In Year 6, we have hit the ground running! It has been a busy half term and the children have really taken all the new learning and transitions in their stride. They continue to work hard to embody our school value of Resilience by adapting to the demands and changes of Year 6 with ease and independence. They have already made so much progress and we are so proud of them all! Take a look at all the exciting things we have been getting up to…
English (Reading and Writing)
In reading this term we have been using various reading skills and techniques to enjoy and further our understanding of fiction and non-fiction texts.
We studied Skellig by David Almond which is a story about children discovering a mysterious, fantastical being in a garage and how he begins to affect their thoughts and choices in life. Work completed included: character descriptions, inference, prediction and justification of opinions. Below are examples of some of the activities we completed as part of this unit:
More recently, we have been studying a beautiful picture book called Mama Miti by Donna Ja Napoli. Through artful prose and beautiful illustrations, Donna Jo Napoli and Kadir Nelson tell the true story of Wangari Muta Maathai, known as “Mama Miti,” who in 1977 founded the Green Belt Movement, an African grassroots organisation that has empowered many people to mobilize and combat deforestation, soil erosion, and environmental degradation. Today, more than 30 million trees have been planted throughout Mama Miti’s native Kenya, and in 2004 she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
In English, we started the year with some autobiographical writing. This was a great way for our teachers to get to know us a little better. The anecdotes we shared were hilarious and really made our teachers laugh. We revised grammar skills from our Year 5 unit on biographical writing and learnt some new skills too, including: 1st person, past tense, chronological order, time conjunctions/use of cohesive devices and adverbials. Take a look at some of our autobiographies:
We have also been writing explanation texts linked to our Ancient Greek topic. We will be choosing a mythical beast and write a piece telling the reader what they are like in terms of appearance and character, what their strengths and weaknesses are and how they became what they are. Some of the beasts include: Medusa, The Hydra and The Minotaur. The grammar and punctuation skills that we have been learning to apply, include: parenthesis, causal conjunctions, cohesive devices, sentence signposts and topic sentences. Below are some of the examples of our mythical beasts that we have been writing about:
Maths
Science
Our science topic has been Light and the children have enjoyed finding out: Where it comes from, what colour it is, how shadows are formed, how we see objects and what the main components of the eye are. The children enjoyed making periscopes, investigating the formation of shadows and using a prism to look at the colours of the spectrum.
Ancient Greek day
On Thursday 10th October year 6 celebrated all things Ancient Greece when we were visited by Adventures Into, who put on some fabulous Ancient Greek infused activities for the children to take part in.
The day began with a breakfast of date, pitta bread, feta cheese and olive that would have been eaten back in the day. This was then washed down with a cup of wine. WHAT I hear you say. It’s ok, wine was substituted with grape flavour squash. Some children discovered new flavours that they liked whilst others tasted things that they will never taste again..
We then split into our classes and took part in three different activities:
Ancient Greek orienteering
Groups of children looked for clues set up all over the school field which linked to a given letter of the Greek alphabet. The rain didn’t hold them back and the clues were mopped up excitedly and successfully with many facts being learnt in the process.
Greek theatre
The children learnt about parts of the theatre in Ancient Greek times, who took part in the plays, some of the characters depicted and the different types of play that were written and performed-tragedies and comedies being the main examples. What the children enjoyed most was being able to create their own mythical beast out of clay and make up a back story to who it was and why it had turned into the creature it was. We had many weird and wonderful looking creations that would have looked great in an Ancient Greek mythical play.
Warfare
The children learnt about the different weapons and tactics the Ancient Greeks used in battle. Siege towers, catapults and swords were mentioned and then out came the bows and arrows. The children had the job of firing at a target with Polythemus the Cyclops on it and getting him right in his one good eye or hitting the back of the welly boot exactly where the Achilles would be. This was followed by a “battle to the death” between deadly foes using all of their fighting skills and guile to get one over on the other. Dodge ball with bows and sponge arrows-vicious or what?
The children (and staff) had a wonderful day and it complemented the work we are doing in class so well.
Black History Month
We are celebrating this important part of our history by learning about one modern black icon and one from over 100 years ago. Baroness Floella Benjamin a Trinidadian-British actress, author, presenter and politician and Walter Tull,, an English professional footballer and 1st World War army officer.
This year we have teamed up with year 2 and each year 6 class has split in half. One half has joined the children down in year 2 and the other half has welcomed year 2 children up to year 6. It has been lovely seeing our year 6 children working patiently and helpfully with their year 2 buddies and taking part in art and drama activities. We have also looked at the impact of Walter Tull and other black footballers from the past on the modern England football team.
