Year 6 Blog

8th November 2024

It has been a great first week in year 6. We have begun our new project of 'A Child's War' with a range of different activities to become immersed into the lives of children during World War 2. We dressed up as evacuees and looked at what important items we may have taken when packing to be evacuated. We talked about appropriate items to help live somewhere new, while feeling comfortable, before designing a packing list allowing for others to know what to take; photos of family and our teddies were high priority.

On Wednesday, we had a really fun English lesson. Next week, we are going to be writing a letter from the point of view of an evacuated child to their grown-up at home. To help, we used drama to experience everything from the air raids, the jounrey on the train and even being chosen by villagers while on the station. We found this experience really unusual as the villagers would make comments about the way the children looked or whether they were a boy or a girl. Yes, this really did happen! We had lots of fun though being different villagers; we had a Reverend, a baker, a WW1 veteran, and a grumpy old man! We used sound clips to hep us really feel as though we were there.

Later this week, we compared the lives of children in England with the lives of children in Germany during the war. We found this very interesting as we didn't realise that they went through the same as children here. Its sad to think of all these children being evacuated and forced to do things they didn't want to do - we know we would have been devastated to have left our grown-ups.

On Thursday, we started our Forest Schools experience! It was so much fun - we had hot chocolate and biscuits out by the camp fire and made 'zoomers' out if disks of wood and string! Although smelling like bonfire by the end of the day, we really enjoyed it and can't wait for next week!

25th October 2024

This week year 6 have been journalists!

We have been exploring Sir Ernest Shackleton's great trip to Antarctica in History lessons. We used this information to write newspaper reports about the great explorer in our English sessions. In order to do this, we studied newspapers to find key features; watched original footage of The Endurance's great voyage and thought about questions we might ask Shackleton and his crew, if they were alive today. We published our reports in The Guilford Gazette and The Oxford News. We had a lot of fun coming up with interesting headlines - our favourites were:  'Shack's back!'  'The Boss is back!'  'Shackleton Saves the Day!' 'Back from the Dead!'

Here we are sharing our newspaper reports with each other!

25th October 2024

Our Worship group held a Worship this week based on the theme of Hope. This is the value we are focusing on this half term. The group used song, dance and scripture to explore what Hope means to us all - either as adults or as children. The children (all from Year 6)  wrote the worship themselves and chose the music. The whole school joined in with the worship and the group acted out the parable of Jesus healing the paralysed man. The group are already starting to think about next half term's theme!

18th October 2024

Over the last 7 weeks, we have been practising a number of gymnastics skills. These have included different ways of moving, rolls, jumps and balances. We have used different pieces of equipment to create a routine. This week, we introduced the box spring, allowing us to jump higher onto and over horses. We then used either a pike, star or tuck jump to dismount, practising spotting the landing with perfect balance. It took a few practises to get onto the horse as well as land without over balancing.

We've also been busy putting the finishing touches onto our descriptive writing pieces. We have created a variety of letters, diary entries and even some poems using a number of descriptive features: similes, metaphors and personification. The children have worked incredibly hard to put themselves in the readers shoes and chosen language to create vivid images in the reader's mind, using all of their senses to fully immerse them.

Our next English unit is all about Newspapers. We discussed this week, what it means to be a journalist and the different skills needed to begin an interview; note taking, focusing on facts being a huge part of this. Then, we watched news reels of Shackleton's expedition which included stills, videos and audio clips from the actual expedition, as well as interviews with Shackleton's son. We then created an enormous word bank of words and phrases to describe the type of man Shackleton was.

11th October 2024

This week in History, year 6 have been learning about the great explorers in the Polar regions. We looked at their achievements but also their challenges. Each group researched a different explorer and we then became 'experts' and shared our knowledge with the rest of the class. We used both primary and secondary sources to do this. 

After this, we looked at Scott's fateful trip to the South Pole. We thought about his errors but also about the bad luck he encountered along the way! Finally, we compared Scott's expedition and his resources to expeditions nowadays. We were really stunned by how much has changed over the years - poor Scott could have benefitted from today's technology!

4th October 2024

Year 6 have been busy this week building their language and creating some fantastic poems about the Antarctic. They have created amazing similes and metaphors to describe as well as using personification to really put you in the frozen kingdom. This has also included '60 Seconds of Bravery' where we have shared our poems to the rest of the class! We got so excited by our poems that we did a poetry recital during DEAR time on Wednesday. 

We also discussed what cohesion means and the importance of it within and across out pieces of writing. In order to do this, we collaboratively wrote sentences to describe different parts of Shackleton's journey in small groups. Then, we read these out to the class before identifying a cohesive order, justifying why the order was the most suited: linked themes, repeating phrases, questions and answers.

We then took part in a competition to identify which polar explorer was the most significant due to not only their discoveries but their perseverance and the lessons learnt from their respective expeditions. As a class, we then had a class vote and decided that Sir Ernest Shackleton was the most significant because he learnt from past mistakes and didn't allow for his quest to detract from his promise to his 27 men - that all would return safe and sound. The debate to get to this decision was passionate at times but the reasoning was so fantastic that it was justified passion. We are big fans of Shackleton in this class!

27th September 2024

Antarctica Antics! 

This week, Year 6 have been researching the frozen polar regions and using our frozen facts to create non-chronological texts. We have looked at climate, topography, natural resources and the concept of Polar day and night. Using our research, we then identified the key features of non-chronological texts - we wanted to inform our readers about the polar regions, to help them to become experts. We thought carefully about audience and purpose and about how to 'hook' our readers. At the end, we held an exhibition of our work and offered each other some positive feedback ass well as some targets for next time.

Here are some examples!