Welcome to Year 6!

2020 - 2021

In Year 6, we have 30 amazing children who are all unique. We love learning and working hard but best of all, we love having a great laugh together.

Our teacher is Miss Dowd and our teaching assistant is Mrs Kealey.

Spring Term 2

We began this half term with two week of home learning. We couldn’t wait to get back into the classroom!

R.E.

Our topic this half term is: Jesus, Son of God, Messiah. We learnt that Jesus healed many people, brought others back to life and that His miracles led many to believe that he was the Son of God. During the lead up to Lent, we explored how Jesus’ enemies plotted to have him arrested, and about the arrest and the trial before the high priest. We acted out the Jesus’ trial before Pilate and how Jesus was condemned to death and crucified.

We led Stations of the Cross for the rest of school - this allowed us and the school a chance to reflect on the life of Jesus.

Spring Term 1

This term we had to go back to online learning again, however, we have completed lots of great learning and we’ve had fun too!

R.E.

Our topic this half term is about ‘Jesus, The Bread of Life’. We began the topic by exploring what the Bread of Life is, we did this by learning about Pope Benedict’s explanation about this, he said:

“So when Jesus called himself the bread of life, it means that Jesus himself is the nourishment we need for both our physical bodies but also for our spirit, soul, will - for our inner self, because the soul needs food. Jesus nourishes us so that we can truly become mature people and live good lives.”

We looked at the importance of the Jesus being the Bread of Life whilst exploring the parts of the Mass. We began by looking at the Eucharist, we compared it to the Bible stories: The Last Supper and The Passover. We analysed the two Bible stories and the Eucharist for similarities and differences; we found that Jesus is giving up his life and he is the sacrifice for us, the perfect sacrifice.

Here is some of our art work to show the Bread of Life.

Maths

During this half term, we have covered the topics: decimals and percentages. This involved finding the equivalent fractions, decimals and percentages. We really needed to use our known facts to help us in working these out.

English

We have completed a variety of writing tasks whilst learning at home. We began the term by focusing on a clip called “Beyond the Lines”, this was a WW2 clip, where soldiers run through a battlefield but the only one of the soldiers are real the others are made from letters sent to and from loved ones. One of the tasks was to write a diary entry from the main character, we ensured we used senses and wrote in depth about the scene.

Another clip we focused on was “Beadle the Bard” stories (taken from Harry Potter). Our focus for this was to write a narrative poem to retell the story. We started by analysing various narrative poetry and the poetic devices used within them. Then, we spent a few lessons planning out our poems and ensuring we include those poetic devices. Take a look at our poems below.

Science

This half term, we have learnt about Electricity. We began by looking at circuits and the symbols used for them. Also, we understood what circuit needs to be complete. We drew and labelled circuits, here is some of our work.

We learnt that electricity can be made using a generator. We researched non-renewable and renewable energy; we explained what they were and the positives and negatives of the energy.

Here are some of the powerpoints the children made:

Leila's powerpoint Edward’s powerpoint Marcus’ powerpoint
Millie’s powerpoint Oliver’s powerpoint Joshua’s powerpoint

History

We continued our History topic of World War Two. We learnt what happened in the lead up to WW2. Hitler capitalised on economic problems, unhappy citizens and political fighting to take absolute power in Germany beginning in 1933. We learnt that Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the outbreak of World War II, and by 1941 Nazi forces had occupied much of Europe.

We explored various primary sources which displayed the Blitz in the UK. We discussed how some of the sources represented Britain winning the war and showed how Britain was losing badly.

Also, we looked at the important jobs for people on the home front. We understood that these jobs were really important for keeping the country running and to support the war effort.
Here are our WW2 propaganda posters to encourage people to help the war effort on the home front.

PSHE

NSPCC Number day

Here’s some of the activities we completed on Number day!

Children’s Mental Health week

Here are some of the activities we completed during Children’s Mental Health week

Autumn Term 2

R.E.

This half term, our topic is called ‘Justice’. We began the topic by discussing what Justice was this:

“Justice helps us figure out what is fair, what is right and what is wrong. When justice is working, everyone feels like they are being treated fairly. Rules and laws help people figure out what is 'just' or fair.”

During the topic, we learnt about important people who were persecuted for speaking out against injustice, such as: Martin Luther King Jr. and Oscar Romero. We wrote our own "I have a dream” speeches about justice in the world.

We know that God has sent us to fight for justice in the world. We looked at various people and organisation which fight for justice in the world.

