Term 6

Year 6 Production

Our enquiry: How can someone simply disappear?

For our challenge we wrote Newspaper reports about Salim's mysterious disappearance. We then used this reports to film our very own news broadcasts.

We thought carefully about how to capture the thoughts and emotions of the different characters involved.

"You don't just get it like a click of the fingers, it's quite hard!" Corey

We used Ordance survey maps to pinpoint locations to help us explore London.

"It really looks like London!" Waleed

Following our visit to the capital city, we created large artwork of London's most famous monuments.

We began our enquiry with a surprise trip to London and a journey round the London Eye!

This will help us to think uncover how Salim disappeared on the Eye!

Term 5

Our enquiry: Can people change their ways?

Our new enquiry this term is based around Louis Sacher's book: There's a boy in the girl's bathroom. It focuses on Bradley Chalkers, a boy who doesn't have any friends, and his time at school when a new boy, Jeff Fishkin, arrives to become his only friend.

We drew ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Bradleys to reflect his confusion. He is currently torn between wanting to be good, happy and enjoy life and his old, safe habits of being cruel and keeping his distance from meaningful relationships. Here are Angel’s and Ella’s outstanding examples.

We produced role plays of Bradley’s internal conflict. To be good or bad?

As part of our Outdoor Learning project, we did some pond dipping of our school pond and collected lots of tadpoles. We then tried to recreate their natural habitat in a tank in our classroom. Finally, we researched their diet to ensure they are healthy.

We discussed the life cycle of a tadpole - we're desperately hoping to grow some frogs!

We also discussed how many challenges face tadpoles and how they overcome these by being born in the masses!!

Anti-bullying day!

We created an agreed definition of bullying, discussed the types of and effects of bullying and the reasons why people bully. We then created our own anti-bullying campaign videos. We did all this to help us better understand bullying and the effects it can have.

Term 4

Our enquiry:

What do Christians believe about life after death?

Road safety

We were lucky to have Road Safety training from the experts!

"Do unto others as you would them have do unto you."

Thinking about our value this term of respect, we prepared role plays to show when we have been respectful and perhaps when we have not been.

E-Safety week

As part of E-Safety, we have studied the importance of keeping your passwords and logins secure and not sharing your personal details with anyone esepically people you do not know. 

We also looked closely at the importance of keeping your privacy settings at maximum on social networking sites so strangers cannot see our pictures or online activity.

Our digital leaders, Maisey and Georgia, also led lessons on cyber pulling and how to stay safe online.

Finally, we looked at and created our own digital footprint. This reflected all of our online activity over the last 24 hours.

Our enquiry:

How and why are all living things different?

Some of our favourite jokes:

Daniel and Jordan:

Why did the computer go to the doctor? Because it had a virus!

What do you get when you cross a fish with an elephant? Swimming trunks!

Ellie: How many dance teachers does it take to change a light bulb? 5, 6,7,8

World Book Day!

We were visited by the Learning Difficulty Awareness team: Mike, Adam, Mat.

They talked all about learning difficulties, like: the best way to talk to people with learning difficulties, they told us about 'Valuing People Now' and we talked about inclusion and what it means.

The LD Awarness team are a small family run business who are passionate about promoting the rights of people with learning difficulties and autism.

China day!

We are learning Mandarin!

What we thought of China day:

'I learnt Manderin: Zih Chen! It means good-bye!'  Maisie.

'It was really fun and I enjoyed Tai Chi!'   Amie-Joy

'I learnt that in Tai Chi, the Chinese look at their incoming opponents through their swords when fighting! I thought China day was good fun!'    Aimee

Term 3

Our Enquiry:

How and why has Kingswood changed?

Our Challenge: Documentaries on Kingswood!

The Growth Mindset

Our latest development in the Becoming Purple Learners project is all about mindsets. 

In particular, a Fixed Mindset where we think we are incapable of changing: we are who we are, we are as good and bad at things as we ever will be and this will never change...

The second is a Growth Mindset. In which, we feel that through perseverance, hard work and focused practice anything can be achieved. We can gain skills, improve and change.

We studies some research which supported the Growth Mindset. It highlighted the fact that the brain actually behaves like a muscle. The more you use it the stronger it gets!

