Summer Term 1

For the first half of the Summer Term, Year 6 will focus their learning on 'Evolution and Inheritance' 

Our text focus is Skellig by David Almond to reinforce our 'Evolution' topic and help us find out more about the Theory of Evolution, fossils and features we have inherited from our relatives.

For our Science topic, we have been learning about Charles Darwin's study of Galapagos Finches. We talked about how weather conditions on the islands caused the birds beaks and feet to evolve in order for them to survive in the different conditions.
Using different instruments as 'beaks', we carried out a science investigation to work out which instrument would make the best beak and how many seeds it can collect in one minute.

As part of our Maths unit, we had a really practical session to help develop our understanding of area and perimeter in the real world. We were set a challenge to find out the area and perimeter of our new build at school.

First, we drew plans in groups of the layout of the new build.

Then, we went into the new building and used our metre sticks to find out the length and width of each part of the build.

Next, we went back into class and added our measurements onto our drawings of the new build, before working in our groups to find the area and perimeter of each room and the total area covered.

Well done Year 6 for your collaborative efforts!
You all worked fantastically in your groups and discussed great problem solving skills to work out the area / perimeter of the electrical cupboard we couldn't get in to measure.

Our RE unit for this half term is 'People of God': we have been learning the story of Moses and how he fulfilled God's wishes to help rescue His people.
After working through the different stages of the story, we looked at the 10 Plagues of Egypt and thought about whether or not Moses should help.

Here are some pictures of our Conscience Alley drama task to try and convince Moses what he should do.

Well done Year 6! I was really impressed with the thoughtful responses you gave to help persuade Moses. Both Liam and Scarlett acted in role as Moses very well too.

To start the Summer Term, we have had a whole school focus on

Starbird by Sharon King-Chai.

Starbird's songs weave the richest dreams and delight all who hear him, but when the Moon King traps him in a cage as gift for his daughter, the colour and life in his voice begin to drip away. While the Moon King is blinded by greed and selfishness, his young daughter can clearly see the injustice and cruelty of his actions.

Here are some of our Starbird summaries.  We are using them as an introduction to our Moon King discussions texts:

Here are some examples of our Starbird discussion texts to find out whether the Moon King made a wise choice releasing Starbird.

All the children have worked fantastically hard on their discussion texts and should be very proud of their writing.

In a Design Technology lesson, we used planning grids to organise ideas for a Starbird shoe box scene. After we had completed our DT box scenes, we also evaluated our group work and considered how we could improve our work.

Here are some pictures of our collaborative work to create our Starbird scenes.

We thought about the choice the Moon King made to release Starbird and whether he was wise in his decision.  We completed a conscience alley drama activity to allow the Moon King to look at the positives and negatives of his choice, hot seated the Moon King and are building up to writing a discussion text.

Here are some examples of our drama activities and the English work we have completed around Starbird:

We also looked at the wonderful illustrations in Starbird and had a go at drawing our own Starbirds.  First, we sketched them on the playground with chalks:

Then, we used pastels to draw Starbird in our sketch books while thinking carefully about proportion:

And, we also compare Van Gogh's Starry Night to the city scape in the text.  We then created our own versions of the Starbird city scape inspired by Van Gogh: