Year 6 2021-22

Every time we start a new history topic, we think about where the civilisation or events are located in history - how far or close they are to other events we have studied, and what else was happening in the world when these events were taking place. This term, we are learning about the Kingdom of Benin. Year 6 worked independently to organise themselves and their timeline cards into BCE and CE events, eras and civilisations, and then ordered themselves from the earliest date to the most recent. They showed excellent partnership and resilience in arranging the events and creating a living timeline!  We were particularly interested to learn that the Kingdom of Benin roughly overlapped with the Tudors, especially as when we last talked about the Tudors (in Year 5), it was in the context of the rise of European Colonialism. We have explored this topic a little more in literacy lessons, learning about the Benin Bronzes and calls to return them to Nigeria. Our opinions on this are varie...

In our science learning, Year 5 and 6 have been learning about the solar system. The children have lots of excellent questions about space, and they've enjoyed learning more about the solar system. Lots of them were surprised to learn that the Sun is also a star!  To help us understand how far away the planets in our solar system are from each other, we went to the courts and made a scale model of the solar system, using our bodies to represent the sun and the planets, and one pace to represent 50,000,000 km! We couldn't quite go far enough to represent Neptune accurately, but that led to an excellent problem-solving discussion about where in the school grounds we could go to make the scale model. Three groups had a go at the challenge of representing the solar system as a scale model, and we noticed that not all of the 'planets' were in the same place. This got us thinking about units of measure and how we could work and measure more accurately in the future.  We notic...

We were invited to the Curzon Cinema in Clevedon to visit the historic cinema building, meet the other schools that had taken part in the cinema project, make thaumatropes and see the final film of the project.  We had a fantastic time! Thank you, Curzon Cinema! 

 On Red Nose Day, we got the Geoboards out and investigated irregular hexagons! It was a really fun way to start the day, and it was amazing how many different irregular hexagons the children were able to find.

 As part of our learning about the water cycle and rivers, we made our own V-shaped river valleys! We balled up paper balls, and arranged them in a zig-zag formation. Then, we used mod-podge to build up a layer over the paper balls. We took special care to ensure that the path of the river was visible. Once that had dried, we covered our models with a mixture of PVA glue and water, and then built up the landscape with strips of tissue paper. 

 It was wonderful to see everyone's World Book Day costumes! Cabot children enjoyed sharing their favourite characters with each other and talking about and reading books. 

 As part of our learning about the water cycle, we made our own water catchment area to investigate what happens to water run-off following precipitation. We also investigated how pollutants enter the water cycle. Children arranged bottles and cartons under plastic bags to create areas of high ground. When it 'rained' they looked at where the water went and if rivers or lakes were formed anywhere. We added pollutants in the form of powdered paint, and were shocked to see how easy it was for the pollutants to enter the water cycle.