Year 6 2021-22

Year 6 Team 2021-22

Monet Class Teacher: Mr Longland

Johnstone Class Teacher: Miss Murphy

Holbein Class Teacher: Mrs Figueiredo

Welcome to Year 6!

Autumn 1 2021

Welcome to our Year 6 class page! We hope you have had a wonderful summer break and are looking forward to beginning the school year in Year 6.

This term, our PE day will be a WEDNESDAY.  Please make sure appropriate PE kit is in school every day. 

We are looking forward to all the learning we get to share together this school year as responsible, determined and successful Year 6 learners. Below is some information on the learning we will be carrying out this half term. 

In English, we will be exploring the text Skellig by David Almond and will use this to create our own fictional texts and poetry. We will then look at the World War II text, Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian and create recounts and explanation texts with this.

In maths, we will be exploring number and place value, addition and subtraction and multiplication and division in a range of fluency, problem solving and reasoning contexts.

In science, we begin the year looking at the human circulatory system and how to live a healthy lifestyle.

In history, we are moving on chronologically from your learning on the Romans in Year 5 and will begin to look at Britain's settlements by the Anglo-Saxons and the Scots.

In geography, we will be comparing Stevenage with Boston in the USA with a range of physical and human geography learning.

We have lots of exciting learning together this half term and we are looking forward to updating this page weekly with examples of the learning we will be doing together.

Key dates - Autumn 1:

Monday 13th-Friday 17th September 2021 - PGL Week

Friday 8th October 2021 - Individual Photos

Monday 18th October 2021 - Parent Consultations - 3:50pm-6.00pm 

Wednesday 20th October 2021 - Parent Consultations - 4pm-8pm

Monday 25th-Friday 29th October - Half Term Week

Monday 1st November 2021 - INSET Day

Week Beginning Monday 13th September 2021

This week was a slightly different week for Year 6! A group of children went to PGL where they took part in a series of team-building and practical activities, including a range of climbing activities, canoeing, rifle shooting and archery (to name a few!). The children stayed away from home for 5 days and challenged themselves both physically and emotionally through the day and evening activities. It was great to see the children having so much fun outside of the school environment and building deeper relationships with staff and children, and making new frienships with the instructors and group leaders they had throughout the week. Their behaviour was fantastic throughout and they represented Round Diamond brilliantly. 

A group of children also stayed at school and took part in activities linked to mindfulness throughout the week. In the mornings, they discussed the skill of staying mindful. They made a one-shot film and walked around the school taking photos of things at Round Diamond that help us stay mindful. In the afternoon, they took part in a project where they created their own island, which had many cross-curricular links. They considered it's physical and human geography, the laws needed on the island and created species that lived there using their knowledge of classification. On Thursday afternoon, they also created art in the style of Charlie Mackesy and his book The Boy, the Mole the Fox and the Horse (see video below). They created artwork and quotes in his style using our school values.

Week Beginning Monday 6th September 2021

This half term, we are learning about the circulatory system in science. This week, we looked at understanding blood flow through the heart and throughout the body. We carried out a heart dissection on a lamb heart, because it is a close match to a human heart. We were able to see the different chambers and valves and understand the direction of deoxygenated blood through the heart to the lungs, before oxygenated blood comes back to the heart to be pumped around the rest of the body. We could see how the left side of the heart was thicker because it is this side that pumps blood to the rest of the body. Red and blue straws were used to show where oxygenated and deoxygenated blood travels. We then applied this understanding and vocabulary to a task where we described the direction of blood flow through the heart.

Week Beginning Monday 30th August 2021

It was great to welcome the children back from Thursday 2nd September. We spent the first two days in our home classes getting to know each other, our new classroom and our new learning. Both classes carried out some learning on their new class artists. Monet created fact files about Claude Monet and Johnstone created paintings in the style of their artist, Terry Johnstone. We watched Goodnight Mr Tom to give us an understanding of the story in preparation for studying the novel by Michelle Magorian during English this term. We also started our afternoon learning in art, RE, science and geography.

Over the summer, some children completed some of our home learning tasks which were given to them on Move Up day. It was fantastic to see the dedication and pride that these children put into their learning and to watch them discussing their learning with the class, using key vocabulary and new facts that they had learnt. It was great to see how some children went out for the day during the summer holiday to places which helped them to learn new information about our topics. For example, two children went to the British Museum and learnt about the life of Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. This learning will now be proudly presented on our learning walls for us all to learn from and refer to. You can see some pictures from the children sharing their learning below. 

2020-21

Year 6 Staff Team

Johnstone Class: Miss Murphy

Monet Class: Mr Sullivan-Pond

Teaching Assistant: Mr Taylor

Summer 2 Learning

This term, our PE day is TUESDAY. Please have your appropriate PE kit in school on this day.

