Writing in Year 6

This week, Year 6 have been starting to plan their discursive RE writing to answer the question, ‘Creation or Science: conflicting or complementary?’ Classes began to unpick the structure of the writing and considered lots of elements in order to make the piece cohesive. Children concentrated very effectively to discuss the purpose and audience, the effect they want to have on the reader, the grammatical and punctuation features they need to include and the topic-specific vocabulary. All their ideas are on the classroom working walls to reference throughout the unit. Children also began to think about the main ideas to include in the introduction and worked collaboratively to shared write this section using great communication.

Outdoor Learning in Year 6

Over the past two weeks Year 6 have been learning about butterflies. They all had some great questions and wanted to learn more about different species of butterflies! Children had a trail quiz to complete and were challenged to find out the answers to their questions. Upon their trail, they found a peacock butterfly in the grass. They were able to get really close up to it and see the beautiful colours of its wings. Some children even got to hold it! 

Outdoor Art y5

Last week in year 5, we started to learn about cityscapes and landscapes. We started by learning about two artists: Vanessa Gardiner and Phil Dean, the Shoreditch sketcher. This week, we were inspired by their work to go outside and create our own multi-media cityscapes of Queen’s Hill.

Mayan Prints in Year 6

This week in Art, Year 6 created brilliant Mayan prints. Inspired by the geometric shapes and repeating patterns used by the Maya people, children first made cardboard tiles and glued on their designs using string. They then painted the string on the tile and pressed down onto their piece of paper using a variety of colours. We were impressed by their creativity and concentration during this process!

Y5 Geography visitor

This week Mr Marsh and Dr Richardson came to talk to us about flood defences as part of our geography topic. We have been learning about rivers and this was the perfect end to our topic. We got to experiment with different types of flood defences and even got to build some of our own. A huge thank you to them for giving up their time to share their important work with us.

Year 6 Careers Fair

Yesterday we welcomed visitors from a range of companies to help host our annual careers fair. Year 6 pupils got to ask questions to different professionals including: a nurse, a midwife and an engineer, to name but a few! Thank you so much to everyone who gave up their time to help our pupils find out more about future career options.

Peer teaching in Year 6

Year 6 demonstrated fantastic teamwork and communication when peer teaching in their English lesson. This lesson was all about working together and generating vocabulary for our suspense narrative based on ‘The Curse of the Maya’. Children also came up with lots of figurative language for the main character’s senses. Each group moved around the room and added ideas or improved what was already there. The ‘Pupil Paparazzi’ then went and collected excellent examples that they wanted everyone to notice. Well done Year 6!

Year 4 – Mad Science

Year 4 kicked off their brand new science topic with a bang this morning as Mad Science led a fantastic workshop.

They learnt all about static electricity through the use of a Van de Graaff generator, which raised a few hairs!

Children were introduced to the terms ‘conductor’ and ‘insulator’ and used themselves as a pathway to allow electricity to flow and light up a bulb!

A big thanks to Mad Science for such an informative and engaging workshop this morning. We can’t wait to find out more about electricity over this half term!

Y5 Rivers

We launched our ‘What is a River?’ topic in Geography this week by making our very own rivers! We are looking forward to exploring the different parts of a river and exploring river wildlife over the next weeks.

Year 6 Mayan Day

This week, Year 6 launched their new topic, the Ancient Maya civilisation, and participated in different practical activities to begin this unit’s learning. Children made and tasted spicy hot chocolate and discovered that the Maya thought cacao beans were so valuable that they were even used as currency. They explored Mayan temples and had a go at drawing their own and constructing them with marshmallows and spaghetti. They even made Mayan medallions out of clay with imprints of animals on them to show the importance of animals to this incredible civilisation. We were impressed with Year 6’s curiosity and teamwork throughout and look forward to seeing how they get on discovering lots more over the course of the half term!