We looked closely at our own attitudes. Who feels they are not good at maths? ​Who feels they are not good at writing? Why do we think of people as 'smart' or 'dumb'? 

People who we deem as 'smart' have just worked hard and persevered at things.

Whereas, people who we might deem as 'dumb' have just not got there... YET!

Would we call a baby 'dumb'? They can't do anything! They gain EVERYTHING they learn to do through hard work, perseverance and practice.

Sugaal said, " I'm rubbish at spellings and I work hard every night to get better but I'm still rubbish."

After discussions, he agreed that he is SO much better than he was. He is getting better and better, but we can't expect to be the best ever speller over night! It takes time and perseverance!

We came up with this motto:

I can't do it... YET!

​This embodies the idea that if you can't do something, that is fine! You will be able to if you stick at it! It may take time but we will get there!

Our values this term is PERSEVERANCE!

We thought about the term ahead and decided on what we are going to try really hard to keep working at. We collected these ideas on our perseverance pants in our floor book.

"I was practising to read my part for our class assembly - I practised again and again until I got it right!" Georgia.

"I persevered when I was practising my guitar skills. I am now excellent!" Jordan.

WOW!

Today we had some local experts come into school to tell us about how Kingswood has changed in their lifetimes. We came away with loads of interesting facts and even more questions to research for our enquiry. 

Our Enquiry:

How are rainbows formed?

Our first enquiry this term is all about light! We will be exploring where light comes from, how it travels, what it is made from and how it makes colour. We will then use this knowledge and skills set to answer the question: ‘How are rainbows formed?’

We used a light box and prisms to create rainbows. With the light box acting as the sun and the prism acting as a raindrop, this showed us how light behaves when a rainbow is formed. As you can see, as the light travels through the prism it changes angle - this is called refraction - and splits into the seven colours of the rainbow!

Using rayboxes and colour filters, we experimented with creating colour. This illustrated how colour is created when white light is absorbed by an object except for the colour that is reflected. This is what gives an object a certain colour.

For example, a green T-shirt absorbs all the colours of the rainbow from white light except green, which is reflected.

How would you keep Bob safe?

We were not happy with Bob's clothes at night; they were too dark so he was not being safe! Our challenge was to design the safest (the brightest and most reflective) clothes for Bob using scrap materials! The winner was the design which used materials that were retroreflective, shiny, smooth/glossy and bright! There was a bonus prize for making Bob look cool at the same time!

This is the first things we saw as we entered the classroom this morning!

We then discussed how light travels and how it behaves when it meets a reflective surface.

Term 2

Weeks 1-4

Our Enquiry:

How does Michelle Paver engage the reader?

Weeks 5-7

Why do Christians celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December?

To answer this question and unpick more about our Christmas celebrations, we explored the Christmas story! We then story mapped they key events and wrote a script in preparation of creating clay animations of our favourite scenes.

The next day, we used the Lego Movie APP to create our animation.

During our computing day we explored activities which illustrated how computers work. Looking at key ideas such as the Binary approach – how computers sort information before searching to be more efficient.  We also used the App ‘CargoBot’ to look at using instructions to create sequences which control mechanical devices. We created some challenging procedures! Finally, we explored how to work through a problem systematically and overcome deadlocks.

The end of Wolf Brother and completing our challenge!

In week 6, we reached the dramatic conclusion of Wolf Brother - so dramatic Ella was in tears!

Throughout Michelle Paver's thrilling novel, we have been trying to answer the question:

'How does Michelle Paver engage the reader?'

We discovered that to engage the reader Michelle uses a range of techniques: figurative language, precise description, her own Wolf Brother language and dramatic themes.

Skillfully, we used these techniques to write our own chapter of Wolf Brother and we were exceptionally proud of the results so we published them and shared them with our parents and carers.

To help our reading and develop our skills of interrogating texts to fully understand them, we have begun Literacy Circles. Each member of the group has a role: discussion director, illustrator, summariser, word finder, passage selector and character profiler. We have a day to prepare our role to share with our group and then we discuss the text, sharing our findings.

"It was enjoyable debating and deciding who we agree with and who we disagree with - it was quite intense!"     Ben.

We thought about how to improve our descriptions with figurative language.

