Year 6

Welcome to The Year 6 Page!

Wonder

Throughout the spring term, we enjoyed reading the book “Wonder”, where we empathised with the plight of the main character August, who has a rare genetic condition known as Treacher-Collins syndrome.

In English, we researched Treacher-Collins in detail, before compiling non-chronological reports to help spread knowledge and understanding of August’s condition, as well as taking the time to write a diary entry, similar in style to the book, recounting a day in August’s life.

“Choose Kind” is a tagline in the book and, working together with our friends, we decorated our classroom with positive messages to help inspire togetherness. Our homework project for the term was also to choose kindness, recording in a diary how we helped and supported our family and friends over a two week period.

ICT

We have been learning how to become app planners in ICT, working hard to solve problems that Year 6 children face every day.

We whittled down our suggested problems to (only!) ten, chose to work in groups with friends who wanted to solve similar problems and then began to plan a presentation to put forward to the Rise Park Dragon’s Den!

When presenting to the Dragons, we were judged on our originality, our app’s usefulness and how well we presented the concept of our app. Some groups were even lucky enough to be “invested” in, which was a small miracle bearing in mind how careful Mr Kelly was being with his money!

Science

We have been exploring the theory of evolution, learning about the life and works of Charles Darwin and identifying evidence for his theory. We constructed models to show what we thought the evolutionary process from fish to elephant would look like.

We have also learned about DNA and the advancements in gene therapy, linking this with our work in Wonder.

Maths

We have been working really hard in all of our maths sessions. So far we have furthered our skills and understanding of place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, including long multiplication and division. We have also investigated prime, squared and cubed numbers, as well as multiples and factors, applying these to problem solving activities. Finally, we have been working with fractions. Each week we engage in fluency activities (speed and skills) then we apply this to reasoning and problem solving activities.

English

In English we have immersed ourselves in the book STORMBREAKER by Anthony Horowitz: a story about how a teenage boy – Alex Rider – becomes a spy. We designed our own “spy gadget” then wrote to MI6 to persuade them to purchase and use our gadget. We have also written newspaper reports about Alex’s exploits. As we write, we have the opportunity to peer and self-assess our writing, making improvements before producing our final published versions. We have also continued to develop our grammar skills, such as our use of the passive voice and the progressive tense.

Linked to this topic we have developed our team work skills in a number of ways including shelter building, team games and designing and making a marble run to transport marbles from each class to meet in the shared area!

Science

Science sessions have seen us plan and carry out a number of investigations. We have studied animals including humans and light so far. We also enjoyed a number of activities based around biscuits during our STEM week. When planning an investigation, we consider what variables to change, how we can ensure our test is fair and we make predictions based on what we know. We use scientific vocabulary in our work and record our findings in a number of ways.

We also had the opportunity to watch the Nottingham Panthers train before we went ice skating with them. It was great fun!!