Year 6 have had a wonderful start the the summer term. We began by immersing ourselves in our ‘Battle for Equality’ topic by separating the children based on their age. 10-year-olds experienced a fun-filled morning of exercise videos, music with instruments, word searches, games and positive treatment by their teachers. In contrast, the 11-year-olds were expected to stretch in silence, listen to and watch the other children enjoying their music lesson and write lines. We wanted to highlight how inequality can make people feel and provoke an emotional response to this unfair treatment (and that’s just what we did!). The children, both 10 and 11 years old, were outraged by the unfair treatment and our morning ended with a mock protest for fairness.
Since then, we have explored this theme in more depth, looking at the collapse of the British Empire, the lives and contributions of Ghandi, Mandela, Parks and King as well as looking at and debating whether the world has achieved equality today. We have found it extremely interesting, and it has really opened our eyes to the world around us.
In art, we have been learning about the impressionist painter, Paul Cezanne. We have researched his life and have analysed his style of painting before planning and creating a final piece, imitating his use of complementary colours and constructive brushstrokes. We are very proud of our final pieces and have celebrated and evaluated them in a class gallery
Our learning in maths has also been fantastic. We started the half term off by learning how to solve problems involving ratio and proportion. This really developed our problem-solving skills and consolidated our understanding of fractions and multiplication to solve these problems. We have then revisited some key concepts from earlier in the year to ensure that we have a strong foundation in mathematical fluency before we move to year 7. We are looking forward to consolidating our learning in written methods, multi-step problem solving and fractions next half term.
We have also made lots of progress in writing and have enjoyed writing biographies, focusing on building cohesion within and across paragraphs. We wrote biographies about fictional characters, which provided us with the opportunity to use our creativity in a non-fiction writing style. We have then learnt and innovated a narrative called The Island and have enjoyed developing characters and using dialogue to convey their thoughts and feelings.
Once again, we are extremely proud of our Year 6 pupils who have put maximum effort into their learning this half term and their progress is really showing. Well done, Year 6 and we can’t wait to enjoy our last half term with you at High Hazels.