Our Autumn 1 Journey
Autumn 1 Curriculum and Homework web
year 6 autumn 1 curriculum web.pdf
English
In English this half term, we are focussing on the book 'Rose Blanche' which links to our History topic of WW2.
We first introduced the story by looking at the images from the book. We were challenged to see if we could use noticing skills and inference skills to put the images in the order we thought they were in.
Since then, we have read the book and explored some of the tricky vocabulary, alongside exploring the book, focussing on developing our reading comprehension skills by answering questions.
We have now explored some new grammatical elements that we are working to put in our final pieces of writing, including 4 new sentence types:
- The more, the more --> The more the children begged for food, the more my heart filled with guilt.
- 3 X --- --> Exhausted, tired and devastated, the children in the camp looked at Rose like she was their only hope.
- Some; others --> Some of the children in the camp were crying for more food; others were huddled next to the hut clutching their stomachs.
- Show; tell --> The children's clothes were ragged and thin, strips of cloth were falling around their ankles; they had been wearing the same clothes for months.
We have now written our end of unit piece of writing - a setting description of the scene in the book where Rose discovers the camp. The children have been challenged to include lots of our learning from this half term in their writing to really showcase their skills!
History
Our learning this half term is linked to World War 2.
We began our learning by using a 'Let's say' to introduce the topic. We imagined a town in 1939 - a prosperous British town in the north of England. We spent time researching and discussing how life and our town/homes would be different to what we have now. We then worked as a whole class to create our very own version of the town with a factory in the middle!
We then dove into one of the houses in our town and met a family who lived there during 1939. We discussed what their lives would be like and what their home would look like. We then created portraits to represent the family's past and the key events that they will have experienced.
We then began to encompass the idea of WW2 into our family's life. We imagined that we were the family, listening to Neville Chamberlain's announcement of war and considered what we would think, feel and say to one another following the announcement.
When I heard the news I felt devastated knowing that my children's lives would be changed forever.
All I could think was that before this moment my son was going to work with his father in the factory and now he will have to fight in a war.
In our next two lessons, we spent some time focussing on the key events from throughout World War 2. We explored key people and what happened on specific dates throughout this time. We worked as a class to make a timeline of the war, and also worked independently to complete a summarising challenge: we were only allowed to use 50 words to describe the events of each year of the war!
Our next lesson was another 'let's say'. We introduced a new family to our WW2 universe and explored their lives a little. Our new family was from Germany and their son was sent to fight in the battles in France. From this we dug deeper into the Battle of Dunkirk and explored how both our British and German family members were feeling at this time. We discussed how they were linked to feel the same emotions, even being on opposite sides of history.
Following the let's say, we explored more information linked to Winston Churchill and learnt a little about his life. We listened to some of his 'we shall never surrender' speech and were inspired to write our own speeches, encouraging our peers to 'join the fight'.
In our final History lesson this half term, we are exploring the life of Anne Frank. We will learn about her life and experiences and use the information to produce a double page spread all about her.
Maths
This half term we will be focussing on developing our place value and four operations knowledge.
We have done amazingly well with applying our Year 5 place value knowledge to our new year 6 learning and lots of us have secured skills that we found tricky before. We have explored rounding further and recapped negative numbers and Roman numerals too!
In our Wednesday afternoon sessions we have focussed on securing our arithmetic skills. This half term we have been introduced to long division which some of us have found tricky, but we will persevere!
Our Year 6 children have done amazingly well when tackling long multiplication this year. This was something that was brand new to us in Year 5 however we are all now much more confident and ready to tackle those questions!
Science
Our Science unit this half term focusses on electricity. We will be learning about electrical components within circuits including how to represent them using scientific symbols, and how to identify problems within circuits and how certain elements work.
During the half term we have explored circuit components alongside learning how to draw real circuit diagrams. We have used investigations to explore different ideas and even wrote and carried out our own investigation!
Art
Our art learning this half term is linked to World War 2. We will be focussing on using perspective, tone and shading to create artwork inspired by famous WW2 artists.
Picture News
WC 1st September: What do you think makes something a wonder of the world?
During picture news this week, we explored a news story linked to Specsavers 'wonder' campaign. We discussed what makes something a wonder of the world and the many things that we find wonderful.
In Year 6, we continued our exploration in a geography linked challenge - we had to locate and label the 7 wonders of the world on a map using our atlas skills.
WC 8th September: What makes a building special?
During picture news this week, we learnt about a church in Kiruna, Sweden which has been moved 5km to a new location because of unstable ground. We watched a video of the careful process being used to move the building which was built more than 100 years ago!
Following this, we worked as a group to research other buildings throughout history which have also been moved from their original location. We plotted these on a timeline as a group.
WC 15th September: Why do we vote?
During picture news this week, we learnt that the voting age for the next general election is being reduced to 16 in England and Northern Ireland.
We learnt about the process of voting and discussed democracy, including how we work democratically and use voting in school.
We discussed the question: Do you think the voting age should be lowered to 16?
I'm not sure if 16 years old is old enough because they will need to have more life experiences to make big choices like that.
Yes because it will give people more choice about their life at a young age.
I don't think 16 year olds should vote because the older you are then you have more information.
I want the age to be lower (16) because it will help people share their opinions more respectfully from a younger age.
WC 22nd September: Can anyone break a record if they try hard enough?
This week, picture news led us to explore the weird and wonderful world of Guinness World record breakers. We thought about the different records we knew had been broken such as the fastest runner, the tallest and shortest people and the longest fingernails!
We then used the iPads to research the weirdest world records we could find!