Year 6

Spring Term Literacy 

This term Year 6 have been focusing on a text called 'The Journey'. This is a picture book with some very interesting illustrations and important messages that tell the story of how a family had to flee their country due to war. The nature of how it is written allows the children to infer hidden messages and make predictions about the challenges and experiences they encounter on their journey to safety. Through this text we have researched and understood what it is like to be a refugee.

We have also taken advantage of many writing opportunities, including persuasive letters as well as immersing ourselves in the features of discussion texts and writing some high quality discussions ourselves. 

Spring Term Maths 

Year 6 started the spring term with learning about decimals. We learnt about the value of digits in numbers up to 2 decimal places and partitioned and ordered them. Following this we learnt about average and how to calculate the mean, median, mode and range. The later part of our term has been focused around fractions. Some of our learning has been new learning but we have also acquired new knowledge and skills including, simplifying, converting from an improper fraction to a mixed number and vice versa and also recognising equivalence between fractions. 

We have really taken advantage of fewer assemblies and utilised this time to continue to work on our mental maths including passports and TT Rockstars. 

Spring Term Science 

Our main Science learning this term has been around the Heart and Circulatory System. We began the topic learning all about the blood, its components and its job within the body. We learnt how nutrients and transported, why our cells need them and how the body absorbs. The heart itself was next and we began to understand it's crucial role within our body and how it works. Galen and Harvey formed part of our historical understanding around how the workings of the heart and circulatory system became understood. We really enjoyed the practical aspects of this topic and also the opportunity to learn some new vital vocabulary. 

Spring Term - Other Curriculum Areas

D&T 

Design and technology this term has proven to be a real hit. We have designed, created and evaluated our own automata toys that we enjoyed sharing with Reception on completion. Our designing of out toys was carefully thought out with consideration given to the audience and purpose of the task. The toys were very challenging to make and required us developing many new skills such as, sawing, gluing, precision and patience!

Despite having to evaluate and amend as we went and our final outcomes not quite working as we expected, we were very proud of our efforts.  

PE

During our PE learning this term we have had the privilege of working with 2 Sports Development officer. Firstly, we had 2 fabulous sessions with Lottie learning new skills in gymnastics. Following this we have spent the past 6 weeks learning new hockey skills with Mr Kinder, which culminated in a Year 6 tournament. 

Autumn Term - Literacy 

At the beginning of the Autumn term, Year 6 revised simple grammatical skills that we require within all aspects of our writing and also revisited a variety of sentence structures.

Our main literacy focus has been on instructional and explanation texts, where we immersed ourselves  in to the world of instructions with a specific focus on recipes. This tied in nicely with our Year group enterprise project, where we made healthy snacks to sell to the whole school. Explanation texts provided us with the opportunity to continue to develop our understanding of audience and purpose and recognize key features before transferring this knowledge to our own extended pieces of writing - 'How to be a teacher' and 'What makes LMDC School successful?'. 

We have also been enjoying reading and sharing our whole class text - Wonder by RJ Palacio. 

Autumn Term - Maths 

The Autumn terms learning began with Financial literacy for Year 6, where we explored many aspects of money such as, profit, loss, revenue, credit, expenses etc. We used this learning to support us with our planning and implementation of our Year 6 enterprise sale. 

Following this, we used a range of concrete equipment to consolidate our understanding of place value with numbers up to 10, 000, 000 and decimal numbers. We then revisited efficient written methods for all 4 operations (+, x, /) and once revisited refined them further. 

Times Tables and passports continue to form part of our daily mathematical learning. 

Autumn Term - Science 

Science for Year 6 this term began with a unit of learning on 'The Classification of Living Things'. This scientific topic, despite proving challenging at times, remains incredibly interesting and varied for the children. Understanding how we know about the Living Things in our world and the incredible system created by the scientist, Carl Linnaeus, encouraged the children to think scientifically, dig deep and ask and answer thought provoking questions. The children explored the layers of the classification system and the process of taxonomy. They organised and sorted animals by Kingdom, Phylum and Class such as, arachnids, crustaceans and annelida. We also learnt how to depict a living thing right back to its original species and Latin name. A highlight of the topic was our hunt around the school grounds, where we put our sorting knowledge into practice. 

Autumn Term - Other Curriculum Areas

D&T 

Our year started with our D&T topic - 'Come Snack with Me'. Year 6 had to design, make and evaluate a healthy snack to sell at our enterprise sale to the rest of the school. They has to consider the cost and work within a budget for their product, advertise and balance the nutritional value of the product they made. All profits go towards their residential at the end of the year. 

Geography 

In Geography we have been comparing two contrasting locations - UK v's The Pantanal. This including thinking about their location in the world, the relief of the locations, vegetation and growth within the locations, population and products and services both locations provide.