If you need to contact us for any reason, please use the email addresses below. 

nallsop@highfieldhall.derbyshire.sch.uk

cheryll4@highfieldhall.derbyshire.sch.uk

Lea Green

What a fantastic trip we had to Lea Green today. We could not be prouder of all of the children!

Hoodwinked

We were gutted that our play had to be cancelled. So many of you had been learning lines and songs. Here are videos of some of our soloists and other brave volunteers singing some showstoppers for you. 

Victorian School Day

Hoodwinked-

Role have been cast and scripts distributed for our end of year production. Whilst, pending covid restriction easing, we cannot yet give details of how we will be able to share our eventual performance with you, we are already busy behind the scenes. There are several versions of other schools productions on line to watch if you want an idea of the overall production.

Today, we joined with the rest of the school in the Highfield Hall fundraiser fun. We really enjoyed looking at each other’s interpretation of oddness!

Stickmen to help you draw realistic figures

https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=BP6Hh01ABn4 

A little light relief

This week, we have joined in with other classes, designing a section of the Highfield Hall contribution to the Chesterfield in Lockdown textile artwork. We thought about our experiences of lockdown. This reminded some of us from key worker bubble life of one of our funny moments- learning about wombat poo. (Thanks Newsround!)

Some children asked if we could add the link to share the fun with families. Here it is..... I'm off for a coffee! (If you get to Question 6- that'll make sense)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/46260399 

Captain Sir Tom 100

In class, we have completed the White Rose Maths Captain Sir Tom 100 challenge. From Friday 30 April to Monday 3 May, Captain Tom's family want people to take part in the Captain Tom 100 challenge in memory of the 100-year-old fundraiser. We would like to see what else you can come up with. For more information see the link below. Please send any photos to Mrs Smith for sharing in class or here on our website. Remember any money you raise should go to a charity of your own choosing. On this occasion we did the activity purely to commemorate this extraordinary gentleman. 

Captain Tom: Could you do your own charity challenge? - CBBC Newsround 

Our Learn with a Lord- Lord Janvrin

Despite a few hardware issues, we thoroughly enjoyed our Learn With a Lord session. We learned lots of fascinating facts about the role of the House of Lords in law-making as well as details about his career and personal interests including:

To apply the knowledge we have gained during out Light and Sight topic, we enjoyed making and using periscopes. 
 

Donut Percentages

We revisited some of lockdown learning this morning when we attempted this NRich maths challenge. In silence, we had trade dominoes with equivalent Fractions, Decimals and Percentages on to complete donut shapes. We showed impressive resilience during this challenge.

Stamp design competition ideas

In you design you may want to consider (taken from class discussion)

• NHS- doctors, nurses, secretaries, ambulance drivers, cleaners, pharmacists
• Care home staff
• Scientists- creating vaccines
• School staff and parents remote learning
• Neighbours and community groups
• Friends, hobbies and clubs that met online
• Captain Sir Tom
• Families and pets
• Police
• Online classes and activities- Joe Wicks, Draw with Rob, David Walliams
• Food banks

Some children asked to prepare ideas on a sheet. Remember time will be allocated for your final designs next week

Skellig-

To find out more about the author David Almond, look at his website below.

David Almond 

Stem Science Challenge 

On Wednesday 24th March we took part in a STEM workshop over teams about marine engineering. We then were challenged to design and make a boat that could successfully hold as much cargo (marbles) as possible. We had great fun testing our boats and the winning one held 125 marbles without sinking! 

We’re Back!

After a busy morning settling back into classroom routines and learning to calculate the area of a parallelogram we started our new Spanish theme Querido Zoo. By the end of this unit we hope to produce a children’s book in Spanish.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

We’re still working hard but when we get chance we’re playing starting to celebrate too.

Looking forward to Spring....

We went, on behalf of the school, to plant daffodil bulbs on Stand Road Park. We’re hoping to go back in the Spring to see the rewards of our efforts. It was a beautiful walk in the sunshine! 

Birthday Party

Today we held our birthday party to celebrate the birthdays in our class so far this term. The children chose to play hide and seek - some of them took some finding! As well as having cake the children also asked to have a 'Strawberry Lace Race'. Watch the videos below to see our finalists and eventual champion!

