St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Thame
Inspired to be our best.....
Year 6
September 2021
Topic Webs
Autumn 2 2022 Topic Web
Friday 11th November 2022
This week in Maths, Year 6 have worked hard practicing their arithmetic and reasoning problem solving skills, as well as learning our x-tables dance ready to teach the rest of the school. In PE the children shared their team games, explaining and demonstrating so that their classmates could have a go. In addition to this we have also been singing our Christmas songs for the Festival of Christmas music, began learning to play the recorder with the class recorder sets and had a rendition of a violin concerto by one of our lovely year 6 children.
Friday 4th November 2022
Year 6 have worked hard this week in Maths learning about arithmetic and reasoning methods for calculating long multiplication and division, and have written fantastic setting descriptions to accompany our 'Ruin' film unit. The children have also enjoyed extending their chess knowledge, and have played golf and team games in PE.
Autumn Term 1 2022
Year 6 have had a fantastic start to the year and have really risen to the role of being top of the school. In English, we have enjoyed reading Wonderscape by Jennifer Bell and it has inspired some fantastic creative writing including character descriptions, setting descriptions and continuing the story by inventing our own fantasy realm and challenges for the characters to complete. Alongside this, we have been developing our reading and comprehension skills as well as our understanding of SPAG. The weekly book recommendations that members of the class have been providing have certainly given us lots of great books to get stuck into. In maths we started by consolidating and extending our knowledge of place value before moving on to look at our four operations- addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Our topic this term was titled A World of Bright Ideas and we really enjoyed delving into the world of inventions and innovations- thinking about inventions that have changed the world as well as creating our own companies making greetings cards. As a part of this we looked at trademarks and patents and pitched our new companies to our classmates in a bid to be the best in our field! We finished our topic by thinking about air resistance by carrying out an experiment to discover what makes the most effective parachute. We were able to use scientific ideas and vocabulary to explain our findings and had great fun making and testing our parachutes. RE this term has involved taking an overview of the Bible and creating our own 'libraries' of the books of the Bible to show how it is grouped into collections. We also spent some time reflecting on the life of Queen Elizabeth following her death, and wrote prayers thanking God for her loyal service to our country. A busy and full term and one which the children should be proud of.
Thursday 21st July
Thank you for all your support and for the very lovely gifts! We wish you all the very best for the next step in your journeys.
Have a super summer and we look forward to hearing about your adventures at secondary school.
Mrs Bull and Mrs Heywood.
Friday 15th July 2022
We have had a wonderful week enjoying performing our play and hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did. Thank you to everyone for your help with costumes, practicing songs, learning lines and encouraging us all. Today we celebrated with Dominos pizza for lunch- yum!
Friday 1st July 2022
We have thoroughly enjoyed the range of activities we have experienced throughout sports week. The boxing session was a favourite and gave us all a thoroughly good workout! In dance we enjoyed creating a routine to Footloose. Alongside all of this physical activity we have been completing transition work for our move to secondary school as well as continuing to rehearse for our production which is promising to be a night to remember!
Friday 24th June 2022
Year 6 have continued to be busy practicing our play and it is coming together beautifully. We have had a lot of fun thinking about costumes and creating props and are learning both our spoken and sung lines brilliantly. Our bake sale was a great success with well over £200 raised for the charity we are supporting and lots of yummy cakes baked and eaten. Thank you to everyone who baked and bought cakes, we hope you enjoyed them as much as we did!
Friday 17th June 2022
Year 6 have been hard at work this week entering the wonderful world of William Shakespeare and beginning to prepare for our end of year performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. We have thoroughly enjoyed learning some of the songs we will be singing and starting to think about acting out some of the scenes. It appears that we have a class full of budding thespians! As well as enjoying performing, we have been looking at the structure of Shakespeare's play and getting to know some of the characters. We can't wait to share it with you later in the term!
Friday 27th May 2022
This week, year 6 have been working hard at finishing and editing our reports that we have been writing about the history of Lego, and we have produced some really careful and detailed work which we are quite rightly proud of. We have had our first swimming lesson of the year and were thoroughly exhausted after an hour in the pool! More than one member of the public commented on how polite we all were on our walk over which was lovely to hear. Father David came to see us and talk about how important the month of May is in celebrating Mary, and we spent some time in the Mary garden, praying the rosary and crowning Mary with a crown of flowers that we had made.
Friday 20th May 2022
This week Year 6 have enjoyed the change of pace from last week, but have certainly not let their learning take a backseat! In Maths, we have been challenging ourselves with a whole range of puzzles and ciphers, which have really made us think outside the box. In English, we have started a mini topic on the history of lego which has been lots of fun and we are now starting to use our research to write a formal report. The beautiful sunshine has added to our enjoyment of our fitness based PE sessions and we have had some lovely creative time in the afternoons.