Here are some of the learning experiences we will have this half term:

This term in English, we will be developing our fictional skills using the book The Arrival by Shaun Tan.

 In maths, we will continue developing our arithmetic and problem-solving skills in a range of topics like fractions, decimals and percentages, shape and measurements.

In History, we will be studying the impact of the Roman Legacy on later periods in British history, including the present day.

In Geography, we will be looking at sketch maps, farming around the world and following a route on an OS map. 

Within science, we will be studying light looking at how light travels, shadows, reflection and refraction.

In DT this half term, we will be creating a moving fairground ride.

We are looking forward to updating this page weekly to show all the fantastic learning that you will be doing over the term!

Happy Summer!

We can’t believe we have reached the end of the academic year. We’ve have a great year together and we hope you have enjoyed our Leavers’ Celebrations, including our videos and disco.

We wish you all lots of luck and happiness as you transition to you new schools. Stay in touch - we love to hear how you are getting on. Have a wonderful summer and take care!

Miss Murphy and Mr SP

Week Beginning Monday 19th July 2021

This week, we planned, built and evaluated a fairground ride powered by an electrical circuit. We explored how motors can power the ride and how cams can be used to control the speed. With the materials available, we had to problem solve and design a structure that was stable. There was lots of discussion and adaption to plans based on tests we did of our product, such as reducing the size of the Ferris wheel to make the ride move better. See some of our creations below 🎡 

Week beginning Monday 12th July 2021

This term, due to missed learning last year, we have had weekly cornet lessons. We have focused on learning about different parts of the orchestra as well as learning how to play songs on the cornet such as Hot Cross Buns and Merrily We Roll Along. We have learnt how to use the instrument appropriately and how to play different notes. We are very grateful to our teacher, Mr Robinson, for our fun lessons. See a song we have learnt below.

Week Beginning Monday 5th July 2021 
 

This week, we had a secondary school transition week. This involved teachers throughout the school teaching us secondary school subjects such as Citizenship, German and secondary school curriculum English, maths and science. This was a great experience that helped us to learn what it’s like to have different teachers for different subjects and to learn some new knowledge and skills for secondary school. 

Week beginning Monday 28th June 2021

This week, some of Year 6 took part in the PGL experience. We took part in a whole range of activities including climbing, canoeing, abseiling, zip wire and problem solving. Throughout the week, we developed our team work, problem solving, communication and listening skills. We had very long and busy days with both daily and evening activities and we are proud of the children for their enthusiasm and engagement within the activities. We all thoroughly enjoyed the week away!

Week beginning Monday 21st June 2021

In science this week, we explored refraction. We learnt that refraction is the bending of lights as it passes through different mediums, such as air, glass and water. We carried out an activity using an image underneath a cup and we found the image disappeared when water was added because the refraction of light meant the light no longer passed out the side of the class. We then carried out an experiment with an arrow behind a glass and saw that the arrow appeared to flip when water was added due to refraction. 
 

Week Beginning Monday 14th June 2021

On Monday and Tuesday this week, the children had two Cross-Curricular Days focused around healthy lifestyles and the Olympics. We learnt about the country of Brazil where the Olympics were held in 2016, the long-term effects of an unhealthy lifestyle on the heart and how to apply bandages. We also had a Year 6 Olympics with a range or activities on the All-Weather Pitch and tried out the Japanese exercise “Radio Tasio.” See a video of us trying it out ourselves below!

Week Beginning Monday 7th June 2021

This week during computing, the children used a 3D room planner to designed their ideal room. They used their computing skills to search up different objects for their bedroom and problem solved ways of adding windows and doors. We then compared using a 3D room planner to create bedrooms to the bird’s eye view drawings we created on Word and Google Drawings in previous weeks. Children felt this 3D room planner was much more beneficial to create realistic looking rooms but would have liked the opportunity to be able to resize objects, instead of only rotate objects, in the room.

Week Beginning Monday 24th May 2021
 

In English the last two weeks, we have been studying a Take One Book called Perfectly Norman by Tom Percival. The book is all about accepting and celebrating your differences. For our learning this week, we wrote our own stories, blurbs and designed our own front covers. I was very impressed with how clearly the children wrote about a challenging theme and linked their story clearly to their front cover. You can see some  of front covers below. 

Week Beginning Monday 17th May 2021

This week, children have started to create their Viking ship sculptures in art. They drew their model to scale and created it using cardboard and Modmesh. This week, we worked in groups to begin using Modroc to create our sculptures. Once these are finished, they will be solid sculptures that we will be able to design and paint in the style of a Viking ship before evaluating our sculptures. 

