English
During this unit, English has been at the forefront of our minds and we continue to develop and recall our use of grammatical structures. This will help us in the build up to SATs of course, but also has helped us to develop our knowledge of the grammatical structures that will help us with our writing. We have begun to add our expert knowledge of these structures into elements of writing for History, Science and Art and will continue to develop these after SATs. Watch out for our amazing writing in our next blog!
World Book Day
Linked to our love of reading, we ‘wowed’ at World Book Day! Take a look at some of our fantastic costumes below!!
Maths
This time around, we have continued to push ourselves in terms of arithmetic. Our skills with number and arithmetic fluency are second to none now. Further to this, developing our knowledge of how to reason with problems using these expert skills has increased over the last 9 weeks and we are fully ready for SATs and beyond! We have also continued to develop the areas of learning that we need to – time, money, perpendicular and parallel lines, shape and units of measure have all come into our learning. We have continued to develop our mathematical knowledge and will continue to do so after SATs. Watch out for the learning we take part in next time out in our next blog!
History
We have transported ourselves back in time to the Ancient Civilisations (and to Year 4)! Since we left the Ancient Civilisations in Year 4, we have learnt so much about History and this has shown in the work we have produced. However, to delve deeply into the Ancient Greek civilisation we invited the Year 4 children to give us a phenomenal recap. Well done Year 4 – you were amazing! It was great to see that we were once in that position and for us to understand just how much we have learnt! Learning about the Ancient Egyptians has been fantastic! We looked at where in time the Ancient Greeks became a fully-fledged civilisation and started asking questions – why could they write myths? Where did their concept of the Gods come from and did it influence others? There are many similarities between them and the Romans that we learnt about in Year 4 – why? This was all to come but first… democracy. We learnt that the modern democratic system that we have in Britain came from the Ancient Greeks and that they invented it in Athens all those years ago. Next, the Olympics. We all watched the Paris 2024 Olympics but were amazed to learn that it is not a modern concept – the Ancient Greeks invented it years ago – minus a few sports that we recognise today! We took part in an Ancient Greek pentathlon – we jumped, we ran, we threw! Everything that the Ancient Greeks would have done. Finally, we looked at the fundamental concepts of our society and asked – where did they come from? We knew that they all came from Ancient Civilisations. We looked at those concepts that the Greeks developed – maths, medicine, architecture and sculpture – and those that they created – literature, philosophy and astronomy. What did the Greeks do for us? They did so much!
Science
Science has been as fascinating as ever! This time around, it was all about light! Well, we know how light works so why learn about this? Light is much more complex than you think and we all learnt this. We learnt that light travels in straight lines – even when reflected it still does this! We conducted an experiment to look at when this wasn’t the case and when light actually ‘bends’. This is called refraction! Why are shadows formed? Well, we found that out too by conducting an experiment in our classrooms – they were dark and dingy to make this happen: not our usual scene at all! Using the darkness and our torches, we produced shadows of different sizes but definitely not different shapes! Finally, we explored the human eye. Did you know that images are sent to the optic nerve upside-down? Well, they are! We learnt all about how the eye lets in light, how the muscles let in more or less light depending on how bright it is and how the optic nerve sends these images to the brain to be processed. Wow! Our eyes are truly amazing aren’t they? Our discoveries have absolutely ‘shone a light’ on what we knew before and how much we have learnt! Having finished this unit, we then embarked on our final unit at Crescent by building upon our knowledge of electricity from Year 4. We recalled all of the symbols that we could recognise from a simple circuit and looked at photos of us making these in Year 4 to reinforce our knowledge. Take a look at our now and then photos below! We really enjoyed recalling our knowledge and seeing how much we had grown and how far we had come in our journey. Next, we looked at the history of electricity and how it changed the way that people lived. We looked at what we use today that requires electricity and how we can make this a sustainable practise – again recalling what we learnt about in Geography at the start of the year. We have also learnt about many famous scientists that are linked to electricity, including Michael Faraday and Thomas Edison. Our learning continues with this unit!
PE
What fun we have had in PE this time around! Year 6 have been becoming Wimbledon-ready through learning all of the skills needed to become a tennis champion! We have had the nets out so that we can practise putting together a rally with our partners. This was only possible due to the training we have put in: we started by practising our hand-eye co-ordination through hitting the ball to our partner (a difficult skill), then getting the height on the ball that we needed and finally being able to keep a rally going. Tennis is tiring! Also in PE, we have been honing our skills in rounders. We are learning how to field in particular as we learn the strategy of the game. Hitting the ball is the easy bit – what happens after that bit? Which base do I go to? Who is behind me? If I am a fielder, which base is best to get to? All of these elements have been practised to ensure that we are the best in our field! We can’t wait to carry on practising our rounders skills next time. Cricket has come to Crescent too for us in Year 6! We will be working with Staffordshire Cricket to enhance our physical skills of batting, catching and fielding and developing our social development skills in teamwork. We can’t wait to continue our work with Anna and become better cricketers over the course of our time with her.
