Year 6 newsletter

 What a WOW week we have had in year 6. We kicked things off with the Windhill21 Speech Evening - "We are all Changemakers". The quality of the speeches our year 6 winners, James Allen and Louis Blind, delivered was exceptional. James and Louis both made such compelling arguments as to why the British Museum should return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, thus protecting Greek cultural heritage, that not one person in the audience was left unconvinced. We were also exceedingly proud of our poetry performers - we were taken on a real journey with our emotions during their performance, and can't wait for their event in April!

The children also completed an independent write this week - composing their own Greek myths. We couldn't have been more engrossed in their tales of adventure, heroes, heroines, monsters and magic...they have truly taken these tales to a level that Jason and his Argonaut's would have been proud of! 

We also thoroughly enjoyed welcoming parents into school to share and celebrate the work year 6 have produced so far this year. We couldn't believe how much we have already done! From World War I poetry to Kahlo and Da Vinci portraits....from narratives on fictional monsters to experiments with electricity! We are so very proud of the children - their ambition, work ethic and attitudes to learning. This was a truly lovely opportunity for parents, children, and the year 6 to share in this celebration together. 

Year 6 newsletter

 What a fantastic return to school Year 6 have had! We were blown away by the passion and care each and every child had put into rehearsing their speech over the half term period. Our Global Goal focus is "Sustainable Cities and Communities: safeguarding and protecting the world's cultural heritage", and wow - the children have made the most considered, eloquent, and compelling arguments to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece, and to act as protectors of a nation's culture and sense of self. Huge congratulations to both James Allen and Louis Blind, who will be representing Kahlo and Da Vinci at the South Mill Arts Centre on our Speech Night. 

We have kicked off a new writing unit on Greek Myths - focusing on the legendary tale of the brave Jason and his band of trusty Argonauts, who faced peril and challenge in their quest to retrieve the infamous golden fleece. The children are thoroughly enjoying both the story and the imaginative narrative we are creating as we go. We can't wait to share their final interpretations. 

Our half termly World View lesson had an interesting focus - does having more make you happier? What an interesting afternoon we had, discussing the implications of everything from defining 'more' to the implications of finance, love, support, working for joy or for money. As always, the children were thoughtful, mature and extremely confident working in their trios and sharing their thoughts. We constructed a recipe for happiness at the end of the lesson, and we think this is a good way to live our lives.

As ever, a week of hard work, lots of enthusiasm and high energy - well done to Year 6!

Our first week in Beatles Class

Welcome to year 3 Beatles Class! What an epic first week back filled with exciting activities and lessons around our "global changemaker" The Beatles. 

Oracy and drama
To start off, we explored what makes someone a changemaker and used this knowledge to help us research important information about The Beatles. 

We worked in small groups to research an individual member of the band and create a small speech about their importance within the band and how they helped to change the music industry. We were all encouraged to present in a unique way. As a result of this, our presentations were all unique, some of us used different speakers, some spoke as a whole group and some of us even added drama. It was great and we became experts on our changemaker. 

Music
We couldn't learn about The Beatles without listening to their songs and practicing it ourselves! We listened to "yellow submarine" and used paint to represent the notes, rhythm and pace of the music through a variety of brush strokes and marks.

We used Boomwhackers (musical percussion tubes) to understand how notes are used in music and the different sounds they can make. To test the notes we practiced banging them with our hands, on our knees, on the ground, walls, tables and a variety of different surfaces to see how the sound can be changed. After experimenting, we got into groups and wanted to see how we could order these notes into groups ranging from the deepest sound to the highest. 

Boomwhackers was a great introduction to getting into and understanding music. This led to us understanding composition and how to create our own rhythms through a variety of claps and rests. 

Art 
During our first week back, we wanted to create art pieces that were inspired by our global changemakers. We practiced sketching skills such as: using a pencil to draw facial features; sketching circles and how to position facial features on a face shape using grid lines.

We also practiced with acrylic paint things such as:

• what happens when you add more water 
• Wet vs dry paint brushes
• brush strokes
• mark making
• creating textures
• Colour mixing

These skills helped us to create a final piece of one of our chosen Beatles member ready for display around our classroom!

Pen pals
To end our week we were introduced to our class post-box and we were lucky enough to each receive a letter from a pen pal all the way from Alabama, America! We are so excited to write them letters as you can see from our faces.  

Long, long ago in the Dreamtime...

Today Warhol created their own Aboriginal stories based on 'How the Kangaroo got its Tail'. They used their oracy skills to rehearse the stories before telling them around a 'campfire'. The children wrote some wonderful stories and this afternoon some even created digital storybooks complete with narration and animation!

We rate debate!

 Wow, what a treat for year 6! We had The Bishop’s Stortford High School winning debate team in to model an outstanding debate to our club. The motion, ‘This House would introduce  compulsory parenting classes’ was delivered with skill, passion and flair - and certainly captured our year 6 audience. So many questions, so many ideas and so many opinions were shared. I couldn’t be more proud of our Debate Club and how they’ve evolved - and much look forward to hearing how they progress with their public speaking at secondary school.

I am excited to re-start Debate Club in September, and look forward to working the Boy’s High in the future - perhaps we can emulate some of their success at primary level very soon! Thank you so much to the the participants for a wonderful afternoon.

Minibeasts and their microhabitats!

In Science today we continued to learn about microhabitats and the creatures that live there. We learned all about how minibeasts are invertebrates, which means they don't have a backbone. We then created fact pages by working as a group to match minibeasts with a picture and a description. We used our oracy skills to work together, taking it in turns to speak and challenging each other if we disagreed.

We were then presented with an enquiry question: do all minibeasts like to live in the same microhabitat? We went outside to investigate, looking closely at different microhabitats and identifying the creatures living there.

We found lots of minibeasts in the flowerbed and thought this might be because there is lots of food for them here.