingly of all, the opportunity to take part in our Year Six Leaver's Production!! I know your teachers can't wait to share all of these things with you, and I hope you're looking forward to them just as much!

And all of this ... well, it's just the beginning, with even more to come.

I hope you'll enjoy Year Six as much as I enjoy teaching it!!

Mr Abbott