Maths

During Maths this half term, we learnt about fractions. We recapped: equivalent fractions, simplifying fractions, improper and mixed number fractions. We learnt about adding and subtracting fractions when the fractions are mixed numbers and/or improper fractions.

English

We read a variety of war poetry during our lessons. We specifically looked at two poems: Flanders Field and Suicide in the Trenches. We used these poems to create ‘black out’ poetry. There is where we chose specific words or phrases within the poem to create our poem. We blacked out the other parts of the poem to create a new one. Here are some of our poems.

Science

We continued our topic of Evolution and Inheritance; we explored Charles Darwin’s theory all species develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. We learnt about his discovery of adapted Finch birds in the Galapagos islands. We investigated this by doing our own experiment; we used three different tools (pegs, chopsticks and tweezers) to mimic the bird’s beaks. We gave ourselves 1 minute to pick up as many seeds to see which ‘bird’ had adapted to its environment the best. We did the three times to find the average (mean) to see which tool (bird) was best adapted. Here are some pictures of our experiment.

History

Our topic is World War Two, we began by exploring what happened at the end of World War One and the repercussions Germany had for starting the war. We thought about how the German citizen’s felt about the Treat of Versailles and the hyperinflation. We recognised that Germany was in need of a strong leader to make Germany great again.

DT

For our Christmas craft, we analysed, designed and made our very own Christmas tree bauble. We used our skills of sewing to: sew the felt together; the snowman’s arms/hats and sew the buttons on. We really enjoyed making these and we were so proud of our baubles!

Christmas party

Christmas Dinner

Santa Dash pictures

Autumn Term 1

We’ve had a great first half term settling in back to school. We can’t wait for the fun, challenges and learning that this year will bring.

R.E.

Our topic in R.E. is called ‘Called to Serve’. We started by understanding what is means to serve God and others.
This year we will be making the Sacrament of Confirmation, we learnt about what happens in this Sacrament and how it will help us to continue to journey of faith.

In this topic, we learnt about what is means to serve. We had the opportunity to reflect on our duty to serve as disciples. We identified our gifts and talents that can be used to to serve God and others.

We discovered people who responded to God’s call to serve God and others. Mama Maggie was an extraordinary person; she loved the children of the Cairo slums in Egypt.

We create some beautiful piece of art work which depict the Holy Spirit.

Our Class Saint Feast Day

Our Class Saint is Saint Therese of Lisieux. We celebrated her feast day on the 1st October. During the day, we learnt about her life and her ‘little ways’. We took part in many activities in the day; we wrote a biography about her life and we created paper flowers which include our little ways we will live by.

Maths

For the first few weeks, we recapped our Place Value understanding and then moved on to reading, writing, saying and rounding numbers to 10 million. In our Four Operations topic, we added and subtracted numbers using column method correctly and continued to work on our accuracy in column multiplication. Additionally, we were taught how to use Long Division to divide 3 and 4 digit by a 2 digit number. We showed great enthusiasm and perseverance whilst learning this method. Furthermore, we have continued to develop our speed in our Times Table recall and our daily arithmetic.

Below show the long division method. The image shows 342 ÷ 12, it is really important to write out the tables to help with the division.

English

Our first book this year was called “The Arrival”. This was a great book to begin the year, it was a wordless narrative; we had to create the story using the pictures. This story gave us the opportunity to develop our simple sentences into multi-clause sentences which showcase our writing skills.

In one English lesson, we took part in drama; we used our inference skills to act out the images from the book. In groups, we first discussed what the characters were experiencing and what we thought they’d say. This helped us write a dialogue about the character we were acting out.

Science

Evolution and Inheritance has been our first topic in Science. Firstly, we began with with explored inheritance. For this, we used the Royal family to identify the inherited physical characteristics they have to one another but also showed Will and Kate’s offspring aren’t identical to each other. We also looked at adaptation in plants and animals and recognised their specific adaptations to suit their environment.

Black History

During the month of October, we enjoyed learning about the the life of Harriet Tubman. We learnt she escaped slavery in Maryland to Philadelphia, a free state for salves. After she escaped, she made it her mission to free other slaves. She lead hundreds of enslaved people to freedom using the Underground Railroad network. Tubman was given the name ‘Moses’ for her aid in helping slaves escape. Not only did she help slaves, she fought for in the Civil Rights Movement too. After learning about her fantastic work, we created leaflets about her life and designed our own Freedom Quilts used in the Underground Railroads.

PSHE

Our School Council Representatives

In September, the children were given a choice to run for School Council. The children created powerpoints and speeches to demonstrate why they’d be good candidates, after we voted for them.

We showed racism the red card in Year 6!