Friday 13th May 2022
Friday 6th May 2022
Year 6 have crammed an awful lot into this short week and have certainly made the most of every minute! Inspired by our current book, The Dam, we have been researching environmental issues that we feel passionately about and are using the information to create an informative piece of work that we will use to try to convince others of the importance of our cause. We are starting a new topic looking at movement of both people and goods around the world, and this week have been learning about Hong Kong. In PE we have been ensuring that our bodies are kept as healthy as our minds in our fitness topic, where we enjoyed designing exercises for the rest of the class to complete.
Year 6 are being sent home with instructions to rest and enjoy the lovely weather this weekend- they have all worked so hard and we have every confidence in them next week.
Friday 29th April 2022
This week Year 6 have thoroughly enjoyed reading and reflecting on David Almond's beautiful book, The Dam. The pictures, words and themes running through the book have provided us with the inspiration to create our own descriptive poems, carefully choosing language to create both tranquil, peaceful and dark, dangerous images of the water. In RE, we have been considering the events immediately after Jesus' death and resurrection and the importance of the resurrection for both Jesus' disciples and Christians today. During our PE sessions we have been working on some fitness-based skills and creating our own circuit style activities.
Friday 8th April 2022
After a fabulous and full week at Woodlands, Year 6 have settled back into a busy week of learning. We have enjoyed exploring some poems from Philip Gross’s collection, Dark Sky Park, and performed them enthusiastically to each other. In RE, we have been thinking about the events of Holy Week and their significance in preparation for the celebrations of the next couple of weeks.
Wishing all our Year 6 families a wonderful Easter break!
Friday 25th March 2022
This week Year 6 have been writing diary entries as if we were on the Titanic, focusing on the features and content of a diary. We have continued our work on the Titanic in history, specifically thinking about those whose heroic actions helped to save lives, such as Molly Brown who helped to ensure people were safely put onto the lifeboats. We have enjoyed playing dodgeball in the wonderful sunshine and have been busy preparing for our week at Woodlands next week.
Friday 18th March 2022
This week is National Science Week and Year 6 have enjoyed thinking about the sustainability of the food we eat and designing a delicious, yet planet friendly burger. We were feeling very hungry by the end of the day! We have been working very hard on assessments this week, but have also found time to get stuck into a very practical maths lesson on nets of shapes and in English have enjoyed letting our creative juices flow, writing some beautifully descriptive descriptions of the boarding of the Titanic.
Friday 11th March 2022
Friday 5th March 2022
This week Year 6 have been reflecting on the season of Lent in a number of ways through our RE work as well as by joining in Ash Wednesday Mass and having a visit from Father David. We had a fantastic World Book Day which involved us performing Shakespeare, a book quiz, creating 'blackout poetry' and recommending our current favourite reads to each other. You can see some of our work displayed on the hall door as you walk past. We have also enjoyed starting a new topic about the Titanic and have been writing some fabulous letters to reflect the differences between conditions for first and third class passengers.
Friday 18th February 2022
Year 6 have been reading about Katherine Johnson and her amazing achievements as a black woman who was involved space travel, despite the discrimination she faced. We have been creating information texts to show what we have learnt. In Science, we thought about ways in which biologists such as Carl Linnaeus have classified living things and had a go at creating our own classification key to identify leaves- it was much harder than it sounds and taught us a lot about the important of careful scientific observation and questioning! We started watching the film 'Hidden Figures', about Katherine Johnson and the space race, and were really enjoying it, so it might be a nice watch over half term. Have a lovely half term break everyone!
Friday 11th February 2022
Year 6 have enjoyed a creative week. In Dance we all enthusiastically learnt a football themed dance which we enjoyed performing and practiced some different balances. We created clay sculptures to show our reflections on peace and is was lovely to see how different they all turned out. In English we have been reading about the amazing Katherine Johnson and her achievements and have researched and created autobiographical non chronological reports.
Friday 4th February 2022
This week Year 6 have been exploring poems by Michael Rosen about migration and have especially enjoyed bringing them alive through performance. We have also looked at Art as a form of protest and our classroom windows now demonstrate our reflections on some of the injustices we see in our world. Our topic work has led us to consider the experiences of those who find themselves refugees and we spent a thoughtful afternoon considering some aspects of what it would be like to have to leave your home suddenly and make the journey to a new life in a different county.
Friday 21st January 2022
Year 6 have really enjoyed continuing our topic, I Have a Dream, this week and have been reading and reflecting on Marin Luther King’s famous speech before writing our own speeches. Our hopes and dreams for the world we live in ranged from wishing for gender equality to thinking about a world in which ‘disabilities’ became ‘different abilities’ and were celebrated. We think we would make great politicians! In English, we have written diary entries based on Floella Benjamin’s autobiography, Coming to England, and worked collaboratively to help each other edit and up level our work.
Friday 14th January 2022
Year 6 have enjoyed learning and practicing the Haka in dance this week. No energy was spared! We have been continuing our new topic, 'I have a Dream', by thinking about the impact of racial segregation at different times in history and have been researching and presenting our findings to the class, while reflecting thoughtfully on the impact that such measures had.
