Return to Children

Year 6

Staff:  Mrs Reed / Mrs Wright / Miss Gottlieb / Mrs Quinn

Contact info. –  amanda.reed@panshanger.herts.sch.uk       nina.wright@panshanger.herts.sch.uk

Spanish taught by Mrs Kay (Wednesday) and music by Mr Mitchell (Tuesday)

Autumn 2

A very busy second half to the Autumn term for Year 6.

We finished our history topic – World War 2. While learning about rationing, they followed authentic war-time recipes to make bread rolls, jam and carrot cookies. The children ate what they had made and particularly enjoyed the carrot cookies.  We found out how the war ended and the celebrations of VE day. Our DT topic was linked to WW2 and the children planned and made some amazing models of Anderson shelters. We also visited the Imperial War museum at Duxford. We were lucky to have an amazing guide for the day, who told us lots of interesting facts. He was also amazed by some of the questions asked by our class.

As part of our WW2 topic,  we researched air-raid shelters. We then designed and made our own which had to take comply with a set of requirements which included being able to support a 1 Kg weight and to be waterproof. All the shelters managed fulfil the requirements! Making the shelters enabled the children to refine their measuring and sawing skills.

In English we started off the half term looking at a thought –provoking text called ‘Wisp’. The wisp, which is a metaphor for hope, allows a small boy living in a refugee camp to envisage his future life. The children explored a range of descriptive devices and practised writing multi-clause sentences before embarking on their own version of the story. Following this, we looked at a non-fiction text called ‘Planetarium’. This enabled the class to identify and use the features a writer uses when writing a fact file.

This half term our science topic was electricity. The children thoroughly enjoyed making circuits and exploring what happened when they changed the components. They also investigated a range of materials to establish which were conductors and which were insulators.

Linked to our environments and sustainability topics we have started a topic on climate change.  We have investigated various climates across the world.  In the next term we will be looking at the main causes / impacts of the Greenhouse effect, calculating our own carbon footprints and make decisions about how to change their lifestyles to reduce this.  We will be looking at the impacts of climate change across the world.