Academic Year 2023-2024

March

Drawing Small  

As part of our learning in Art, before our final collage piece, Year 6 pupils have been learning how to draw small and really pay attention to the details. We began by making sketches on the page, amongst the objects themselves. We made tiny movements with our fingers and hands – drawing from the wrist, but also being most comfortable. The exercise was intended to help us focus, relax, and begin to coordinate hand and eye. As we drew, we became more aware of the relationship between looking and drawing and let our eyes flit between looking at the object and looking at our sketch.

Eco Day

Organised by our Eco Club within school, Year 6 participated in the Great British Spring Clean by wearing green and helping to clean up our school grounds. We have been focusing on recycling safely and enjoyed picking up over 3 bin bags full from the car park area alone!

Micro:bit Coding Challenge

4 students representing Queen Edith visited The Centre of Computing History to take part in the Micro:bit Coding Challenge sponsored by Cambridge Rotary. The children had a wonderful day, coding a buddy to navigate around a race track, and they were even able to play on some of the retro games. Special thanks must go to Mr Blower who accompanied the children.

Heart Rate Investigation  

In a cross-curricular investigation using elements of Science, Maths and PE, Year 6 have designed and carried out an investigation of their own creation, using their learning about our circulatory system, as well as the effects of diet and exercise on our bodies. They had to organise their groups to pose a question, hypothesise, and collect their own data. Next Science lesson, pupils looked at this data and presented it in a way that they thought was the most useful from our statistics lessons in Maths. They finished by concluding and evaluating their investigation – well done to all – great synergising!

Science Week

For Science Week, Year 6 had two opportunities to put their scientific minds to the test! First, we had a visit from Mrs McGeeney, who taught the children how to extract DNA from common fruits found in our kitchens – a task that the children thoroughly enjoyed getting messy for! Next, a visit to the biomedical campus of Astra Zeneca, where the children were given a tour of their state-of-the-art building. Once the tour was completed, the children were then given the opportunity to take part in an experiment within their STEM lab. Pipetting a design on a range of arrays, the children were told of the medical benefits that help future research in medicine. Overall, an action-packed week, filled with awe and wonder.

PE – Yoga

Year 6 have been learning yoga in PE this half term. It links beautifully with our current topic as the yogic tradition, with its focus on the inner self, has been adopted by Buddhism. The common essence of both yoga and Buddhism is the attainment of ‘enlightenment’ through discipline. We learned that Buddhism refers to this ‘enlightenment’ as Nirvana. We’ve enjoyed learning about mindfulness, meditation practices and breathing while focusing on our strength in our cores and trying hard to keep our balance in certain poses!

February 2024

Science – Circulatory System

Fairtrade

On Thursday 14^th February, to conclude our topic work on Fairtrade, Year 6 worked in groups of their choosing to create and make a new edible treat!  We had to find and amend the recipe, provide the ingredients and equipment then bake it with only minimal help from our teachers.  We also enjoyed preparing a stand, which included posters, logos and leaflets, as well as showing off our topic books.  In the afternoon, we invited parents and friends to look at our new Fairtrade products, aiming to impress our guests and persuade them to vote for us! It was a lively afternoon, after a busy morning cooking.  Everyone worked so well together to create their amazing brownies, delicious cookies and mouth-watering cake options!

Hockey vs Queen Emma

On 6^th February, our Year 6 children walked over to take part in a Hockey tournament at Queen Emma Primary. All children played well as a team, showing excellent understanding of the sport and of each other. Well done!

January 2024

Fairtrade Topic Game

To introduce our new topic of Fairtrade, Year 6 were tasked with playing a game …

Maths – Positional Language

In Maths, Year 6 have been looking at position and direction and recapping key maths language. We went to the hall to safely have an active session using hoops, balls, beanbags and other sports equipment. We had been set a series of challenges by our teacher and needed to see if we could meet them. First we tried making 2 ½ rolls in one go and working out how many degrees this was. We couldn’t do forward rolls as we needed to always land on our heads with our heels in the air (not safe!) but we could do pencil rolls and teddy bear rolls! We also had to see how many rotations of a hoop we could do in 30 seconds, then find out if we could do it both clockwise and anticlockwise. There were lots more and we had great fun!

English – Animal Encyclopaedia Entry

To start 2024, we wrote a fact file on animals in a habitat in South America. We researched three animals whose habitat was in South America (eg. Amazon Rainforest, Atacama Desert, Pernambuco Beach, Bolivian Salt Flats or Andes Mountains) and used a high quality text called The Wonder Garden to give us inspiration. We were asked to complete a double page spread about our animals and the habitat they live in and we were able to design it however we wanted. As you can see, there were loads of different ideas!

December 2023

RE – Making Christingles

In RE, we finished our unit on Christianity and incarnation by making Christingles. We learned about what each part represented for Christians and how this light-giving object reminds them of the purpose of the incarnation.

