Our Trout have arrived!

Year six welcomed 100 brown trout eggs to our tank this half term. This is part of Trout in The Classroom project from The Ribble Trust. We have successfully hatched 66 brown trout which are currently at the bottom of the tank feeding on their egg sacks and stopping out of the way as they would do in nature to avoid predators. Soon, we are expecting them to start swimming up to the top of the tank to take a gulp of air which will help them to move around in the tank. At this point they will be ready to start feeding on trout food. When they are large enough the class are looking forward to taking them to the River in Townley Park and releasing them into the wild.

 

English

Year six have been reading The Matchbox Diary, a novel by Paul Fleischman, “The story of an amazing life in one tiny box.” The book tells a story of a poor family living in poverty in Italy and their life as they try to make a new home in America. The story is told through the things found in many matchboxes which represent different memories and events along their adventures. An olive stone in one, a photograph in another, a lavish hairpin, each telling a piece of Gino’s life from when he was a young boy. Gino, who lives with his family and Grandmother in an old, dilapidated stone house, is often hungry and cold but make the best of what he has while Gino’s father works in America and supports them. One day tickets arrive from their father inviting them to travel to America to join him. Leaving Grandma behind they start a perilous journey to America where they are unaware of the life that awaits them there. Year six have used prediction and speculation based on evidence from the book and the beautiful illustrations. We have used “slow writing” to write in role for a diary and have independently written letters that might have been sent from Gino to Grandma. We have planned, written, and edited out work and published pieces into our presentation books.

Maths

We have focussed on percentages this half term as well as Area and Perimeter. 

Percentage facts are very useful when we are asked to calculate a percentage of a number. For example percentage facts for the number 300 would look like this:

1% = 3

5% = 15

25% = 75

10% = 30

50% = 150

75% = 225

100% = 300

Using this we can quite easily work out 30% of 300 by adding our 25% and our 5% facts (75 + 15) together to calculate the answer 90. We have practiced percentages for the first two weeks of the half term to reinforce our knowledge and practice our skills.

Following on from this, we have learnt how to find the area and perimeter of a number of shapes such as triangles and parallelograms. This is something that the children have enjoyed and have been able to apply foundation skills such as adding and multiplying into problem solving and reasoning. We have continued our Shape, Space and Measure work by looking at common conversions and reading timetables.

Science

We have started this half term by looking at the classification of organisms. The children have investigated and researched the characteristics of each classification (mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, and amphibians). They have had lots of fun sorting and categorising all different organisms and have been surprised at some of the exceptions such as the dolphin which is in fact a mammal! In our science experiment we investigated how DNA is a blueprint for all life contained in most cells, we then extracted DNA from strawberries – which was amazing. Lastly, we are debating whether humans are primates, we have looked at the characteristics and features of humans and primates and come to our own conclusions whether we believe that we have originated from primates.

History

The children are investigating how medical breakthroughs of the last two hundred and fifty years affected the lives of people in Britain.  Year six are studying the Neolithic Era in Britain’s history and what their lives looked like. We can see that man, at this time, started to develop skills and knowledge which would help to protect them and improve their health. We looked at a timeline of life expectancy covering the years and also the events that might happen to increase or reduce life expectancy in humans. Our enquiry will continue next half term.

Design Technology

Our Spring Term One DT project is to research, design and create our own waistcoats to wear during our performance of Cinderella Rockafella later in the year. Year six have researched and studied waistcoat making, created their own design criteria, researched ideas that they liked for the design, drawn their design ideas, and chosen their favourite one. Then, having planned their waistcoat in detail, used patterns, material, thread, embroidery and stitching to bring the designs to life. Evaluating the final result against the design criteria is the last step so that they can understand the challenges they faced and celebrate overcoming these. We can’t wait to show you all their amazing waistcoats at our production.

RE

Theme: Beliefs and Meaning Religion: Christianity Concept: Salvation

Key question for this enquiry: Is anything ever eternal?

Learning Objectives: We are learning to evaluate different beliefs about eternity and to understand the Christian perspective on this.

The Year 6 children have really worked hard with this unit. They have shared their own views with one another and had many class discussions on heaven and hell, unconditional love and what they believe eternity to be.

We have searched and then read several bible stories and then analysed these. Using the internet as an educational tool, we have watched BBC Teach videos of the bible stories to engage the full class, then shared our views and evaluated our learning.

We have studied how the Abrahamic and Dharmic religions believed in eternity, then investigated the Vikings and Egyptians beliefs too.

Singing

The children have worked in groups and in pairs to compose a Coronation fanfare for King Charles. Whilst studying about fanfares, the pupils have understood how a piece of music can be put together. They have engaged in performing and experimenting and improvising in order to decide on the order of the melody and the rhythm. The pupils have also used crotchets, quavers and semiquavers, but added more complicated combinations to make their fanfares more rhythmically interesting. All the pupils have had their pieces recorded; used the correct rhythmic notation and have a copy in the music books of their own composition. Lastly all pupils were given verbal feedback with them also giving their own responses to how well they feel they coped with writing a fanfare and how they could improve it.

Music

Our BFG’s have been studying the musical genres Jazz, Blues, Classical and Pop. They listened to several compositions from each of these genres and discussed how to distinguish them. We enjoyed learning about the famous British pop band The Beatles.

Classical – big sounds of the orchestra, dramatic pieces which can be long, string quartets and symphonies – Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn – they remembered the song Mr Garrett wrote for them to remember these famous classical composers.

Pop – strong melody, simple lyrics – The Beatles, ABBA and Adele

Blues – often sad songs, specific 12 bar chord sequence – Robert Johnson, BB King, Nina Simone and Rag ‘n’ Bone Man

Jazz – free style and syncopation, soloist will improvise – Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, Michael Bublé and Robbie Williams.

We celebrated Chinese New Year 2023 is the year of the rabbit. The children listened to Chinese Music and had great fun using dance ribbons creating shapes and making them dance to Chinese music.