This half term has been a blur! The children have worked their socks off during the run up to SATs and then blew everyone away with how mature they were during that all-important week. We haven’t had chance to study a set question in an afternoon, but we have managed to learn lots and lots in Geography, mostly through self-directed learning.

 

The children went on the journey of a river, learning about all the different parts of a river, they wrote this up as an informative piece. We also learnt all about Latitude, Longitude, the Equator and the Northern & Southern Hemispheres.

        

As part of English we have used reciprocal reading to explore and find meaning of texts by taking on group roles.  This strategy of summarising, question generating, clarifying and predicting has also been applied to Maths as reciprocal reasoning when solving problems.

          

After SATs….

We have so much planned! We will be studying the story of The Trojan Horse and Living Things and their Habitats. We will be reading Mary Poppins in preparation for our end of year performance ‘Mary Poppins: The Panto!’. We can’t wait to share all the exciting things we will be doing, including our residential to Kingswood in Wales, a visit to Pizza Hut, watching War Horse at the theatre and hiring out the cinema to watch The Incredibles 2 – I’m exhausted just writing this!

This half term we have been so busy! We have focussed on lots of revision before and after our Mock SATs and we have squeezed in World Book Day, Mental Health Awareness Week, a visit from Wellybobs and lots of Art, Science and Geography learning, all in five weeks.

Art

This half term we have created some beautiful pieces of art, inspired by Indian culture. The children loved creating this mandala art with Miss Smith. They used colour blending skills, knowledge of complimentary and contrasting colours and symmetry to create bold patterns.

   

  

Science

This half term we learnt about animals, including humans. The children learnt about food chains, creating some lovely 3D paper chain food chains! They went on to learn about humans and their respiratory systems. They experimented with heart rates, seeing the affect exercise has on the heart rate, by taking their pulse.

 

Geography

We really enjoyed finding out the counties of England, making use of our Atlases and map skills. The children were so engrossed; they wanted to carry on into their own time! We then compared a map of Lancashire from 1830 to a present day map and talked about the human and physical features. We then spoke about grid references and using an Ordinance Survey map, the children located different features and recorded the grid reference.

Then we learnt all about contour lines and what they mean. The children grouped up, choose a hill from the Lake District and began to create a 3D model, making sure they spaced the contour lines accurately. We haven’t finished our creations just yet, so watch this space for more pictures!

 

 

A message from Mrs Staples

Next half term is super important for year 6 as it gives them a chance to show off all the hard work they have put in.  The BFG’s have impressed everyone in school and we couldn’t be prouder!

Keep going Year 6, what you have achieved, so far, has been incredible!

Spring Term 1 2018

English

This half term we have thrown ourselves into Goodnight Mr Tom. We read an extract from the book to inspire our autobiographies. We found out about evacuation and how this affected different people, both adults and children. We performed our Talk4Writing in assembly – this was really tricky because we had lots of powerful punctuation in it! All the children have made expected, if not better, progress in Writing and we are all super proud! Take a look at some outstanding pieces below.

 

Maths

We have spent a lot of time on Fractions this half term and refreshing our knowledge of number and place value. We have also learnt about percentages and decimals, learning the common conversions and knowing how to find a percentage/decimal/fraction of an amount and applying this knowledge to word problems. Have a look at some of the amazing learning that has taken place. 

History

Our question this half term was ‘Why was winning the Battle of Britain so important?’ The children have worked so hard in History this half term. I have challenged the children by asking them to write very sophisticated and mature pieces to answer questions and compare and contrast sources of information. We have looked at orders from Hitler, discussed and compare the number of weapons on each side. We have also analysed diary entries, press releases and newspaper articles – always remembering to interpret the information carefully and to not jump to conclusions. We have looked at maps, worked out how miles away Dunkirk was from Dover, found and labelled the Channel Islands and talked about how powerful Hitler was given his position in Europe.

 

Geography

We have looked at work and travel in Geography. We compared the jobs and transport in a developing country (India) and a developed country (Britain). The children researched independently, creating a table and writing a comparison paragraph. The children have used maps to compare transport and past and present and they have also discussed how things might change in the future – considering environmental features.  We also talked about the vocabulary we used – developed country and a developing country.

Art

We have studied the work of LS Lowry, focussing on the work from around WW2. The children have discussed pieces and talked about colour and textures. They have then gone on to create their own paintings, using watercolours.

 

Autumn Term 2 2017

This half term has been a busy one! The children have matured and grown up so much in the last 6 weeks and we are all very proud of them. They have been learning and challenging themselves every day and have developed a fantastic work ethic and resilience as well as building that Growth Mindset.

English

This half term we have focussed on fiction based around WW2. We have read The Silver Sword for our class novel and the children have written letters, poems and flashback based around the novel. We have also written recounts and discussions to link in with our History topic and Science unit. We have also begun to use Reciprocal Reading as part of our Reading Detective activity in Guided Reading. This is a great tool that allows the children to run their own discussion.