Week Beginning Monday 10th May 2021

In science this week, we went out into our school environment to see which plants and animals we could identify. We noted these down and then classified these into the difference plant and animal groups ready for creating a field guide next week. 

Week Beginning Monday 3rd May 2021

Year 6 were very lucky to have an online quiz delivered to them all about road safety on Friday. We learnt lots of interesting and useful safety information, such as car stopping distances and where to look when crossing the road.

Week beginning Monday 26th May 2021

During art in Year 6, we have been developing the skills to create a Viking longship. We have produced scaled drawings of longships and practised using Modroc to create a sculpture. We will now use these skills to create our longships next week. 

Week Beginning 19th April 2021

This week, Year 6 have been looking at decimal place value. We have been using our knowledge of decimal place value to order and compare numbers. To practise these skills, we went outside and worked in groups and put ourselves in ascending order based on the decimal value place number card we had been given. 

Week beginning 12th April 2021

It has been great to welcome the children back after the Easter break to begin our learning for the summer term. This half term in art, the children will be creating a model of a Viking longship using Modroc. In order to help us with our designs, this week we learnt about the history behind Viking longships, their design and purpose. We will then use this to create scale drawings for the models that we will be making.

Week Beginning Monday 22nd March 2021
 

This week in science, we set up an experiment to look at what conditions the fungus mould needs to grow on bread. We set up different fair test investigations with mould in the following conditions: warm and cold, light and dark and wet and dry. We took observations over time and found that mould grew the most on the wet piece of bread. 

Week Beginning Monday 15th March 2021
 

In English, we have been exploring a new class text called There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom by Louis Sachar. To help us explore the characters further, we did some drama improvisation into how the main characters, Bradley and Jeff, were feeling in one of the chapters. We then used this to help us write diary entries from each of the characters. You can see a video of one of our improvisations below. 

Week Beginning Monday 8th March 2021
 

We were so excited to welcome all of the children back to school this week! 
In geography, we used research that we completed last week on Storm Ciara to write a weather report. We included rainfall, wind speed, damage and disruption caused by the storm.

You can watch a video where we got some of our research for our reports from below. 

Week Beginning Monday 1st March 2021
 

This week was World Book Day, where the children were able to celebrate the joy of reading 📚 The children were able to watch a video from a real author, James Campbell, who spoke about his books and the challenges he had to overcome to become an author. From this, the children wrote motivating speeches on how you need to persevere to achieve your goals. I was very impressed with the powerful quotes the children included in their writing. The children also took part in Round Diamond’s Masked Reader, where they had to guess which teacher was reading the book behind the disguise. Did you guess Miss Murphy correctly? I’ve added my video below alongside some children’s motivating speeches!

Week Beginning Monday 22nd February - DT Food Research

This half term in DT, the children will be creating a Viking Stew, linked to our topic of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. This week in DT we begun our research into the meats and vegetables that Viking would have had available and how these were cooked and stored. 

Week beginning Monday 8th February 2021

This week, relating to their learning on evolution, Year 6 took part in their own science investigations at home. The task was to investigate the success of different beak shapes and sizes with different sized food items. The children were very sensible and organised their investigations well, using a variety of tools such as spoons, chopsticks, tweezers and clothes pegs to replicate birds’ beaks. They then interpreted their results to make a conclusion on the best type of beak. 
 

We would like to say well done to all children in Year 6, both in school and online, for their hard work throughout this very different half term. Have a well-earned rest over half term. 

Week Beginning Monday 1st February 2021

This week, Year 6 have been learning about how the Vikings first arrived in Britain. They used their computing skills to complete this learning in Google Classroom, labelling and colour coding maps to show the names of areas in Britain at the time, as well as the Vikings’ route from their homelands of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. 

Week beginning Monday 25th January 2021

Over the last few weeks, Year 6 have been refining their shading skills and learning how to accurately draw a portrait. This week, they combined these skills with their history learning on the Vikings to produce some very impressive king portraits. 

Week beginning Monday 18th January 2021

This week on Google Classrooms, Year 6 have enjoyed making their own Pong games on Scratch. Have a look at the example below to see one in action!

Home Learning

Well done to Amaya in Monet Class for taking part in the Humanities and Arts Home Learning Project! Amaya used the Google Arts and Culture app to explore the Eiffel Tower in Paris and has created this great PowerPoint presentation on what she learnt. 

Week Beginning Monday 11th January 2021

In art this week, we looked at putting the pencil, shading and texture techniques we learnt the week before into practice by drawing self-portraits. We followed instructions to draw them to ensure our facial features were correctly positioned and sized. It was fantastic to have children take pictures of their drawings and upload them to our Google Classroom for us to see. Have a look at some of the outcomes below!

