Year 6
Welcome to Year 6
As your child starts their journey in Year 6, they are on the verge of becoming young adults, developing inquisitive minds ready to question and challenge the world around them. We aim to encourage them to have a love of learning. Year 6 is an action-packed year, with many opportunities for the children to immerse themselves in much more than SATs. Our class page will keep you updated with what your child has been learning each year as well as links to how you can support them at home. We look forward to sharing our Year 6 journey with you each half term.
Topics
Autumn – Crime and Punishment / Our Wonderful World
Spring – Storms and Shipwrecks / Ancient Greece Oddysey
Summer – Digging Deeper/ Moving on
PE
PE (Wednesday and Friday)
We will be swimming on a Friday during the Spring Term
Equipment
It would be useful for all children to have their own equipment in school. Useful items to have are as follows: pencil, ruler, small pencil case, glue stick, handwriting pen (black), highlighter, scissors, water bottle, home/school diary EVERY DAY – (these need to be signed by parents).
Homework
Children will be expected to complete homework on a weekly basis. Homework will be set on a Friday and will need to be returned to school by the following Wednesday at the latest. Tasks will mainly focus on Maths and English and will focus around key objectives which children should meet by the end of year 6. Children are expected to read daily in Year 6, both in school and at home, and to keep a log of their reading in their home/school diary.
Homework will also be set via Seesaw and use apps such as Spelling Shed, TTRS, Spag.com and Purple Mash.
Autumn 1
We have had a great start to the new school, with life at Forsbrook returning to the old ‘normal’. This year we have relaunched our house teams and they now have new names which were voted for by the children last year: Earth, Fire, Water and Air.
Being in Year 6 brings new responsibilities and the children who wanted to put themselves forward for the role of Team Captain by writing their own speeches. The standard was fantastic this year and we were so impressed with the efforts of all of our children. A huge well done to those who were elected – we look forward to you leading and supporting your team this year.
Our topic this term is Crime and Punishment and we started the year exploring the narrative poem, The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. We rewrote the poem as a narrative focusing on the careful use of language and revising key grammar skills. Next, we wrote a newspaper report about the tragic events that unfolded that night and learnt how to write reported and direct speech.
Continuing our writing theme on Crime and Punishments, we analysed the features of a balanced argument and wrote our own based on the question “Should graffiti be legalised?”. We learned how to structure our writing using paragraphs and impersonal language.
In art, we have been learning about perspective drawing and over the last few weeks have been practising the skills needed to produce our own one-point perspective pencil drawing of the ribbon-of-moonlight-road which stretched across the purple moor in The Highway Man poem.
In maths, we have secured our knowledge of place value and have been learning to calculate both mentally and in written form using all four operations. We have shown excellent problem solving and reasoning skills along the away and we have been learning how to represent the maths both with counters and pictures to help to understanding the key concepts.
Electricity has been our topic in science and we have learned how to draw circuit diagrams using correct symbols. We have had lots of opportunities to experiment using wires, batteries, bulbs, buzzers and motor and we even had a go at making our own switches!
In computing, we have been learning about variables and we’ve made our own ‘catching game’ using Scratch. Why play the games when you can make your own?
And finally, in music Mrs Cooke has been teaching us how to play the ukulele and we’ve been mastering basic chords. Watch this space for our performances. We can’t wait to show the world our musical talents!
Autumn 2
Wow – what a busy half term it has been!
On our first day back after half term, Year 6 were transported back in time to the Victorian period to find out first-hand what life was like for children during this period. Many children needed new names as their real ones were far too modern for the Victorian period! We developed our understanding of chronology and timelines, asked questions based on historical events and used a range of sources to find evidence about life in schools. What brilliant historians they were!
In English, we have been reading Oliver Twist. We developed our writing skills by concentrating on describing settings and characters using careful use of language including experimenting with personification and show-not-tell techniques.