 

Science – Bird Beak Investigation

In Science, we finished the term by conducting our own experiment to determine whether the size and shape of a bird’s beak really makes a difference to the type of food that it eats. We have been learning to identify how animals and plants are adapted to suit their environment in different ways and that adaptation may lead to evolution, and the beaks of birds are clear to see. We used sweets to be the ‘prey’ and the children each were birds and have different types of beaks (tweezers, large tongs, tooth pick and straw). They had to see how much “prey / food” they can “eat” by transferring it from plate to plate – jelly worms, hundreds and thousands etc. Each beak had 20 seconds to collect as much food as possible.

Design Technology – Sewing

Maths – 3D nets

We have been revising our knowledge of 2D and 3D shape and spent part of our Maths lesson making 3D shapes from their nets. We made everything from cubes and pentagonal prisms to dodecahedra!

Dodgeball competition 

Year 6 visited Coleridge Community College on Tuesday 5^th December to participate in a dodgeball competition. The children battled valiantly against 9 other schools, coming first in their heats and then winning the entire competition outright! They worked incredibly hard to show amazing sportsmanship and teamwork and this led them to a well deserved victory!

November

Maths Trip to The Perse School

Year 6 popped out to visit The Perse School and meet some Upper Sixth students who gave us a number of Maths challenges including code breaking and games such as Bingo all while testing our Maths brains! Thank you to our parent volunteers who came with us – we all had a fun and challenging afternoon.

Science – Understanding Inheritance

We have been learning about inheritance in animals and used Mister Men to help us recognise that living things produce offspring of the same kind, but normally offspring vary and are not identical to their parents.

Tag Rugby vs Queen Emma

On 1st November, our Year 6 children invited our Federation counterparts over to take part in a Tag Rugby tournament. Queen Edith won the matches this time and they all played well as a team, showing excellent understanding of the sport and of each other. We look forward to more sports tournaments in future!

Remembrance Art and Poetry

After spending some time chatting about Remembrance Day and recognising the importance of learning about the recent past with our World War 2 topic, Year 6 spent some time creating beautiful 3D art, representing how the hope of future peace is in their hands by being able to remember the past. We hope you love their artwork!

October

NSPCC Workshop

Year 6 enjoyed a very important workshop from two volunteers from the NSPCC recently. This linked in to our PSHCE topic of ‘Rights and Responsibilities’. The workshop helped children to understand more about abuse in all its forms, including bullying. We talked about how to recognise signs of abuse and how to protect ourselves. Finally, we discussed how to get help and the sources of help available, including Childline. It was a session that was serious in parts, but was made fun and interactive by our visitors and Buddy, their mascot.

Our trip to Duxford Imperial War Museum 

This half term, Year 6 have been studying World War 2 so we went to visit Duxford Imperial War Museum. We visited Hangars 8, 4 and 1 to look at the vast array of different exhibits including those vehicles used for land and air warfare and followed trails made by our teachers to really ensure that we were looking closely. We especially loved their ‘Heavy Drop’ exhibit which showed us about the parachute regiments, the interior of the Operations Room where men and women sat, in charge of how the German fighters and bombers would be attacked. Amazingly, we saw 2 Spitfires take to the sky – this was extra special as RAF Duxford was the first station to receive the Supermarine Spitfire.

World War 2 Topic – Homework Projects

For our English homework, which concluded our World War II topic, children all crafted, wrote and presented some astounding World War II projects! Numerous topics were displayed, such as the Blitz and shelters, amazing animals, some family history, aeroplanes, information about battles, tanks, ships and submarines and even some evacuee information! Many students had original ideas that were explained perfectly. Congratulations to all!

September

Coleridge Maths Challenge

12 Year 6 students had a great morning at Coleridge Community College participating in their annual Maths Challenge. We worked in two teams of six and fantastically one of our teams came third. Congratulations to all the pupils who worked hard and enjoyed the Maths problems!

Science – Plants

In Science, we’ve been learning about adaptations of plants, looking for key observable characteristics, so we went outside to carry out a plant survey, taking full advantage of our lovely outdoor space. We have created branching diagrams to help us sort leaves that we may recognise and we looked carefully across a variety of habitats for different types of plants to begin to understand how these can also adapt.

Paired Reading

Year 6 have paired up with a buddy from Year 3 to enjoy sharing books. The Year 3’s have enjoyed reading to the older children and, in turn, the Year 6’s have felt very responsible being allowed to write in their reading records – even awarding house points! We’re looking forward to some more lovely times working together!

Mathematics

Year 6 have been revising and investigating negative numbers and played a bingo style game in pairs using dice. We had great fun and had lots of practise with subtracting across zero.

Bikeability

Year 6 have been participating in some exciting Bikeability training. We spent a day on the playground learning how to start and stop safely, and how to look after our bikes. Then we went out on the nearby roads to test our skills and learn how to be safe around others – pedestrians or vehicles.

World War 2

September

This half term, Year 6 are learning about World War II. In one of our first topic lessons, we looked at the countries that were involved and whether they were allies, neutral or an axis power. We used our geographical knowledge from previous lessons, our own research, and the atlases to help us colour code our own maps of Europe.