Week Beginning Monday 4th January 2021

Welcome back! We hope you all had an enjoyable and safe Christmas break.

This half term Year 6 are putting their skills learning online on Google Classrooms back into action.

In English this week, we have started reading the novel Coraline by Neil Gaiman. The children are really enjoying getting to know the adventurous and courageous character of Coraline and some of the strange occurrences that she comes across living in her new house. Well...she did wish for a more exciting life!

We have started to explore the authorial techniques used to make this an engaging book, such as the balance of speech, action and description in the text, that you can see evidence of us highlighting below.

Over the next few weeks, we will finish reading the book and exploring the writing skills before writing our own short stories based on the text. We will look forward to sharing our finish pieces soon!

Merry Christmas!

We had a great last day of term today! We started by having our end of year assembly where we also got to watch the staff Christmas video that has been made. We then played party games together before watching a film, having our video from Santa and lots of lovely snacks and drinks thanks to FORDS.

We hope that you all have a wonderful, safe and happy Christmas and we will look forward to seeing you again in 2021!

Week Beginning Monday 14th December 2020 - The Gift

In English, to finish our Take One Book called the Gift by Carol Ann Duffy, we perfectly presented the poems we had written together and decorated them with the elements of the setting from the story. To create the poems, we needed to use our knowledge of the story and organise it into different verses of the poem. We used figurative language and impactful description to describe the different parts of the story. We also focused on the use of syllables and rhyme to give our poems rhyme and rhythm. 

Week Beginning Monday 7th December 2020 - Whole-School RE Afternoon

On Thursday 10th December 2020,  we took part in a whole-school RE afternoon to deepen our understanding and real-life experience of our RE learning. Our afternoon was focused around Bodhi Day - a Buddhist celebration to celebrate the day the Buddha reached Englightenment. We learnt how Buddhists celebrate this day by decorating a Bodhi Tree and by worshipping statues of the Buddha. For our learning experience, we made our own statues of the Buddha out of clay and decorated leaves for a Bodhi Tree with the ways you can reach enlightenment. 

Week Beginning Monday 30th November 2020 

Miss Murphy’s English group created our own sequel stories on PowerPoint using the book Tuesday by David Wiesner. We then used this to inspired our writing on police investigation reports.

Week beginning 23rd November

This week, we have taken part in our termly cross-curricular days. This time, all of our learning was centred around 'The Wizard of Oz'. We started our learning by watching the film in order to understand the story and characters. We then applied our skills in a range of subject areas, drawing on our knowledge from the story. 

In maths, we compared data on the size and strength of different tornadoes and presented this information in bar and pie charts. In science, we looked at investigations which seemed to be 'magic' such as dancing raisins and rainbow celery. In English, we wrote character descriptions of the witch and in geography we learned what to do to keep ourselves safe in the event of a tornado. We finished the week by looking at the artistic style of surrealism and drew a dream we had experienced in this style. 

Week beginning 16th November

In history this week, Year 6 have been looking at some Anglo-Saxon artefacts. When trying to find out what they were, they answered questions such as:

Who used this object?

What was it used for?

Where do you think it was found?

What clues does it give us about what Anglo-Saxon life was like?

The children then reflected on this learning to decide what skills they thought archaeologists would need in order to give us clear pictures about what life was like in different time periods. 

Week beginning 9th November

As part of their DT learning this half term, Year 6 are designing and making their own felt Christmas decorations. To prepare for this, they practised their stitching this week and learned how to do stitches including; running stitch, back stitch, over stitch and blanket stitch. 

w/b Monday 2nd November 2020

This week, Year 6 spent the week learning on Google Classrooms at home. We got to experience live teaching on Google Meet from our teachers before applying our computing skills to completing and submitting tasks for different subjects online. All Y6 staff were very impressed with the maturity and dedication of the children during this time - well done Year 6!

w/b 19th October 2020

This week in RE, we learnt about how different religions use art to express meaning. We then used tissue paper to make our own stained-glass windows to convery a meaning of our choice.

w/b 5th October 2020 - Peer Editing 

Now we have finished writing our Skellig stories, Year 6 have been developing their editing skills. Children evaluated their own and others’ writing for elements such as grammar, spelling and sentence construction and looked at ways they could edit their writing to improve it. The results showed some great writing improvements! 

w/b 28th September 2020 - Maths
 

Johnstone maths group have been playing times table games during fluency this week. We played times table bingo and a game where you randomly choose a times table fact and have to race your partner to the correct answer. The children showed energised learning for both games and are seeing an improvement in how quickly they’re able to recall their times table facts. 

w/b 29th September - Sports Crew 

The Year 6 Sports Crew set up games for Year 6 to play on the playground this week. It was brilliant to see the leadership skills they showed when organising the games and the enthusiasm and enjoyment of the other children joining in. Well done Sports Crew! 

