We were extremely fortunate this week to welcome a guest to speak with us about her mother, a Kinderstransport refugee. During World War II, her mother escaped the Nazis in Germany by travelling across Europe to the UK, where she stayed with a host family. This gave her the opportunity to have an education, stay safe and learn English fluently. The children had some fantastic, insightful questions for our guest speaker.
This week, we finished off our autumn term science unit all about light. This involved doing a series of investigations, one of which looked at how light reflects and travels in straight lines. To do this, we gathered our equipment and worked in groups to mimic how a periscope allows us to see an object over an obstacle. It took some trial and error to get the mirrors at the right angle, but all groups were successful in the end!
Another experiment we carried out was on light refraction. We learned that light travels slower when passing through dense objects, causing it to bend or change direction, almost creating an illusion. We were fascinated to see how a horizontal arrow appeared to point in the opposite direction when we looked at it through the beaker of water.
It was great to celebrate the end of the autumn term this week at with a spectacular Christmas Carol service at Church. Year 6 have been working hard to practise songs and readings to perform in front of Year 5 pupils and parents. Well done and thank you to all involved – it really was a joyous occasion!
Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year from Class 6C!
Book night was an opportunity for Y6 to give a gift to their Reception buddies. After picture books were chosen, they were wrapped in Christmas wrapping and gifted to the reception child. The children found a cosy place to sit together, open the gift and enjoy the book together with some biscuits and hot chocolate or juice. Year 6 were mature, caring and responsible with their buddies – such excellent role models!
This week, 6C finished their hockey unit in PE and competed for victory in a class tournament! Over the past weeks, the class have been learning to: tackle, hit, shoot, pass and dribble the ball. Brought together with attacking and defending skills, the class were able to apply their learning and follow rules within gameplay.
We have now finished our lino printing unit and the results are beautiful!
First, we practised sketching leaves and used these to develop our lino print design. Then, we transferred our designs onto the lino – some of us used tracing paper for a more accurate copy. Once transferred, we could begin to use the lino cutting tools to carve out our design; it was important to follow the safety instructions when carving.
With our carvings complete, we created a background to print on. For this, we used mixed media paper and created a border using masking tape (to create a neat edge when painting) and used watercolour paints to create a wash background. Autumnal colours like orange, yellow and hints of green were the most effective.
The final step was to ink up our carved lino blocks using printing ink and a roller. We then carefully placed this onto our watercolour background, making sure to firmly smooth out the surface, and then peeled off the lino to reveal the final print.
Until the final print was made, we could not be sure how it would turn out… but they all look superb! We loved seeing our final pieces being revealed.
This week in writing, we created freeze frames of our model text to help us understand the narrative in a creative and memorable way. Our text type was a warning tale. In groups, the children took a part of the story structure each – the opening, build up, dilemma, resolution or ending – and recreated it using themselves only, no props! Have a look at the photos below to see the outcomes.
Eden Camp is a museum in North Yorkshire. It used to be a prisoner-of-war camp but is now an exciting and immersive theme museum with 29 huts where children can learn about the history and experiences of war, especially the Second World War.
We learnt about air raids by the German Air Force – the Luftwaffe. This was where Germany bombed British towns and cities and was known as the Blitz. It was interesting but shocking to see the bombed street scene as we walked through the Blitz hut.
As well as this, we learnt about why blackouts and air raid shelters were necessary during WW2. We even got to go in some air raid shelters!
This all links with our class novel, Letters from the Lighthouse, where our main characters experience an air raid in the first chapter.
A huge hello and welcome from me to all of Class 6C and their families. This blog is a space to get an insight into what we have been learning in school. I hope it inspires you to continue learning and exploring at home!
We have made a great start to the year so far. A huge highlight has been our trip to Meanwood Valley last week visiting the Seven Arches Aqueduct.
Here, we learnt about the local area for our writing lessons we began this week, we picked leaves to identify like scientists and used them to create leaf rubbings using crayons, and practised being geographers as we plotted our route on an OS map.
Our trip has inspired lots of nature related learning this week too. In PSHE, we considered how a tree belongs to nature and thought about our values, hopes, dreams and interests to discover where we belong in the world. In writing, we have been collating key information about Meanwood Valley to prepare us for writing our own non-fiction information text very soon!
