Year 6 2021-22

 In literacy lessons, we have been learning about part of S. F. Said's book, 'Phoenix'. We read an edited version of the first chapter, and over the next few weeks, created our own action stories based on that.

 For Music Week, we listened to 'The Carnival of the Animals'. Year 6 focused on 'The Aviary'. After discussing the piece of music, we looked at images of birds and then collaborated as a table to create our own bold, beautiful birds. Don't they look great?

Year 6 have been practising their -ant, -ance, -ancy and -ent, -ence and -ency spellings recently. One fun way we found to practise was by playing a matching game. Children had to turn over a word card and a definition card and see if they matched. If they did, the children had to try to spell the word without looking at the card. If they were correct, they kept the pair of cards. The winner was the player with the most pairs!

 We loved celebrating National Writing Day this year! It was really interesting to think about how authors and illustrators work together to tell a story, and we have made a fantastic class book full of stories about our proudest moments.  We also liked taking part in the challenges which came over the walkie-talkie during the day! A particular favourite was 'write your name in fancy'.

 We've been lucky enough to take part in some African drumming workshops as part of our preparations for our school carnival this year! We've been having weekly lessons with Richard and Mike, who have taught us how to play rhythms on the djembe, bongos and bass drums, as well as the bells and the shakers.  Year 6 persevered when learning the different rhythms, and worked hard to try to play in time with each other. We were very proud of our final performance to the whole school!

 We used the double-sided counters to explore the game of Nim-7 . We enjoyed working out if there was a way of always winning, whether you were Player 1 or Player 2.  Once we'd explored that, we started asking ourselves other questions: "What would happen if we had an even number of counters?" "What if you could take more counters at a time?" "What if you used the same rules, but played with more people?" Each group picked a question to investigate further, and started to think about how to record what they had found out. Year 6 worked well in partnership with each other and really thought deeply about the maths behind the investigation.

 In Literacy, we read and wrote discussion texts about whether or not artefacts such as the Benin Bronzes should be returned to their countries of origin. To explore the issue, Year 6 took part in role-play activities and conscience alleys to share their opinions and understand how different people might feel about this topical issue. Year 6 showed great maturity in discussing this topic and were able to express their viewpoints with evidence and arguments to back themselves up.

Now that the SATs are over, we've been consolidating some of our maths learning by taking part in some collaborative maths investigations. We've been working on this one for several days  and the children have noticed a lot of patterns and relationships hidden within the arrangements of counters.  We have predicted several ways of working out how many counters will be in each ring, and how many counters will be used in total for different numbers of rings, and now we are trying to prove our predictions work mathematically!

Year 6 have worked so hard this year, in all areas of the curriculum! We are so proud of them and the progress that every single child has made in their time with us. They showed our Cabot values of partnership, inclusion and excellence during SATs week, and should all be feeling very pleased with themselves. To celebrate the end of their SATs, we had a class party. Thank you so much to the generosity our parents and carers showed in cooking, preparing and purchasing treats for the children to share! (We haven't finished eating everything yet - I think we will be having a biscuit a day for some time yet!) Of course, the week wouldn't have been complete without the Don't Lick Your Lips Challenge, when we were delighted to be given freshly-baked doughnuts by Mr Burton! How many children do you think managed to eat their doughnut without licking their lips...? The day wouldn't have been completed without Mrs Ahkter creating amazing henna designs for every child who wanted