Year 6 Blog

 Trade is an important part of life, either for small villages, towns, cities or globally.  South America mainly relies on agriculture as it has the right conditions to grow bananas, coffee and cocoa beans. It also exports wood, gold, minerals and so much more. 

 Year 6 have begun their unit of work for this half term based on the BBC Ten Pieces (music for schools). They will focus the next few weeks on the composer Ivan Stravinsky (1889-1971) and his piece of music The Firebird (finale) which was written in 1911 as a ballet. We listened to the music, heard the story of the ballet and watched an animation of a similar story with the music.  As a side to this, we started the lesson watching the performance of Lucy from the TV program The Piano. Lucy is severely autistic and blind, but her performance was rather incredible! The children were in awe of her playing and in awe of how she learns - making them realise that if there is anything they really want to achieve there is always a way - it may take longer and the journey may look very different to others, but they can still get there if they want to! Just a little bit of inspiration to get them through! 

 Today, Year 6 had to pull out key facts and details about the four main character in Malala’s story: Malala, her mother, her father and The Taliban. Once they had the key details, they had to chose one of the characters to write in detail about. We had some great descriptions, that were true to the facts and informative.  So far, the children are really enjoying learning about Malala’s story and her accomplishments all for the Right to Learn.  

 Year 6 have begun their new writing unit - For the Right to Learn. They have spent a couple of days looking at The United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child. Children looked at 3 different groups of the different Articles (there are 41 altogether) linked to Basic Needs, Safe from Harm and Expressing Themselves. They then had to choose their most important 5 and explain why they had chosen them. This created some great discussions and has opened up some possible further development later in the year! Today, we explored information around an image and looked at the front and back covers of the book. Children immediately realised why we looked at the Rights beforehand! Article 28 - Every child has the right to an education. Primary education must be free and different forms of secondary education must be available to every child. Discipline in schools must respect children’s dignity and their rights. Richer countries must help poorer countries achieve this. We then read toget

 Learning objective: I can convert measurements of grams and kilograms;  This week, the children in Year 6 have looked at conversion of measurement. We first looked at practical application of this, thinking about weighing different items. We then looked at conversion of g and kg. The children were really impressive thinking about these conversions, such as 0.1kg = 100g.  Later on in the week, the children had to work out the total volume of three different containers: 1.2 l, 250ml and 500ml. The children changed them all to either l or ml.  The children worked through their worksheet independently and then worked on problem solving and reasoning problems. 

 This week the children looked at the physical geography of South America, particularly The Andes. The Andes is a mountain range which runs pretty much the whole length of the western side of South America. It also contains the highest mountains in the Americas, which are 22,831 feet high:Argentina’s Mount Aconcagua is the highest mountain. The Andes expands over 7 countries. 

 What are Biomes you may ask?  A biome is an area classified according to the plants and species that live there because of the temperatures/ climate, light and water that is unique to that place. Biomes can span more than one continent.  Children were asked to research a biome found in South America as part of their  physical geography studies. 

 Year 6 revised everything that they have done this half term, including using Je voudrais, which they then practised with their partners, ordering ice cream. They then matched French and English words.