Year 6 Class Page

Mr. Johnson and Mrs Banks would like to welcome you all to Year 6 – the top of the school!

This year is going to be full of hard work, graft and determination… It is also going to be full of fun! You are at the top of the school, the role models, the leaders, the head honchos! You have worked hard for 6 years and have found yourself at the head of the table! One of you will be Head Girl, another will be Head Boy. Some of you will be House Captains, others Prefects and Eco Warriors. You are leading the way for the rest of the school, setting the example for them to follow.

You will go on spectacular overnight trips (a curriculum based trip in the Autumn Term and a residential in the Summer) and will become prepared and ready for the jump to secondary school. You will do some incredible growing up over the course of this year and will leave the school wonderful young adults.

What about the learning? Topcs wise, you will learn about the early 20th Century in our World At War topic, before moving on to Volcanoes in the Spring term and finally Ancient Mayan civilisations in the summer (sadly there will be no trip to Mexico!) There is a rich and broad curriculum in Year 6 for you to enjoy!

Our class charity this year is Zoe’s Place, this was voted for by the children in the class. They will be fundraising for this charity throughout the year.

What’s On In Year 6

Spring 1 Week Beginning 17/1/21

English: We will be looking at the story of Pompeii this week. I have included a story below that sets the scene (it features some reading comprehension questions). Over the course of the week the children will be recapping using speech to advance a story and using expanded noun phrases within a story to describe character and settings (examples of both of these are in the text below). By the end of the week we will be planning and then writing part of the story of Pompeii.

Maths: This week we are looking at Properties of Shapes. To begin, we are looking at finding missing angles in quadrilaterals and triangles. From here, we will be moving on to finding missing angles around a point or on a straight line. There is work on maths.co.uk for the children to have a go at and there is more work to complete below. I would strongly recommend that the children try maths.co.uk first however. If there are any issues with the completion of these tasks I will happily Zoom with you and the children to help out.

Geography: We are researching the differences in human and physical geography between North Yorkshire and Tonga in light of the recent volcanic eruption in the South Pacific. The children have learned what GDP and GDP Per Capita is and are comparing the two, as well as population and population density to compare human geography. To compare physical geography, the children have looked at the differences between the sizes of the two areas, the highest and lowest points and how the areas are made up (e.g. Tonga is made up of lots of islands whilst North Yorkshire has but one coastline).

The children are also learning about 6 figure grid references and are completing the sheets below. There is a nice BBC Bitesized resource explaining 6 figure grid references to help.

Science: This week, we are learning about how eyes work. I have included a slideshow which covers the basics, and have included a video below which goes into a little more detail. Work is included below too.

Spring 1 Week Beginning 10/1/21

Maths: We will be filling in some little gaps this week in maths, starting with looking at a recap of measures and conversions, followed by rounding large whole numbers. Later in the week we will tackle the order of operations with BIDMAS (aka BODMAS – they both mean the same thing!) There is work for all of this on maths.co.uk.

English: We are poets and we definitely know it. This week the children will be looking at the lyrics of Dylan! Specifically the mysterious One More Cup Of Coffee (lyrics here). The children will look at how Dylan has used language to convey meaning and will try and decide what the song is about. Moving on, the children will plan their own mysterious poem / song using metaphors and similes and will spend time thinking about how to use figurative language. Once the children have planned and written their poem they will edit it to improve their language with a fresh set of eyes.

Science: We are beginning our light topic. The children will learn about light travelling in straight lines and will consider how that enables us to see things.

Geography: Volcanoes! We will be looking at how volcanoes came to be, and labelling a volcano. Some volcano info can be found here, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find your own explosive videos!

Spring 1 Thursday 6th & Friday 7th January

These two days will be spent recapping the key learning points from the Autumn Term and refreshing the children’s knowledge. We will be introducing our volcanoes topic with a fun, clay based activity and looking at how tectonic plates have changed the face of the earth over millions of years.

Autumn 2 Week 5:

Maths: We have started learning about area and perimeter this week. The children have been learning about finding the area of compound shapes by breaking the shapes into rectangles and squares and finding their areas. We also looked at finding missing side lengths to achieve this. We touched on circles for one day as well, looking at diameter, radius and circumference. Some children were introduced to pi and finding the area of a circle.

English: The children are back at their diaries. This time the Bletchley Park Codebreakers have had success! The chlidren have used informal language and have expressed delight and relief in their writing. The children have also practised using single dashes in their writing, and have practised writing dialogue.

Science: We have looked at how nutrients are passed around the body from the moment they are chewed up in the mouth until they are entering the blood stream.

Art: The children have been making some wonderful Christmas decorations to give us a wonderfully Christmassey classroom!

Autumn 2 Week 4:

*** Assessment Week ***

Autumn 2 Week 3:

Maths: Continuing ratio from before London, specifically solving problems in ration. Measure, estimation and converting measurements.

English: Planning and writing a diary entry from the perspective of a frustrated Bletchley Park Codebreaker. We looked at hyphens and subordinate clauses in our grammar sessions and the children answered explanation questions as they read. The children considered how they would make the writing feel emotional and portray the frustrations of the codebreakers.

Science: The function of the blood.

History: The rise of Nazisim and the start of WW2, with a specific focus on primary sources.

Autumn 2 Week 2:

The children are on a once in a lifetime trip to London where they are visiting Bletchley Park, the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, Parliament Square, the RAF Museum and the London Eye. They will also take a leisurely boat tour of the Thames and visit the West End to see Matilda The Musical (and get inspiration, ideas and thoughts on which parts to audition for when we produce the very same musical in the summer).

Click here for more information about our fantastic trip to London

Autumn 2 Week 1:

Maths: Recapping fractions from last term will make up the bulk of the week. We will finish with an introduction to ratio and look at how to simplify ratios.

English: The children will become experts in building an Anderson Shelter. They will pass this newly gained knowledge on in the form of a set of instructions which will feature modal and imperative verbs.

Science: The children will begin their new topic, which looks at the human heart.

History: The children will look at the causes of the second world war. They began looking at this towards the end of Autumn 1, but will benefit from a more detailed account of what happened between WW1 and WW2, including the rise of the Nazis.

Autumn Term Overview

Throughout this term, the children will learn about World War 1 (before half-term) and World War 2 (after half-term). This wide ranging and broad topic will see children learn how to use various historical sources, sequence and understand the events that led to both wars and ask historically valid questions that will help them make sense of the past. This topic will also lend itself to looking at the changes in the human georgraphy across Europe over the last century and establish how the geography of various battlezones altered the type of combat that happened there.

In English, the children will be taking inspiration from World War 1 in the first half of the Autumn Term as they work on newspaper articles, letters from the trenches, fact files and descriptive writing. After half-term, the children will be experiencing a once in a lifetime trip to London which will influence a lot of their writing moving forward. The children will write diary entries from a day in the life of a Bletchley Park codebreaker, begin adventure stories of the tomb raiders who discovered some of the mummies they saw in the British museum and begin ghost stories about some of the famous people buried beneath Westminster Abbey. We will read The Machine Gunners as a class and the children will have regular opportunities to read for pleasure in Year 6.

In maths this term, the children will solidiy their knowledge and understanding of the four rules of number, before moving on to covering fractions (they will compare, add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions as well as find fractions of amounts and more), following this the children will compare fractions with decimals and percentages and learn how to use ratio.