As part of maths week, year 6 took part in a ‘Join the Dots’ workshop led by a mathematician from Oxford University. They used straight lines to create curves called ‘parabolas’ and created some fantastic patterns. In our maths lessons this half term, we have been getting to grips with fractions. We have been learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions, and we finished our unit by applying our skills using all four operations to problem solving.
The children have developed their road sense skills after two days bike-ability training. Well done to all who took part-the leaders commented on how wonderful they all were.
Our science work this half term has focused on learning about light. We investigated how light travels in straight lines and conducted an experiment to find out how shadows change.
In RE, we have been learning about incarnation and exploring how the prophets in the Old Testament wrote about the coming of a messiah. To conclude our topic, we visited St Peters Church where Rev. Jonathan answered our big questions about this topic and taught us about how Christians celebrate Christmas.
Spring 1
This half term, we have been reading the fantastic book Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. This has been the stimulus for our English writing and we have written a persuasive letter, using arguments for and against; a desert island setting description selecting vocabulary carefully; and an instructional guide of how to survive on a desert island.
In art, we looked at the famous painting “The Great Wave” by Hokusai, and how other artists have recreated artwork based on the original painting. We used our sketchbooks to select our favourite pieces of work and used these ideas to plan our own version using media of our choice. The variety and creativity is amazing and we are extremely proud of our results.
In Geography, we have been finding out about different signs of climate change found throughout the world. We learned about droughts in Gambia, floods in Devon, UK, bushfires in Australia, and melting icecaps in Greenland. We have looked at different ways that we can help to reduce our Carbon Footprint as well as learning about the commitment of other countries to help to reduce climate change.
In maths, we have been mastering the tricky skills of algebra and learning that it isn’t so hard after all! Using manipulatives, we have been representing expressions and solving equations. We are still working hard at improving our arithmetic skills, showing that we can use all four operations to calculate efficiently.
Learning how to search the internet effectively has been our focus for computing. We have explored how to refine searches, how search engines rank their searches and how webcrawlers work.
Living things and their habitats is our theme for science. We have been learning about Carl Linneaus’ classification system and have classified plants and animals in a variety of ways using classification keys and Venn diagrams. We studied the duck-billed platypus and noticed that this strange creatures has similar features to birds, amphibians and mammals making classification all the more difficult. Finally, we created our own imaginary animal identifying key features which would help to classify it.
Spring 2
This half term we have been learning about what life was like in Ancient Greece. In English, we have been looking at Greek Myths and legends. We read a variety of Greek Myths and explored the themes and characters within including Pandora’s Box, Daedalus and Icarus and King Midas. After reading the story of King Midas, we wrote our own version based on the structure of the original story but making it original. We enjoyed sharing these with Key Stage 1. We’ve also been reading ‘Who Let the God’s out’ by Maz Evans. In history, we have used a range of sources to find out about life in Ancient Greece and looking at the similarities and differences between life in Athens and life in Sparta. We explored ancient Greek pots and found out about how historians try to piece together the past using the images and drawings from these pots. I art, we read the story of The Twelve Labours of Heracles and recreated different scenes from the story on our 2D pots. We are really proud of our art work.
In maths, we have learned to recognise, describe and compare ratios and will represent them in different ways. We have also looked at the concept of scale factors and learned to interpret scales on plans and maps, using them to calculate actual size or distance. We have enlarged shapes by a given scale factor, and learned to identify whether two shapes are similar using calculations to deduce the scale factor. We have also been learning how to use a protractor to measure and draw angles accurately.
In science, we have continued our learning about living things and their environment. As well as plants and animals, we have learned about microorgansims and even devised an experiment to grow our own mould. In design and technology, we have been designing and making our own model bird hides using our maths skills to produce scale models.
In computing, we have been using the Microbit and open source software to write programmes to make a digital glove. We have created tunes and learned how to move code to make a physical device work.
In RE, we have continued our theme looking at “What Would Jesus Do?” and explored a range of parables and the teachings behind these. We have applied these teachings to everyday life and thought about how we can live out our school Christian values of love, joy, hope, peace, respect, compassion, friendship and courage, and be the best versions of ourselves.
