Academic Year 2019-2020
Code-Cracking
Class 13 have been working tirelessly to crack secret codes crucial to the war effort! We have been learning about the vital work of Alan Turing and other code-breakers who worked at Bletchley Park during WWII. The Enigma machine and how it helped crack secret German codes during the war fascinated us.
We made our own machines and cracked some codes before making our own codes for others to crack. We set our code-crackers to different settings each time we wrote a new code so that it couldn’t be guessed easily!
Fleet Airm Arm Museum
On Thursday 17th October, we visited the Fleet Air Arm Museum. The children dressed as World War Two evacuees for the day. During our visit, we took part in two workshops – one about rationing and one about The Battle of Britain. Both were fascinating and so engaging! We were able to be ‘hands-on’ and examine real artefacts.
In the rationing workshop, we planned a week’s menu for our teacher. We had to weigh our ingredients and spend our meat ration money wisely so it would last a whole week. Each group had a different focus: breakfast, lunch, dinner, celebrations and, most importantly, tea! We were tasked with planning seven lots of meals, a celebration cake for a birthday and how many cups of tea one person could have a week. Groups had to negotiate with each other too – the breakfast group had the whole milk ration for the week.
We also learnt about how Britain triumphed over Germany in The Battle of Britain. We discovered that this was a team effort and how all the parts worked together to make the British campaign a success. We researched and interrogated real artefacts, maps, the ‘roll of honour’ and saw demonstrations of how the command structure and radar system worked.
Finally, we toured the museum with a knowledgeable guide who told us about the planes that were involved in the war and how technology and manufacture advanced in such a short period of time to change the design and speed of them to keep up with the requirements of warfare.
We had a fantastic day! The learning centre team at the museum were extremely impressed by the attitude and behaviour of all the children who visited. They commented that they asked intelligent and thoughtful questions, worked well together and were completely engaged in what they were doing. Well done, Year 6!
History - Gas Masks
In Class 13, we have been continuing our history topic by researching how and why gas masks were used during World War Two. Children spent time undertaking their research at four ‘information stations’; they discovered how propaganda was used, studied real gas masks, researched the different purposes of gas masks and independently researched interesting facts about gas masks.
Living Things and Their Habitats
As part of our ‘Living things and their habitats’ unit in science, we have been learning about the work of Carl Linnaeus who developed the taxonomy for the classification of all living things. We have been learning about the six kingdoms of all living things and learning some challenging vocabulary along the way! To help us remember the six kingdoms and the difficult words, we made wheel spinners to test our friends. Once you have spun the arrow on the front of the wheel, you have to tell your partner a fact about that kingdom. Finally, you can lift the flap to check your answer.
Computing
In computing, we have started out first programming unit. We will be creating our own quiz games for our World War Two topic. During the first part of the unit, we are creating times table quiz games to test and refresh our programming skills. Initially, we mastered the basic programming for a question and response e.g. 7 x 6 = 42.
After this, we learned some new skills that enabled us to generate a random question, repeat this for a given number of ‘goes’ and add a score for a correct answer/remove a score for an incorrect answer. Next session, we plan to make the game more visually appealing and our challenge is to add programming for an additional player.
WW2 continued
We have been discovering more about what life was like in Britain during World War Two. This week, we have been learning about the different types of air raid shelters used during the war. The two types of shelter we have been researching are Morrison shelters
and Anderson shelters. We were most surprised to learn that people had to build their own shelters and some had as many as 350 parts to assemble. Fortunately, the model Anderson shelters we made were slightly easier.
World War Two
In Year 6 this week, we have been learning about the events that occurred leading up to the beginning of World War Two. We listened to Neville Chamberlain’s infamous declaration of war speech and then had a go at writing our own. We practised ‘performing’ our speeches and then recorded them. Some of us got the giggles whilst trying to impersonate Chamberlain’s ‘received pronunciation’ accent!
Following this, we also had a lively discussion about whether war was the only option for Britain in 1939.
Science
In science, we have been learning about the seven life processes of all living things. We searched our school grounds to find evidence of living things within them. In groups, we selected three separate areas to search and recorded our findings in photos, sketches, rubbings and pictograms. We discovered lots of creepy crawlies in the Forest School area but found it more difficult to find evidence of living things on the playground.
