Year 6

Our transdisciplinary theme this term was ‘Where We Are in Place and Time` and the central idea that we have been exploring was: ‘Wars can have detrimental consequences.` 

As part of this term’s provocation, the children experienced three different workshops. The children took part in creating gas masks, designing their own propaganda posters and took on the role of an evacuee and wrote a letter to their families from the perspective of an evacuated child. The children then analysed what the central idea meant and created their own provocation questions. 

Once the children had been introduced to this term’s topic, they started the term by discovering many ideas about ‘The origins of war’. The children were inquirers into how both World War One and Two started and how the Treaty of Versaille contributed to this. The children took on the roles of people involved in the Treaty of Versaille and took part in a debate expressing what they thought their character would want from this meeting and why. 

Moving forward with their learning, the children then presented their many ideas in any way that they wanted using either a double page spread and a combination of text and images. 

Our second line of inquiry this term was to investigate ‘How wars can shape lives’. The children started this line of inquiry by becoming geographers and historians and investigated how their local area was impacted by World War Two.The children soon found out that Dartford had been impacted in many ways: the school used to have its own air-raid shelter, Carrington Road was bombed causing mass destruction and a spitfire crash landed in Hesketh Park. 

To finish off this line of inquiry, the children wrote their own narrative in the style of ‘When the Sky Falls’ or ‘Letters From a Lighthouse’. They were able to really demonstrate all their knowledge of World War Two using a range of grammar skills and vocabulary to really show what life was like during the war. 

For our final line of inquiry, the children started to take action! The children wrote their own speeches about ‘How can we prevent future conflict?’. The children brought together their many ideas and the links they’ve built throughout their inquiry journey this term to explain why we should not have a future war and how this could impact our lives. Some of the children were risk-takers and performed their speeches in front of their peers at their own remembrance ceremony in Hesketh Park.