Dear Year 6,

I hope that you are all well and are having a good time at home. I have been doing plenty of exercise and learning at home. I have also been doing lots of coding and chess in my free time. On Scratch (which you might remember from ICT learning last year), I am trying to recreate chess complete with artificial intelligence and online play. I am finding it really hard and after a month, I have managed a piece tracking engine, pieces, a board, and a legal moves engine (which I am still working on).

I am using this blog and checking the school website every day, which I recommend if you are looking for a way to learn at home. I am also getting resources from the online Oak National Academy (the.national.academy), which has hundreds of online lessons from Year R to Year 10. Although it is designed for teachers, I like using it and am actually doing a French lesson as I write.

Surprisingly, as I know you all never thought you would, I genuinely would be very pleased to see things back to normal. The coronavirus has got a lot worse than it was in mid-March when the school closed. The UK has over 190,000 confirmed cases and a fatality rate of 14.7%. If you would like the data of reported cases, go to worldometers.info/coronavirus/.

I have been doing a lot of exercise, including Joe Wicks' PE lessons and a Zoom PE class, as well as going in my garden. I am determined to keep fit and you might see me running across the sports field in Holland Park for my daily exercise (but don't come up to me, we're not allowed to meet up with others outside of my own household). I have been playing chess outside a lot too, nearly as much as I have been exercising, so if you want to challenge me, create a ChessKid or lichess account and I will give you further info.

It is the forty-eighth day since the school was closed and they say the 1st of June is the earliest day schools will open. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), Year 6 is likely to be the first class to open. Please can you all stop playing ttblast, as I am ignoring it until one of you get to 50,000 points overall or 10,000 points in a week. My best is 15600 in a week and 70 in just one game without bugs (with bugs, 256). Can you beat it?

Until we're back to school, keep going, clap for our carers on Thursdays at 8pm, stay safe, stay home and stay well. Keep connected using this blog, I think it's a great idea. Whether you miss school or not, we are going to end up coming back soon; they are starting to think about lifting the lockdown. BTW, this post is 500 words long.