Year 6

Welcome to Year 6

What are Year 6 learning about this half term?

Spring 2

This half term our focus will be Geography with our key enquiry question being: From giant cities to remote communities – what is it like to live in South America? We will look at life in the largest of the South American countries – Brazil - and study the difference in lifestyles in this country of varying landscape including finding out how the indigenous people live.

In English our book focus will be Holes by Louis Sachar, we will be using this text as our inspiration to write a recount letter, instructions and to charcaterise speech. Reading this half term will be looking at a range of different skills and how we can answer questions effectively and accurately. We will also be celebrating World Book Week (2^nd March-6^th March), this will include a school-wide dressing up day on Thursday 5^th March. Throughout the week, will take part in lots of book talk and think about our own identities as readers.

In Maths we will continue to follow Power Maths, our units of work this half term will be percentages and algebra. Science will shift to looking at the circulatory system – how does it help us, how can we look after it and what other systems does it impact? We will be looking at ways in which we can raise our heart rate and predicting which activities will have the greatest impact on heart rate.

In PE we will be taking part in Dodgeball on a Tuesday and Fridays will focus on Badminton with EdStart. We will continue with our alternating weekly Forest School sessions. For both PE and Forest School please ensure children wear appropriate clothing and footwear, they must also make sure earrings are removed or taped for PE sessions, thank you.

In Spring 2 our PSHE unit will be ‘Families and Committed Relationships’ we will look at human reproduction, this will include different ways in which couples can start a family. RE will see us learning about the Easter story and asking what Christians believe about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In computing we will be looking at the program ‘Python’, tinkering with this, creating nested loops and learning how to de-bug the program when things go wrong. Our music lessons will look at the links between music and art, in particular when thinking about Pop Art. Our DT project will be designing a playground, we will think about the equipment needed in a playground and use construction skills to create solid structures.

Our Previous Learning this year

Autumn 1

In our first term back at school we were getting used to our new rules and the expectations placed on us now we are the oldest in the school; the first way in which we did this was by applying for roles of responsibility within the school, writing a formal letter to the staff team.

In English we completed PVPG work from Grammarsaurus, which helped us feel more confident in our sentence structure before we begin our extended writing. The texts we will be inspired to write by this half term will be 'The Island by Armin Greder.

Maths focused on units within the Power Maths scheme, beginning with place value and moving on to learning formal methods to answer problems involving all four operations. All children’s learning can be further supported from home by participating in TTRS challenges making all pupils fluent and confident with their times tables.

We focsed on Geography in our Topic work, our key enquiry question was ‘Why is the coastline of the UK changing?’, in this unit we investigated how Britain’s coastal features are formed, the impact of weathering and erosion, and what the future of the landscape might be.

Science centred around electricity, we built a range of circuits and drew scientific diagrams to show these circuits. We will also made predictions when using various equipment and looked at alternatives to energy sources within the UK. In Computing the children explored what AI is and how it generates text images and code, they will also considered the ethical implications and its potential to replace human roles.

In Music the class appraised the work of classical composer Felix Mendelssohn, learning about dynamics, pitch and texture, before they worked on their own group compositions featuring changes in texture, dynamics and pitch. Art will be concentrated on monochromatic pieces when learning about drawing detailed portraits with accurate proportions, when we learned these skills we then got creative when learning to draw a Tim Burton style self-portrait. In French we will be reviewed our prior learning and put this into written work – taking into account the correct use of verb tense.

In PE we showed our adventurous sides while learning orienteering and working on our fundamental physical skills. We were also busy outside in the allotments as we turned our hand to gardening each week.

Autumn 2

This half term Year 6 will focused on history beginning their WW2 topic we looked at Germany – past and present- before concentrating on how the war began and what the impact on Europe was. We also recognised Remembrance Day and used the date as inspiration for poetry writing.

Our Science learning saw us investigating Charles Darwins Theory of Evolution when we learnt about evolution and inheritance. We looked at how plants, animals and humans have adapted to survive over time. Our English writing was based around this topic as we created non-chronological reports about animals and setting descriptions about the beautiful islands Darwin visited during his exploration. We also took part in the Todmorden Book Festival and enjoyed working with Ian Douglas, the storyteller, early on in the half term.

In maths we completed our four operations learning by completing calculations using BIDMAS and thinking about how we can use known facts to help us in our mental mathematics. We then moved on to focusing on Fractions – adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

Our Computing work was titled Bletchley Park – learning about the code breakers before we broke and create codes of our own. In Music this half term we listened, appraised, sang and created our own wartime songs.

In RE the children learned about Forgiveness and how religions view the concept, before asking should we always forgive others? In the build up to Christmas we switched our focus when we looked at the nativity and the role the shepherds played in this, we read different accounts within the bible and compared and contrasted these. Our DT learning this half term was an opportunity for us to explore micro:bits. We looked at navigating the world and working to a design brief to create a backpack which would help us on a worldwide expedition which included compasses, pedometers, etc.

PE we took part in a range of sports during our multi-sports unit. We also participated in gymnastics with the coaching staff from Edstart each week. We continued to take part in Gardening sessions each Thursday even as the weather turned colder.

Spring 1

In Spring 1, Year 6 continued their history focus 'What role did Britain play in World War II, and how did impact the outcome of the war?', this half term our focus shifted away from Germany to looking at the impact on Britain and its citizens before looking at how the British forces were victorious in the Battle of Britain. Our English text will be "When the Sky Falls" which is a story set in London during the outbreak of WWII and focuses on a young boys life, change in circumstances and the reltionship he develops...with a gorilla! From this text we will take inspriation to write a setting description and a recount in the form of a diary entry. Our reading lessons will also be based around texts set in wartime - A gunners day, Little Smuggler and two non-chronolgical reports about Reginald Joseph Mitchell and one based on World War 2.

In PE year 6 will continued with EdStart on a Friday taking on the challenges of hockey - they needed to wrap up warm for these sessions as they took place outside. In their second PE session each week the focus was dance based around musical theatre. We created routines to tracks from hit musicals including: The Greatest Showman, Matilda and Shrek. Their end results were very impressive. Our music learning this half term consisted of us creating soundtracks for movies thinking about scenes, sounds and composing our own pieces to suit certain moods.

In Science we moved on to the topic of Light with our key question being "What is light?". We did not only focus on the way light travels, reflection and how mirrors work but we will also looked at the structure of the eye and how it works. Our PSHE key question was: How can we show more responsible behaviour as we get older? We identified areas for development, recognising our strengths and thinking of ways we can take care of ourselves physically, mentally and how we can manage ourselves financially as we get older.

In computing the class focused on data - how it can be collected and how it can be stored, this included RFID, QR codes and barcodes. Finding out how the information is stored and retrieved and creating data sets of our own. In RE the children learnt about hinduism and what different hindus believe about God.

In art we looked at the power of protest in this half terms chromatic unit, looking at how art can be used to deliver messages and designing our own charity t-shirts. Our outdoor and adventurous learning was held on a Wednesday morning during Forest School sessions, children needed to bring extra layers to wear outside as they took part whatever the weather!