Science learning w/b 21.09.20

In science this week, Year 6 tested their knowledge on the circulatory system by creating their own quiz questions. They then put their peers’ knowledge to the test by asking each other their questions to earn points and prove their expertise. 

A hello from your new teachers! 

Please email any questions you may have about next year to faqs@rounddiamond.herts.sch.uk

 2019/2020

21st July 2020

Year 6 have had a lovely last two days at Round Diamond. Yesterday, they enjoyed a video call and virtual quiz between the bubbles in school and the children at home - it was lovely to see those who haven’t been in school since March! 
Today, they enjoyed some music and games in their bubbles on the all weather pitch. As always, they really impressed us with their excellent behaviour and it was lovely to see them all having fun together. 
We hope you all have a restful and safe summer break and wish all of the children every success and happiness in their journey on to secondary school. 

Year 6 Leavers’ Videos!

Goodbye and Good Luck from Round Diamond

Today, Year 6  had the opportunity to view their leavers’ videos during our farewell video call. Below you can find the links to the two Year 6 leavers’ videos created to mark the end of primary school for a wonderful cohort. All of our staff wish them every luck and happiness for the future as they begin their exciting new journey at secondary school in September.

The videos are available using the following links:

Year 6 Leavers 2020 - Pictures throughout the years:

https://youtu.be/_35-hM42TVk

Year 6 Leavers’ Messages: 

https://youtu.be/bwndtO-eOGU

Class Teachers:

Johnstone Class Teacher: Miss Murphy 

Monet Class Teacher: Mrs Downie

Holbein Class Teacher: Mr Pallant

Teaching Assistant:

 Ms Landau

Our PE day is now on a Wednesday. Please ensure that children have the correct school PE kit in school with them each day. As we move into the winter months, please ensure that children have an appropriate school PE jumper and jogging  bottoms to keep them warm during outside PE lessons.

Welcome to Year 6!

Welcome to the class page for Monet and Johnstone Class.

Join us this term and see our exciting learning journey, along with  other celebrations we take part in.

We have a lot to share and can't wait for you to be able to take a sneak peek into our learning in our final year at Round Diamond.

2019-2020

Friday 3rd July 2020

This week in Year 6, we have spent a lot of time outside, despite the unpredictable weather! In science, we explored our school grounds and made a record of the species of plants and animals we could see in their habitats. We have also continued to play a range of socially distanced games during our break times and taken part in some different activities in our PE sessions. 

Friday 26th June 2020

In Year 6 this week, we collected the results of our investigation on mould growth. We found that mould grew much more quickly on the bread that was left in damp conditions. We also created some fantastic portraits of famous Viking Kings, using a range of sketching pencils and shading techniques. 6M and 6D bubbles finished the week with some socially distanced problem solving games in the sun on the all weather pitch, while 6T had a great time learning songs from The Lion King. 

Friday 19th June 2020

This week in Year 6, we have been practising our debating skills in our English lessons. We discussed the quote “To Live Forever is Not to Live At All” and came up with for and against arguments. In science, we have prepared an investigation into which conditions mould will grow most effectively on bread and will be checking for results next week. 

Week Beginning Monday 15th June 2020

Thursday 11th June 2020

We’ve had another fantastic week in our Year 6 bubbles. In English, we have been learning about the sinking of the Titanic and have written discussion texts on who was responsible for the disaster. In maths, we have been solving a range of problems relating to area of 2D shapes and volume of 3D shapes. This afternoon, we put our art skills to the test by using a range of sketching pencils to create some impressive self portraits. Some of us even finished the afternoon with some socially distanced PE! 

Week Beginning Monday 8th June 2020

Thursday 4th June

It has been lovely to see lots of our Year 6 children back in school this week! We have been very impressed by the way they have adapted so well to our ‘new normal’ and have really enjoyed teaching them in our ‘bubbles’. The children have engaged fully in their learning in class and have enjoyed playing different games together during break times. Well done Year 6 - what a fantastic start to the new term! 

Week Beginning Monday 2nd June 2020

Monday 1st June 2020 is an INSET day, therefore there is no learning for this day.

Week Beginning Monday 18th May 2020

Week Beginning Monday 11th May 2020

Week Beginning Monday 4th May 2020

Week Beginning Monday 27th April 2020

Week beginning Monday 20th April 2020

Friday 3rd April 2020 - End of Term

Today is the day that we officially break up for the Easter holidays for 2 weeks!

