Year 6 - Spring 1 - Week 1

Date: 6th Jan 2022 @ 4:41pm

Happy New Year! We hope you have all had a lovely Christmas break and are ready for 2022!

It may have only been a short week in school, but we certainly packed a lot of learning in! To begin our new term – as you may have predicted – we spent some time catching up and talking about our Christmas holidays. Whilst we enjoyed hearing everyone’s festive news, we also reflected on who or what made our time so enjoyable and made sure we wrote an early entry into our gratitude journals to list all that we had to be thankful for. We also compared our experience with our previous Christmas holiday - where government restrictions had been tougher - and made sure we acknowledged how grateful we were to be able to see more family members and to celebrate in larger groups this time around…it isn’t all just about the presents!

Following on from our previous Science topic all about the human body, we acknowledged how currently we may be hearing adults and older siblings discussing ‘January diets’ and weight they have gained after some over-indulging on food and beverages! We recalled how these aren’t topics we should be concerned with at this age and revised what it means to have a healthy diet - including how we can best support our mental and physical health as we start to become young adults and go through various changes linked to puberty. In line with the Year 6 Science curriculum, we also learned more about drugs and alcohol and addressed some misconceptions we may hear / could hear when they go to secondary school.

In RE, we learned about the significance of the Eucharist in the Christian faith. This followed on well from our Autumn 1 topic of ‘Life as a Journey’, where we learned about the seven Catholic sacraments, as well as our visit to St. Peter’s Church to attend a Eucharist service last half-term. We recalled how the Eucharist links to the Last Supper and how this is evident through practices observed during a Church service; we also learned how the Eucharist is connected to the Passover and the Old Testament story of Exodus. We realised that not all Christian denominations practise the Eucharist in the same way (and that some denominations do not celebrate it at all!) and were able to identify many themes and values, including acceptance, belonging, friendship, and sacrifice.

We began our new History topic on the Shang Dynasty on Wednesday. Although set during a different period, the children were able to draw on some prior knowledge of Ancient China from watching films such as Disney's Mulan. In our first lesson, we learned some of the key facts about the Shang Dynasty, including when it was in power, who founded it and where the leaders resided. We also reflected on how historians know this information and the reliability of it.

Friday welcomed another Computing Day, this time exploring the world of virtual reality! Using the iOs application, CoSpaces, the children were able to follow various algorithms to design their own virtual reality enviornment, using their skills and knowledge to ensure their environment was: aesthetically pleasing; reflected their creativity and evidenced attention to detail. We saw some very creative virtual worlds - well done, Year 6!

In PE, we were able to resume our gymnastic unit, having had to postpone some lessons last half-term due to Christmas performances taking place in the hall. During this lesson, the children worked in pairs / small groups on counter balances and counter tension. We saw some very creative thinking going on as the children performed a sequence balances at the end of the lesson for the rest of their peers!

Overall, a very busy three days…but most enjoyable! It has been lovely to welcome the majority of pupils back and we are confident it is going to be another fantastic term. For more information on what we will be learning about this term, please click here.

New spellings can be found on Google Classroom. Homework will resume from next week.

Enjoy your weekend!