January News 

After returning from a well-earned Christmas break, we have really been picking up the pace in Year 6.

The children have been gripped by the events that are unfolding in Private Peaceful and are keen to find out which Peaceful meets their fate in the end. Their oracy skills are developing brilliantly when taking part in activities such as “Readers’ Theatre”. Our tone, intonation, volume and use of choral reading for impact has come a long way and the increase in confidence of certain pupils is a delight to see!

In writing, we have taken on the roles of different characters from Alfred Noyes’ ballad “The Highwayman” in order to write diary entries, taking into account the events that each character would know about/be involved in as well as carefully using tense and a more informal style of writing. We also debated how much the character of Tim was to blame for the deaths of Bess and The Highwayman. It started out quite tentatively and then some children really found their voices and could provide strong arguments, questions and refutes to move the debate along. 

In Science, we have been looking at light. In order to prove the theories we have learnt – such as “light travels in straight lines” – we used mirrors and torches to shine light onto a target placed in a completely different area. 

Before the Christmas break, the children took part in DT day where they made waistcoats for a teddy – or in some children’s cases, their guinea pigs! They had to work through the whole design process: from developing a design to using patterns to prepare the fabric and sewing the pieces together to adding finishing details. We were very impressed with the finished results!

Great start to the New Year, Year 6! Keep it going. 

February News 

We have been continuing to work hard in Year 6 and the children are making great progress and putting lots of effort in.

We have moved on to reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It is very different from Private Peaceful but definitely has one of the most intriguing opening lines and an array of unusual characters.

In English, we have written a balanced discussion on one of the most debated current events: immigration. We used research to carefully inform our pros and cons, using statistics and expert opinions to support both sides of the argument before drawing our own conclusions. We have since moved on to exploring a beautiful short film called “The Piano” and have created a back story for the central figure in order to support our writing later on.

Meanwhile, in maths, we have been working through a range of topics such as ratio, area, perimeter, volume, percentages, decimals and even angles. There is still much more to cover!

Continuing with our unit of work on light, we devised and carried out an experiment to investigate shadows. We wanted to find out the effect the proximity of an opaque object and a light source had on the object’s shadow. The experiment was carried out twice in order to ensure accuracy and consistency and we then developed our data from a table into a line graph.

To complete our unit of work on population in geography, Year 6 created powerpoint presentations on the effects of climate change on populations across the globe. This inspired many children in the class to create powerpoints on topics of interest at home, some of which they kindly shared.

March News 

Year 6 have been showing great determination and resilience as we move ever closer to SATs week. 

In English, the children did probably one of their best pieces of writing to date. Using the short film “The Piano” as inspiration, we wrote an emotive flashback narrative to narrate the main character’s life. We had to carefully consider our language and use of sentence structures to create various effects depending on the tone of that particular section of writing: nostalgia, romance, war. They truly are beautiful pieces of writing so be sure to have a look when you come for Parents’ Evening next week. 

We have now moved on to a really fun piece of writing where the children have to design their own theme park and use their powers of persuasion to create an advertising leaflet to encourage people to attend. Watch out world of advertising – Year 6 are coming!

In maths, we have bravely taken on algebra and found that it’s not really as daunting as people say. As well as learning new units of work, we are also revisiting previously taught topics such as fractions, decimals and percentages, area and perimeter and unpicking those confusing worded problems. 

To provide some light relief, the whole school enjoyed a performance of Dr Dolittle – with our very own Keira even taking on a starring role!

For World Book Day, Year 6 used our increasingly amazing skills in Readers’ Theatre to create a performance of The Gruffalo for the rest of the school. Their teamwork was amazing and they developed some really engaging and interesting performances, keeping their younger audience in mind. 

Have a lovely Easter break but please ensure that your child keeps their revision ticking over as when we return, there is not much time left until SATs week itself. We have worked too hard for little things to be forgotten over the two-week break.