FunFest

We had lots of fun partcicipating in a variety of team games in FunFest. Even though it challenged our ability to cooperate and play fairly when very excited and tired (both very important skills to develop), there were plenty of smiles around. Well done!

[For additional photos and video, see sporting events folder on school page]

Super scientists and...

We couldn’t wait to get started on our practical science work in our new electricity unit and really impressed our teaching staff with our curiosity and critical thinking when building circuits. We worked independently, fault finding and recording our work accurately in circuit diagrams. Some of us even extended our own learning exploring series circuits. 

Excellent Investigators!

We excelled in our electricity investigations. Starting with a simple circuit, we chose an input variable that we could change. Then we looked at the effect that had on our circuit. We recorded our predictions, circuit diagrams, result and conclusions in our topic books. 

Virtual Harvest festival.

Please watch our video and look at us painting autumn trees for our harvest festival. It can be found in the special section below the link to homelearning. Children will be looking at the work of other classes when more is uploaded.

Parliament Week including virtual visitor!

The nationally celebrated event was actually last week but it suited us to postpone ours until today (Friday 13th)..  This video clip shows using having a virtual learning event with representatives from the actual Houses of Parliament via Microsoft teams. We knew the bell was called Big Ben but the tower is called the Elizabeth tower after our Queen. (The film stops abruptly as I had to type the answer).

The team were impressed with our knowledge , curiosity and critical thinking. We had a couple of tough questions for them.

During the session we appointed several new peers including Baroness Smith, Lord Dr Bywaters and Lord Rashford. (Sadly they rejected Leonardo Di Caprio]. We have also started a series of lessons about an issue that is important to us- plastic pollution. Ask us about the issue. We have also made chatterbox quizzes to remember the key facts we’ve learned.

Hockeyfest

There might have been a chill in the air, but hockey 🏑 fest certainly got us warm.  We learned loads from how to hold the stick correctly to dribbling and passing.  Look at the photo below for an accurate demonstration and have a look at the slideshow to check out how we got on.

Purple Mash Festive card competition

Some of our pupils choose to participate in the Purple Mash ‘Festive Card’ competition.

They designed festive images using ‘2Paint a Picture’ in Purple Mash.

Poppies- we remember!

We have joined in with the rest of the school to commemorate Remembrance Day with our contribution to a whole school art display. We have made outdoor poppies by recycling the bases of pop bottles. Thank you to those of you who took time to rinse and send in the bottles. Thank you to Mrs Charlesworth who supported us step by step in their production (including doing all the melting on our behalf- we observed in pairs from a safe distance) and installed our artwork on the pedestrian entrance from Highfield Lane.

We  joined in with the national silence on Wednesday 11th November.

Even more oracy- English (The Midnight Fox)

We used a new discussion technique called traversing to explore the hinge question in our class text Should the Midnight Fox be killed?

We used the talking stem The biggest reason to support/oppose the hunt is...

Our partners used the responses yes and or yes but to build our discussions.

We used the traversing technique to swap partners and find out the opinions of other people.

Willow Pattern plates.

Even though we know it isn’t from the times of the Shang Dynasty, we have treated ourselves to some creative work this  week. We have been learning about Willow Pattern pottery- its style, origins and the storytelling it supports. We’re having a go at designing our own story telling plates. Look at these designs! Can you spot which story they support?

Adam has turned the story of the original Willow pattern plate into a cartoon. Have a look below....

Soccerfest

The weather stayed fine long enough for the rescheduled girls’ football session to take place. Our coach was very impressed with our behaviour and sporting skills. Well done girls!

Racketfest

We have been increasing our physical health, by developing our tennis skills in Racketfest. We showed a growth mindset through a range of different challenges. We used our emotional health to cope with the frustrations and to celebrate our successes. 

Powerful P.S.H.E.- 

Following on from the Big Anti-bullying Assembly, we have explored what can cause these issues. As a class, we have thought about the role ignorance of difference can play and how to demonstrate respect. This is the premiere of the class acrostic poem we have written.... (it’s not even been shown in class yet!)

