Year 6 - November 2022

Year six have been occupied this Autumn term with a great deal of learning, in addition to the residential trip to Manor adventure just before the half term break. Working hard, the year five blogging team have been interviewing a group of year six children to discover more about what they have been up to around school and in their lessons.

In English, year six have been reading and utilising the book “The arrival” to write and chot (meaning chat and jot) down vocabulary features and ideas for their sentence stacks. They have been focusing a lot on the feeling lens from the writing rainbow (the story they are focusing on is a very sad one) and performed a conscience alley exercise. Chloe said about the conscience alley exercise, “The class thought about the main character and shared lots of ideas for vocabulary about how she might be feeling at certain points of the story.” Freya said, “I really like the sentence stacking lessons because we get to make great paragraphs!”

So far in computing lessons, year six have been using Python – coding software. Though slightly harder than what they have previously done in computing, they’ve practised using text–based code to create a game. They have also had to work hard to debug their code to ensure it works smoothly. Zain commented on this as being his favourite lesson of the week.

In science this year, year six have been concentrating on the circulatory system of the heart pumping blood for the lungs to give oxygen to. Their new topic this term is light and they’ve been seeing how light hits the eye. They’ve also completed an experiment on reflection, using mirrors to reflect light.

In maths this term, year six have been learning about how to find the equivalent for fractions and decimals. They’ve also learnt about many other topics: percentages, friendly number boxes, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. With these last four, they’ve been learning how to apply the four operations to fractions. Zane said, “I’ve learned some easier techniques for adding fractions although I found it hard before.”

In art, year six have been looking at a Japanese artist called Hokusai who painted a picture called ‘the great wave’. They’ve been aiming to mimic the art style and create a water scene.

During their history lessons, year six have learnt about various aspects of World War II: who announced it – Neville Chamberlain and what they did without much food – rationing and the unfortunate evacuees, including operation Pied Piper. They’re looking forward to learning about Anderson shelters and DT will overlap with this learning as they will attempt to replicate them. 

In PE, the year six classes have learnt two different topics: hockey and different types of dancing. They were called the Charleston, Lindy Hop and the Lambeth Walk which they might eventually perform to somebody. In hockey, they have learnt how to control the ball using a hockey stick. They have also played a couple of matches using the skills they already know and what they have learnt with Mrs Holmes and Miss Keen. They have also played a hockey tournament which includes lots of hockey games. 

This blog post was written by the year five blogging team.