Well done to adjusting to a new way of learning at home for couple of weeks and it is now time to relax and enjoy the break. Although this holiday will be different to other school breaks, we hope that you make the most of spending time with your family, doing activities that you enjoy and that you keep yourself active while staying at home. Below we will place a link with some fun ideas to have a go at during this time.

Further learning updates will be posted to this page after the Easter holidays. 

We hope that you stay safe, well and have an enjoyable break,

Miss Murphy, Mrs Downie, Mr Pallant and Ms Landau

Link to fun activities that can be completed at home:

https://www.scouts.org.uk/the-great-indoors/

26.03.20

Hello all,

As we come towards the end of the first week of a different way of learning, we wanted to send a message to say that we hope that you're all keeping safe and well.

We hope that you have managed to find a routine of completing some English, maths and afternoon subject learning each day as well as completing home activities that you and your family enjoy. It is very important for your physical and mental health that you complete some daily exercise to help keep yourself active while at home. Both at school and at home, we have been finding the daily PE with Joe Wicks workouts (live from 9am every weekday morning and can be accessed on Youtube at Body Coach TV - these can be done live at 9am or at any time after) brilliant to get ourselves moving and to release all those feel-good hormones that come with exercise.

Below we have also attached some links to additional learning opportunities that you can access to keep yourself learning and feeling good.

Keep visiting this page regularly for your learning and updates. Adults can email: lmurphy@rounddiamond.herts.sch.uk if you have any questions during this time.

Stay safe and keep smiling,

Miss Murphy and Mrs Downie

Additional learning links:

• Audible is free for as long as the schools are closed, so if you run out of books on BugClub, there are lots of audio books for children of all ages. Find this at: https://stories.audible.com/discovery 
• GoNoodle is good for practical dance and mindful activities
• BBC Supermovers has videos relating to a range of activities
• Topmarks has a range of interactive activities to support learning for a range of subjects

School Closure Home Learning - 18.03.20

Attached below are a range of home learning opportunities for children to complete during this period of school closure. This learning covers the 2 weeks of teaching before the Easter break. MyMaths and Bug Club have also been set and children have been given their passwords for these. Any children without access to the internet will be given a printed pack.

We recommend that children stay in a regular routine of completing English, Maths and afternoon subject learning daily to ensure a sense of stability, routine and allow them to progress with their learning.

Twinkl, an educational resource website which is used at school, has also given parents a free-month access code to use during this period of school closure. The free access code is: PARENTSTWINKLHELPS and can be used at www.twinkl.co.uk/offer

They have a range of high-quality resources and explanatory PowerPoints across year groups and all subjects that will be extremely useful for additional learning or to focus on specific learning areas.

If you have any questions regarding this learning please email: lmurphy@rounddiamond.herts.sch.uk

We would like to thank you for your continued support at this time.

The Year 6 Team

Writing learning

Below are a range of writing tasks on fiction and non-fiction topics. Please use the differentiated writing mats and sentence starter document for ideas, support and to recap skills we have been working on throughout the year. Some tasks may also require you to do some research using the internet to gather ideas.

The English Faculty have been considering ways in which to make effective changes to our home learning expectations at Round Diamond. As part of this process, we have looked at opportunities to promote the enjoyment of high quality texts, both in school and at home.

To support this, each year group has created a ‘Summer Term Recommended Reading List’. The list has been put together by class teachers and has been designed to give children the opportunity to explore a range of texts at home, over the course of year.

Alongside this list are some question prompts which can be used to start discussions about what has been read. The questions are in line with our weekly VIPERS teaching, that focuses on individual skills within reading – Vocabulary, Infer, Predict, Explain, Retrieve, Summarise.

Please note that this home learning is not compulsory. We hope that you will be able to enjoy some (or all!) of the recommendations by buying the texts if you wish. Equally, the question prompts can be used with any book you choose to enjoy with your child.

History - Ethelred the Unready - 16.03.20

As part of our history learning, we learnt about the Anglo-Saxon King Ethelred the Unready and how he used Dangeld to pay the Vikings to try and stop them from attacking during his reign...and how this didn't stop them because the Vikings learnt that they could keep coming back for more money!! Using this learning, we created a poem on Ethelred the Unready in the style of the one attached below. 

13.03.20 - PSHE -  The Importance of Hand Washing

This week in PSHE, we reiterated the importance of thorough hand washing to keep ourselves healthy. We watched videos on how to wash our hands thoroughly and then created posters to advertise the useful steps. Find the video was used at the link below. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/51698180

Science - Creating Periscopes - 5.03.20

This week in science, the children created periscopes using cereal boxes that were kindly donated. We used these to help understand how light is reflected to help us see. We explored the angles of incidence and reflection to help us understand how we see our reflection in some objects and not in others. 