Then, we created sinister descriptions of wolves riddled with similes, metaphors and personification. Don't read if you are easily scared!

Our WOW for this enquiry involved us studying evidence from the world of Wolf Brother. We then asked insightful questions to interogate them further.

During our study of the book, we have been hunting and recording the many devices Michelle Paver uses to engage the reader: figurative language, description, Wolf Brother language and some of the complex themes.

We have also begun to think about our Challenge - which will be to write in the style of Michelle Paver using her arsenal of techniques to engage the reader!

“Every mistake is a step closer to a better piece of work.” Charlie and Harvey 6DP.

Week 1 was WW1 week!

We used all the knowledge we had gained to teach the rest of the school about The First World War. We also used this opportunity to finish our enquiry: "Which front won the war?"

We met with members from the other classes in year six so that we had experts who had been studying three of the fronts involved in the war: the Western Front, the Sea Front and the Home. We then debated which front was responsible for winning the war.

So, which front did win the war?

Through our debate, we soon came to the conclusions that each front: the Western Front, the Sea Front and the Home Front are interwoven. Whilst they played very different roles in the war, if you removed one of them there would have been a different result in the war. So, all of the fronts played a vital role. Almost like a chain. If you remove one of the links in the chain, the chain fails. If you had removed one of the allied fronts, the war effort would have failed.

"It's amazing what you can find in school!"    Jaeven.

As experts, we were assisting the rest of the school in their efforts to dig our school trench. During our digging, we stumbled upon some artefacts - some over 100 years old!

The school is built on an old coal mine so that might explain some of the artefacts. We are currently researching where the others may have come from!

6DP teach during WW1 week.

To finish our enquiry: "Which front won the war?" we used our extensive knowledge of the Western Front to teach the rest of the school. We created and resourced our own activities and then shared these - without any teacher help!

We created three activities: Whack the Bomb! In which children, if they answered multiple choice questions correctly, were able to whack a hanging bomb filled with prizes!

Also, Match the Rats. An activity where children had to match rats with artefacts from the war with facts about the war. They then used these hanging rats to answer questions in a quiz!

Finally, the Treasure Hunt. Children hunted for facts we had placed around our playground using maps we had created. They then recorded their findings and used these to answer questions in a quiz.

The activities we planned were a great success. We have learnt a lot and so have the rest of the school.

"I was really nervous about teaching but once I started it was awesome!" Ella-Mae.

"It got better and better each time we taught as we learnt more about what works - the first group were haywire!" Jaeven.

"I was really nervous at first- I was shaking- but I got more and more confident as we taught more." Ellie

Term 1

Our Enquiry:

Which front won the war?

"Reading broadens the mind!"

We know how important a life skill reading is.

Each term we have a reading challenge in which we need to regularly at home to a family member or friend. If we complete this challenge, we get to take part in a treat at the end of term. This term's treat was... DODGEBALL!

Following the shocking end of our Power of Reading book, Private Peaceful, in which courageous and caring Charlie Peaceful is deemed a coward by his peers and shot by a firing squad, we evaluated these events. Was Charlie Peaceful a coward? Did he desert his fellow soldiers? Or, was he right to stay and protect his helpless little brother Tommo?

Read our balanced arguments. Whose side would you be on?

Using our role playing skills, we stepped into Tommo Peaceful's shoes in order to imagine how he must have felt during his childhood. How was he coping with the loss of his father? With the guilt that he might be to blame? How did he feel about Chalie and Molly now they were together? How did he feel about The Great War?

Using these ideas we wrote a diary entry from Tommo's point of view. We focused on using emotive language. What do you think?

Weeks 1 and 2

We began our year by working on our 6 new school Values: Trust, Friendship, Responsibility, Honesty, Perseverance and Respect. Then we enjoyed a very exciting Science week, jam packed with WOW Science experiements!

Science week!

We had a fantastic Science week jam packed with WOW Science experiments!

We answered many puzzling questions, observed many chemical reactions and explored many phenomenons!

Using just marshmallows and spaghetti, we had to make the tallest structure we could!

What is the best device to prevent us plummetting from great heights to a messy end?

Unfortunately, despite fighting gravity with parachutes and battling with high velcocity impacts with a cushioned basket, none of our eggs survived! A sad and messy afternoon!