In our English lessons this term, we have used our Destination Reader books to support our writing. We started the year by using The Firework Maker's Daughter to create our own fireworks, understanding the basic components. We imagined ourselves as the Firework Maker's daughter and our final piece of independent writing was an instructional text on how to reassemble our firework.

After finishing our instructional text, we moved on to creating diaries from the perspective of both Hetty Feather and Oliver Twist. During this time, we immersed ourselves in the model texts using Talk-for-Write strategies. Our final independent writing allowed us to showcase all we have learned this term.

We have also been working hard on our spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Over the last term, year 6 have enjoyed reading a variety of fiction and non-fiction books. We began the term reading The Firework Maker’s Daughter where we were captivated by Lila’s adventures to Mount Merapi. During this time, we worked hard on the specificity of our retrieval answers from texts.

Moving into the second half of the Autumn term, we were captivated by Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, where we challenged ourselves to understand the scientific vocabulary and its meaning. 

Also, this term, we have been gripped by the tale of Hetty Feather, a child, who was left by her mother as a baby, in a foundling hospital. Finally, we have been trying to understand what life would have been like as a workhouse child.

In Maths this term we have worked on our place value of numbers to 10,000,000, exploring each concept with concrete, pictorial and abstract representations. We are able to say the numbers and write them in both numerical and word form. During this, we also learned our Roman Numerals and now use these every day in Maths lessons.

We then moved on to the four operations, starting with the addition and subtraction of numbers, including inverse operations.

After that, we went on to learning our common factors and multiples, which we are now using within our fraction’s development. We have also worked incredibly hard on our times table this term, using these skills to multiply and divide 4-digit integers by 2-digits integers.

In History this term, we looked at the themes of ambition, religion and technology in relation to the Shang Dynasty.

We were able to identify when and where the Shang Dynasty existed, accurately using dates to order historical events. We then went on to pose our own historically valid questions about this period in history, before using primary and secondary resources to seek the answers to our questions.

During Geography this half term we have been working on our retrieval of of the UK including Scotland and Wales and being able to identify cities within these countries and their capitals.

We then moved on to extending our knowledge of the UK by being able to identify, name and locate geographical regions within Northern Ireland. 

We were also able to name human and physical characteristics of Nothern Ireland using our own research skills to create a travel brochure.

We started the term looking at electricity. We were able to draw and label the symbols for the component parts in a circuit. We then went on to create our own circuits, understanding where some circuits may not work and how we could adapt our circuits to make the bulbs brighter.

During the second half of the Autumn Term, we were learned about the theory of evolution and inheritance. We also read about fossils and understood how they are made.