RE
In RE this time, we continued our focus on the Christian belief. We explored the belief in the ‘Big Story’ of the bible – creation, fall, redemption and restoration. We were blown-away by this concept and how deep it went into the general belief of Christians. Through this, we explore key bible passages: creation – Genesis; fall – Noah’s Ark and other stories; redemption – the Easter Story and Jesus’ sacrifice for the world; restoration – how Christian people can now enter the Kingdom of Heaven through Jesus’ sacrifice. Finally, we explored ‘Holy Communion’ and how the sacrifice Jesus made is shown through this. We very much enjoyed role playing this and completely understanding this concept of the Christian religion. After this, we have continued to explore the Christian religion with the question ‘For Christians, what kind of king was Jesus?’ In this, we are looking at parables – biblical texts – to understand what the concept of the Kingdom of Heaven is and develop our knowledge of this. Further to this, we will be revisiting the 10 commandments to understand what the rules are that Christians follow and how they live their lives to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Next, we will be continue this learning and link how religion and Christian belief fits into the global picture of the world that we live in today!
PSHE
In PSHE, we have continued to explore what it means to live in the wider world. We reviewed what should and should not be reported online so that we ensure that our safety is always our priority! Websites and other forms of media that make us feel uncomfortable should always be reported to out trusted adult. We all know that these people are our family or teachers! After this, we explored what should and should not be shared online and on social media. All of us know that we should not have social media as we are not old enough! Despite this, we have all learnt about the dangers that it posses in our future and how to use it correctly. Our question: would I be happy for a stranger to see this? If the answer is no, it is not ok! We have discussed at length what is considered reliable, suspicious and age-appropriate online and we constantly have these conversations in our classrooms to ensure that we are safe, act appropriately and ensure that being online is a positive experience. We have begun to look at the different kinds of relationships that people have in their lives. This will have a huge impact on us as we grow older and so this unit is very important and will build upon the knowledge that we have already learnt. Already, we have explored family relationships, friendships, romantic relationships and professional relationships (and how they differ) and these will inform us as we grow older. We will continue to develop this unit until the end of the year so look out for our next blog to find out more!
Art
In art this time, we will be exploring abstract art as we build upon work we have done in previous years. We have explored the difference between abstract art and surrealism (we explored this in the last art unit) and looked at the differences and similarities between the two. Our artist focus for this unit was Pablo Picasso and his art work – this was an inspiration to us as we began to craft our own pieces of artwork. We began by using photomontage to create Picasso-inspired portraits and decide how to assemble elements of the human form in different ways. Through the artistic skills taught, we have developed our ability to create facial features when creating pieces of artwork and this has lead to our exploration of how Picasso’s pieces of artwork are unique to him and the recreations formed are influenced by him. This sounds like something that would not be important – we kid you not it is! ‘How does a canvas differ from paper?’ Well, the differences in how we create art and how media is used and formed are so different! Who doesn’t love a canvas?! We used oil pastels as the medium of choice to create our final pieces of artwork after we experimented with them. The effect created really emphasised the lines of our artwork and made them bolder and clearer. Finally, we used a previous skill of blending but applied it to oil pastel work to create an effect on our work. We have loved art and, as you can see from the pictures below, WOW! We have great artists in Year 6! Continue this in the future Year 6… amazing!
SATS
Well, SATS is its own thing isn’t it. Our children have been working so hard in English (Reading and SPaG) and Maths to achieve their own personal targets. There isn’t much to be said Year 6 other than that everybody at Crescent is so proud of how you have taken on this challenge and made such progress! Well done to you all! You need to be so proud of what you have achieved and we know this will reflect in your results in July! You are all amazing!!!
Next up!
We have so much left to learn about in Year 6 in our next unit!
Geography will be the focus as we explore the Amazon Rainforest and delve deeper into our text ‘The Explorer’. We also have many opportunities to develop or knowledge in all areas: PSHE will see us develop our knowledge of relationships for our future outside of Crescent; RE will see us develop our knowledge of different beliefs and cultures that we will take into our future outside of Crescent; Science will teach us the elements of electricity that we may need in our future careers and life. We have so much to look forward to in our final unit at Crescent. This will include or leavers assembly and prom. Watch this space for the final blog of the year!