02/03/20 - Discussion Texts

To help us with our discussion writing this week, we researched the use of animals for human benefit to explore more about the themes raised in our class text: Pig Heart Boy. Each group took and different view and a different area to research including use of food, drug testing and xenotransplantation. We then presented our findings to the class to help us make our own  opinion on the topic. 

New Science Topic - Light - 27.02.20

Year 6 begun their new Science topic of Light this half term by exploring how light enables us to see. We learnt the science behind it before creating group presentations to demonstrate how light travels in a straight line from a light source, bounces off an object before travelling in a straight line to our eyes. 

13.02.20 - The Day the Chairs Quit!

In English, we have been reading 'The Day the Crayons Quit' as part of our learning on persuasive writing. Today, the chairs in all Year 6 classrooms decided they would quit after being mistreated by not being tucked in and being swung on constantly! Our job was to write a letter to the chairs to persuade them to come back. Luckily, most of us had earned our chairs back by break time!

03.02.20 - Geography - Grid References

This week in Geography, we learnt how to read four and six-figure grid references to give exact locations of places. We will be putting this learning together, alongside this half term's learning on compass directions, reading maps and OS Map Symbols to create our own map using these skills next week. 

House afternoon - Rule of Law - 30.01.20

This afternoon, we had a house event where children in the same house from Years 1-6 came together to discuss the importance of the British Value - Rule of Law. We then worked together to come up with the laws we would make if we were Prime Minister. Children came up with some really thoughtful laws such as ways to reduce plastic and provide more money to the NHS.

It was great to see many of the Year 6 children acting as leaders to their younger peers, with our House Captains helping to direct children to the correct classes and children supporting younger ones during the task and then sharing their learning in our sharing assembly. 

Compass directions - 21.01.20

We have been developing our map reading and directional skills during geography. To build on our knowledge of locating places on a map and our knowledge of longitude and latitiude, we learnt about the 8 points on a compass and how a compass works by taking some outside and trying them for ourselves. We then used this knowledge to locate countries on a map. We will use this knowledge again next week when we explore OS maps of Stevenage.

Year 6 - Evolution and Inheritance - 07.01.20

To begin this half term's science topic on Evolution and Inheritance, the children had an awe and wonder session to explore inheritance. They were given pictures of members of staff and their parents, who they then had to match up based on similar inherited characteristics. I think the children will agree that it was quite a challenge, but really helped us to understand the difference between inherited and acquired charactertistics in a fun and practical way!

Happy New Year!

Spring Term 

The Year 6 team all hope that you have enjoyed a wonderful and relaxing break! We are very excited to welcome you back to a new term.

This term, we are embarking on a new learning journey in our history and geography learning. In History, we will be exploring the Viking and Anglo-Saxon struggle for the Kingdom of England, looking at the range of battles and raids that occurred in this era and what that meant for our country.

In geography, we will be learning the skill of reading 6 figure grid references and applying this to develop our understanding of major UK cities and places in the wider world, particularly through a comparison between our hometown of Stevenage and Boston, USA.

Within English this term, we will be developing our skills of fiction writing by creating short stories before moving onto applying non-fiction writing skills to persuasion texts. We will be progressing our reading skills by using a range of texts to develop comprehension skills in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. We are starting the term finishing off the book 'We Were Warriors' by Emma Carroll which is a sequel to the popular 'Letters from the Lighthouse' that the children enjoyed during Autumn 1. Reading for pleasure is still something we are promoting and this term we will begin to enjoy some of the stories that children voted to read last term,  including Floodland, Bubble Boy and the London Eye Mystery.

In maths, we will be exploring a range of mathematical topics to continue to develop our fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills, with an increased focused on applying our developed arithmetic skills to reasoning tasks.

Our first study in science is called 'Evolution and Inheritance' and will involve exploring scientific theories behind how species have evolved and how variation occurs through inheritance. In Spring Term 2, we will be studying the topic of 'Light'.

As you can see, we have a jam-packed term filled with lots of new and exciting learning opportunities. We hope that you are looking forward to it as much as we are!

17.12.19

In Year 6 this week, we have been sharing our Home Learning projects. The task was to make a World War 2 shelter, with the option of also researching different ways in which people protected themselves during air raids. We saw a wide range of impressive designs; some complete with real soil, lifting roofs and bunk beds! Some children accompanied their projects with impressive PowerPoint presentations and it was obvious that everybody had put in a great amount of effort. Well done to everyone who produced a project - what a great way to end our World War 2 topic!

13.12.19 - Letters from the Lighthouse

This week, we finished our class book of Letters from the Lighthouse which we have been reading this half term and focusing our writing and guided reading lessons on. The children absolutely loved the book and were kept hooked throughout by the fantastic action, vocabulary and engaging characters. We finished our unit by writing our own book reviews on our experience of the book. Luckily for us, we will be starting the sequel: When We Were Warriors, after Christmas!