Living Things
Following on from our investigation of living things in the school environment, we have been thinking about how we distinguish different types of living things from each other. We thought broadly to begin with but then tried to narrow down our ‘groups’. We learnt that living things are classified into groups based on similar characteristics. We all were given a living thing to ‘be’ and we had to sort ourselves into groups. To begin with, we organised ourselves based on the number of legs we had. After that, we tried to narrow down our categories to make smaller groups e.g. birds, fish, insects, mammals. We discussed how mammals can also be classified within that larger group, for example with the ‘cat family’. Our cat family included a lion, panther and tabby cat. Although all of these are cats, we realised that there were still a lot of differences between them, including their shape/size, habitat, appearance. We ended our lesson by posing a question for next session: How do scientists classify living things so that they can be easily distinguished?
ACADEMIC YEAR 2018-2019
Year 6 Prom
Our year 6 leavers prom was held during the last week of term, where the children dressed in their finest outfits and danced the night away to celebrate their last few days at school. We wish them the best of luck at their secondary schools in September.
Careers Talk
Class 13 & 14 were really lucky to have Lt Cdr Hollingsworth explain the different roles of the Royal Navy. She explained that her role is like the headteacher of a school, but that her students are the fighter pilots who fly all of the noisy jets around Yeovil.
Ellie told us about the exciting career opportunities that can be found within the Navy. She explained that when onboard a ship everyone is on duty all of the time, but that they get good holidays when they return. Life onboard a ship is like being in a village - lots of different people are needed to provide all that the sailors need during their time (chefs, doctors, chaplains, mechanics, engineers, postal workers, to name but a few).
Fleet Air Arm Museum Trip 16.1.2019 (Or should that read 16.1.1939)
We enjoyed a really interesting day at the Fleet Air Arm Museum on Wednesday! Our teachers (and our hosts at the museum) were delighted with the effort everyone had made to dress as World War 2 evacuees – we really looked the part! When we arrived, we met Stuart, our guide for the day (and Gemma’s grandad!). He outlined the day ahead of us before sending us to our first workshop about wartime rationing.
Wartime Rationing
Working in groups, we explored the range of foods available to us in 1939 (no ready meals!) and were tasked with planning a week’s menu for one of our teachers. We chose Mrs. Moss, who took a day off from maternity leave to join us – she must being missing us! Each table group had to plan one aspect of the menu, which included breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks and a birthday cake (very tricky with rationing in place; only one fresh egg a week was allowed – imagine!). In order to successfully complete the task, we had to negotiate food swaps with other tables as the food allowances were often very small, e.g. 2oz of cheese a week, and make sure we didn’t run out of money! Within the hour, however, we devised a menu of which to be proud – Mrs. Moss wasn’t going to starve! She would enjoy bread and dripping, curried kidneys, rabbit stew, liver and cabbage… You’d have thought her face would have shown more gratitude for such a nutritious diet, especially when we chose her as a thank you for joining us! She was, however, delighted with the birthday cake even though it looked like something that might have come out of Mrs. Fossey’s oven – flat as a pancake! She knew it had taken a lot of our week’s rations to bake it.
The Battle of Britain
Our second workshop involved working in teams to investigate different aspects of the Battle of Britain. We used documents and artefacts to solve puzzles and learn about what actually happened. We explored pilots’ experiences, women’s roles, propaganda and much more! Did you know that Britain was very close to losing the war even though our armed forces were doing an amazing job? Mr. Churchill was extremely worried! Thank goodness the USA came to our aid! Once we gained supremacy in the skies, we also gained the upper hand.
After lunch, we split into groups and enjoyed a tour of the museum, including the aircraft carrier experience. All too soon, it was time to leave for home. What a great day we had had though!
World War II Pick & Mix Homework
We have had a lovely afternoon sharing our ‘Pick & Mix’ homework with each other.
There were cakes, biscuits, board games, poems, cards, posters, a story and a toy, all with a wartime theme. You’ve all been working hard on this creative task and should be proud of your efforts. Thanks to all the parents (and in some cases grandparents) for their support.
Year 6’s trip to the SSDC offices.
On Wednesday 10th October we visited the South Somerset District Council offices as part of our ‘British Values curriculum. We found out about all the diiferent ways the council help our community.
In our House teams we prepared proposals for a new leisure facility for the town. We then learnt about the voted process before voting for the proposal we liked best.
Come and see our display in the main school corridor.