 

Maths

We have tackled Fractions this half term, something which the children weren’t keen on, but now they have the skills, they can face and solve any problem involving fractions! We have also revised the four operations and begun to look at percentages and decimals. The children are making great progress, which showed through their mock SATs papers. The children were clearly proud of their performance in Maths and this has given them more confidence for after Christmas. We have also started to use Reciprocal Reasoning as part of our everyday maths lessons, this allows the children to think more about a problem or puzzle and work at it collaboratively.

Topic – Geography

Year 6 have started to look at ‘Water’ this includes water conservation, where water comes from, which countries are still without free flowing safe water. We have added to our class map, showing where in the world clean water is needed and we have labelled the oceans and seas around the world.

Topic – History

We have tied up all the loose ends from WW1 and the lead up to WW2. The children enjoyed an excellent drama morning, where they became WW1 recruits, led by the very strict, but very knowledgeable Sergeant Meredith! The children learnt all about hand signals, what it means to sign up and looked at lots of amazing artefacts. They also learnt to stand to attention, stand at ease and salute – but never to the sergeant! We have also begun to look at our next question ‘Why was winning the Battle of Britain so important?’ This will take us into next half term as well.

   

Science

The BFG’s have been learning all about electricity this half term. We have researched the history of electricity, discussed vocabulary and discussed renewable energy. Linked to this, we have held debates about renewable energy and fossil fuels and written up discussions. We will continue this next half term, looking more into making circuits and talking about the physics of electricity.

DT

We have thrown ourselves into the world of puppetry! We were joined by Tom (a master puppeteer) to help us create WW1 Indian Soldier puppets – they were amazing!

Here is more about the day….

Year 6 Puppetry Workshop

On Wednesday 15^th November, The BFG’s were lucky enough to take part in a puppet making workshop, led by Tom from The Horse and Bamboo Theatre in Rawtenstall. We made Indian soldiers from WW1, linking to our Topic of WW1 and leading into our Topic on India after Christmas.

The children used a variety of materials and learn brand new skills to make their amazing puppets. There are some comments from the children below:

‘At first everyone was confused at the polystyrene ball and plastic cup that lay in front of us, however soon we began to see the parts come together to create our Indian soldiers. The trickiest part by far was the turban, however everyone enjoyed the day. I especially liked collaging the face of my soldier and all in all it was an amazing experience!’ Lalitah.

‘We made puppets with a lovely man called Tom, it was lots of fun. They were Indian soldiers with moving heads and arms. My favourite part was designing the head – it was a great challenge!’ Noah

‘I enjoyed Tom’s visit thoroughly and I think the puppets are marvellous. My favourite part was the head/face and tried my best, no matter how difficult it was! Tom was really patient with us and we loved the relaxed environment and I hope we can make something like this again!’ Holly

‘I enjoyed making the puppets because they weren’t too complex, but they look really effective. From what it started from (a paper cup) to what turned into was an amazing transformation. I am looking forward to using them in a puppet show. I also love that each puppet looks different, making them diverse and unique.’

 

 

 

As you can read, the children used so many different skills and we wanted to transfer this to making a puppet of our own.

 

With the Christmas Fayre coming up, the children decided to make the characters from ‘Twas’ The Night before Christmas.’  They designed it, chose materials, and researched ideas, improved upon the original process and Orange group created a flow chart, using each shape correctly! The puppets look fantastic and we hope, as mini apprentices, we make a little profit from the Christmas Fayre!

Autumn term 1 2017

The first two weeks back have been a whirlwind! We have taken part in Identity Week, where we had a special visit from ‘The Young Un’s.’ This was a folk band that told us amazing stories of ordinary people who did and have done extraordinary things! We joined in with the story, learnt the songs and had a great day!

 

For this week, we studied Walter Tull, who was a soldier in WW1. In fact, he was the first black officer in the British Army and he saved 100’s of lives before he dies in battle in 1918.

Following Identity Week, we started our English unit. We are studying War Horse. The children have spent a long time analysing Chapter 6, learning lots of amazing new vocabulary (our favourite words are ‘peremptory’ and ‘bivouacked’) and preparing readings. We used the QR scanner on the iPads to find out lots of new information we didn’t know and shared our thoughts about the chapter with the class.

 

We have now moved on to Talk4Writing. We have all done exceptionally well to learn a rather long paragraph, by memory, using actions. This will help us write our own chapter for War Horse that we can then published in our brand new presentation books!

 

 

 

In Maths, we have focussed on our key skills in Place Value. We have ventured into the millions and sometimes to ten millions! We are preparing ourselves for reasoning and problem solving over the next few weeks. The children need lots of practise with their times tables, so we have used Tackling Tables to increase our knowledge and speed of them.

In Topic, we are studying the Great War. We have all been very enthusiastic and excited to find out all about WW1. We have asked lots of questions and we are now finding our own answers as well as learning from the teachers. We have a very exciting trip booked that links nicely with both topic and English, but we have to be patient and wait until June!

 

We had an impromptu geography trip on the second week back. The Ribble River Trust offered us a brilliant workshop where we followed the River Calder through Towneley Park and learnt all about the way the river works. We spotted lots of wildlife, discussed the features of the park, including the flood plain and the tributaries. After that, we took part in two activities in Towneley Hall, we created our own river using sand and a water pump and we followed the river down from Cliviger Gorge.