6.12.19

On Wednesday afternoon, we read through some extracts of books from our Year 6 Reading List. We then voted for our favourites in order to choose our new class texts. The winner was 'Floodland' which we will start reading after Christmas. The runners up were 'Bubble Boy' and 'The London Eye Mystery' - we will read these texts later in the year. We really enjoyed having the opportunity to read extracts from the books and are looking forward tp starting to read them in class!

06.12.19

Year 6 were visited by Herts County Council on Tuesday. They showed us the dangers of using a mobile phone near the road and talked to us about the safest places to use a mobile phone when out in public. We did some activities which showed us how using a mobile phone affects your concentration. We then designed posters to advertise the dangers of being distracted when walking or cycling near roads.

27.11.19 - Reading learning

This week in English, we learned about Kindertransport, a non-fiction topic linked to our fiction class text of Letters from the Lighthouse which is linked to our World War II topic. We watched a video (that is linked below) to learn about real-life experiences of Kindertransport and then answered some comprehension questions on it. This learning helped us to understand more about the experiences of the character Esther, from our class book, who has experienced this. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/46877532

22.11.19

This week, we have been enjoying our Cross-Curricular Days. On Monday, we had a visit from Stevenage Museum, who launched our days with an assembly about the Romans. In class, we then researched Roman Gods and Goddesses, wrote charachter descriptions about Jupiter and Juno and did some drama activities in order to get into character. We also learned how to make and use a sundial, created leaflets about the Roman Baths and made mosaics similiar to the ones that Romans would have used to decorate their homes.

12/11/19 - World War II

This week, we celebrated Remembrance Day, which is a very important day every year, but even more significant as we have been studying World War II throughout this term. This week in topic, we learnt about the difference types of shelters that people used to protect themselves during air raids. From this, the children have been set a home learning challenge to create and research their own air raid shelter. 

7/11/19 - New Science Topic: Electricity

Welcome back after half term! This week, we started a new science topic on Electricity. We started our topic by completing a comprehension activity to find out some facts about the history of electricity that led to the electricity we are lucky enough to have today.

23.10.19

In Science this week, we carried out an investigation into how our heart rate changes. First, we took our resting heart rate and recorded it. We then took part in some moderate and vigorous exercises and recorded our heart rates afterwards to see how much they had changed. We repeated this three times, then worked out our average heart rates for moderate and vigorous intensity exercises.

Maths - w/b 14/10/19

This week, the children have been showing some fantastic dedication and resilience towards our SATs Practice week by carrying out past reading, SPaG and maths SATs papers. The children have shown brilliant focus throughout this and have been excited to find out their achievements and learn about their next steps. During maths on Thursday and Friday, we learned and applied our knowledge of fractions, decimals and percentage equivalents. 

Rose Blanche - Take One Book - 07.10.19

This week in English, we have started a Take One Book linked to our World War 2 Topic. Rose Blanche tells a story of WW2 from a German child's perspective. We will finish our unit by writing our own short stories based on the book.

01.10.19 - World War 2 Baking

Linked to our WW2 topic, Year 6 had a go at baking a wartime treat, linked to our learning on rationing. We begun by learning about which foods and items were rationed during WW2 and researched some WW2 recipes. We then created an Eggless Sponge which we then tasted and evaluated. Although they were slightly different to cakes today due to the ingredients, they were popular amongst the children! Lots of children showed great enthusiasm in the topic and we have therefore encouraged them to research some of their own WW2 recipes that they could make at home. If you do, please send us a picture, or even better, bring us some in to try!

To immerse ourselves within our new WW2 topic, we carried out a carousel of activities for the afternoon. We started by mind-mapping what we already knew about WW2. We then carried out activities related to how the war started, rationing, morse code and evacuation. We were also very lucky to have Mrs Umney share some real WW2 artefacts with us that were given by a family member. These included a war helmet, gas mask and box and a shell. We then added our new learning to our mind maps to use for future lessons. 

On Monday afternoon, Year 6 attended Crucial Crew. They took part in a carousel of activities to learn about water safety, e-safety,  street safety, electrical safety, fire safety, first aid and feelings and emotions. The children thoroughly enjoyed the experience and were really engaged and involved throughout the activities. We were very proud to have their brilliant behaviour praised by the volunteers running the event. Well done Year 6! 

06.09.19

We have had a great frst week back in Johnstone and Monet classes. We have started some fantastic learning on Anne Frank's Diary in English and Place Value in Maths. We have also created some beautiful paintings, inspired by our class artists. Take a look at our artwork below!