Rethink what you say and do (Madeleine)

Everyone has feelings (Sophie H)

Support each other (Mazie and Nicole)

People are different (Amber)

Everyone is special (Mazie and Nicole)

Comfort people in need of a friend (Alexa)

Treat each other well (Mya)

Onion skin oracy- prayer discussion

Our endeavour to improve our oracy continued today. Not only did we discuss how prayer may make a believer feel but we also observed what made an effective discussion. Our insights will help us develop a set of class rules for discussion.

Making marvellous music!

Purple Mash has a fabulous app called Easy Beats that we used to create our own happy tunes. We selected the instruments and tempo to make cheerful tunes inspired by Pharrell Williams’ Happy. Watch how much fun we were having. They sound pretty good too!

Problem solving partners

Today, we practised our oracy skills in maths. Whilst solving multi step problems, we worked with partners. One pupil explained how to solve the problem; the other child completed the calculation. We really enjoyed this strategy. Even though it took a little bit longer, we felt much more confident and got more questions correct.

Active Spanish!

In our mission to be physically healthy, we are always looking for opportunities to keep moving. In Spanish, we are currently revising the language we have learned over the last two years. Here we are revising days of the week.

Dynasty Dough

We have continued our Shang Dynasty topic by investigating early writing found on Oracle Bones. Not only did we show curiosity and critical thinking about the pictogram symbols used but also got creative making our own with salt dough.

Oracy challenge- If I ruled the world......

Dr Bywaters has set us a challenge to improve the quantity and quality of our speaking and listening in class (oracy). In groups, we tried this challenge .

Child 1: “If I ruled the world, I would..... because....” (using own idea)

Child 2: “I couldn’t disagree more because .....” (even if they don’t). If I ruled the world I would....”

Child 3: as above

We had fantastic ideas and lots of fun. Try it as a family!

An actual archaeologist!

It surprised some of the children that we have an archaeologist amongst our team. Mrs Houghton brought in some of her family’s finds (from stone-age to within living history) to show us. We enjoyed examining them and asking questions. We were very respectful handling the precious possessions carefully. Thank you Mrs Houghton!

Archaeology Activity

We had a wonderful afternoon recreating the role of archaeologists investigating the Shang Dynasty. In the school grounds, information was hidden. We found the clues and visualised the site.  Then we interpreted the clues, using critical thinking, to make inferences about who the tomb belonged to.

Beginning of the year message...

What a fantastic start we’ve had together in our new class. We’ve been really impressive showing our school core values of curiosity and perseverance throughout our academic work. We’ve also been showing our emotional healthiness through impressive discussion in Mind Up, PSHE and in our classroom behaviour. Keep up the good work! We really have set ourselves a high standard to maintain.

Please see above the pledge we made after watching the Big Anti-Bullying assembly 2020.

Hello Year 6 class and families!

Below is some information regarding the general school day.  

The School Day

Our school day starts at 8:50am and we will meet you outside the cloakroom entrance so that we can go into class together after we have washed our hands. We will take all our belongings up to class - coats, book bags and lunch boxes. 

School ends at 3:30pm for us and at this time we will go and meet parents / carers outside the cloakroom entrance to go home.

Our Classroom

Everyone will have their own space and own pack of resources with the things that you need such as pencils, glue, rubber etc. We won't be using our drawers for the time being so you will keep your bag under your chair with your snack and things in it. Please don't bring lots of things from home, just the things you need. N.B. Since October half term we have allowed children to bring a small pencil case to store their things in. 

Lunchtimes and Playtimes

We will still have a morning and an afternoon break but different classes will be outside at different times. At lunchtime the children who have sandwiches will eat in the classroom after the tables have been cleaned. School dinners will be in the hall as usual and you will be called to go in when it is your time. 

PE and Swimming

Our PE session will be on a Wednesday - we will be outside wherever possible so please make sure you wear an appropriate kit on this day - t-shirt, joggers and a jumper and suitable footwear. Occasionally there will be other sporting events planned; we will let you know any additional days P.E. kits are required.

We will let you know when swimming will start again - sadly we have no date for this.  When swimming does start again this will be on a Monday.