Autumn 2024

Year 6 have made a superb start to the year and are working really hard.

In English, Year 6 have enjoyed reading Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson.  They have written setting descriptions, persuasive travel brochures for the Amazon and their own journey stories.

   

In maths, Year 6 have been working hard on their arithmetic skills, including practising the four operations, calculating with fractions and using BIDMAS rules for completing calculations with more than one operation.

      

In art, Year 6 have thoroughly enjoyed their work on portraits.  They have created portraits in lots of different styles, inspired by Julien Opie, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, as well as focusing on accurately drawing portraits in proportion.

      

  

The highlight of this half term was definitely the Year 6 trip to Kingswood.  They worked together and challenged themselves with a range of activities such as abseiling, climbing, zipwire, leap of faith, archery, aeroball, problem solving, shelter building, fencing and beach adventure.  They developed independence and resilience as well as team work.

  

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Summer 2 2024

In Year 6, we have really enjoyed our topic on World War Two.  We have read the story, Carrie’s War, and learnt about the events of World War Two, especially the Battle of Britain.  We had a great trip to RAF London, where we took part in a Wartime Classroom workshop and looked at the British, American and German aircraft that were used. 

    

We also had a World War Two day in school where we imagined what life would have been like for an evacuee.

  

In science, we have been learning about the human body focusing on the circulatory system.  We created information posters to show how the heart, lungs and blood vessels work together.

  

As part of Unique Week, we created art work to represent our favourite things and the way we are all different and unique.

  

In art, our topic has been talking textiles.  We looked at the Bayeux Tapestry as an example of a story told through textile art.  We also looked at the work of textile artists, Debbie Smyth and Lindsay Taylor, before designing our own textile collages to show our memories of our time at Beech Hyde.

   

Years 5 and 6 have worked hard together to put on a great performance of ‘What A Knight!’ by Craig Hawes.  The acting, singing and dancing was fantastic – the audience were definitely impressed!

 

As we reach the end of the year, Year 6 have been thinking a lot about moving up to secondary school.  We wish them all the best on their new adventures!

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Year 6 have worked hard this half term to prepare for their SATs.  They tackled SATs week with calmness and determination, trying their best with every question.  Everyone at Beech Hyde is very proud of them.

In English, Year 6 particularly enjoyed reading ‘Night of the Gargoyles’ by Eve Bunting.  They developed their suspense writing skills and used various techniques to create tension.  They wrote some super stories to describe the mischievous activities the gargoyles got up to over night.

 

In science, Year 6 have been learning more about classifying living things.  They have particularly enjoyed finding out some quirky creatures and then creating some of their own.

  

In geography, Year 6 have been learning about fair trade.  They particularly enjoyed the international trade game.

  

In PE, Year 6 have been focusing on their fielding, batting and bowling skills while playing rounders.  They enjoyed playing a friendly match against St Dominics.

Year 6 did a super job in presenting their class assembly on Tigers and are proud to have adopted a tiger through the WWF.

 

Year 6 love their leavers hoodies that were provided by our amazing BHA.

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Year 6 have enjoyed their English topic on Africa this half term.  They have learnt about Nelson Mandela and his achievements, writing detailed biographies about him.  They have also read ‘Journey to Jo’burg’ by Beverly Naidoo and learnt what it would be like to grow up as a child in South Africa during apartheid.  They have worked hard to write the story ending from an alternative point of view.

      

Year 6 have worked hard in maths this term.  As well as practising their arithmetic skills, they have worked hard to master ratio and proportion, interpreting pie charts and finding the mean.

    

In art, Year 6 have continued to work on their ‘Cityscapes’ unit.  This half term they have focused on the work of Antoni Gaudi.  They have used collage to make their own trencadis animals and have made Gaudi inspired sculptures from clay.

In computing, Year 6 have been writing online safety stories for younger children.  They have drawn the illustrations and written the stories and combined these on the laptops.  They are looking forward to sharing their stories with the younger classes.

  

This half term, Year 6 also enjoyed dressing up for World Book Day.  They enjoyed talking about their favourite books and made superb book characters from paper cups.

 

Year 6 have thoroughly enjoyed taking part in Book Club with Sixth Form students from St Albans School.  They have read ‘Owen and the Soldier’, ‘Goldfish Boy’ and ‘Once’.

 

Year 6 have also done a super job on the sports field and have been great representatives for Beech Hyde in both football and netball.  The netball team won the Small Schools Competition at the netball rally.

   

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In English, we have enjoyed reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.  We wrote our own newspaper articles about an event from the story and scientific descriptions of our own magical creatures that could be found in Narnia.

 

As part of National Storytelling Week, Year 6 created storytelling strips.  We used these to tell our story to a partner before writing our description of Lucy discovering a new world through the wardrobe.

   

Year 6 also used the Hollow Woods pictures to tell their own stories, both individually, in pairs and in small groups.

    

In maths, we have been working hard on both our arithmetic and problem solving skills.  We enjoyed dressing up for digits on Number Day and playing dice games to improve our number skills.

  

In art, we have been looking at cityscapes.  We tried hard to draw London landmarks having been given half the building. 

We have also drawn our own cityscapes using one-point perspective and painted them with watercolour.

  

In RE, we have continued our work on Buddhism.  We have particularly enjoyed designing and drawing Buddhist stained glass windows.  Having watched a video clip of Buddhist monks making a sand mandala, we tried to draw our own mandalas.

  

In French, we have been learning the French alphabet and practising how to spell French words.  We all took part in the annual Beech Hyde French Spelling Bee.  Everybody worked hard and congratulations go to our runner up, Cienna, and our winner, Ysabel.

As part of Children’s Mental Health Week, Year 6 made worry monsters.  We are very pleased with them!

  

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In Year 6, we have enjoyed reading Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and Elf Road by Pie Corbett in English.  We have written our own portal stories inspired by Elf Road. 

   

We read and performed the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll before drawing our own version of the Jabberwock and writing non-chronological reports.

         

In RE, we have been learning about the story of the Buddha and how Prince Siddhartha left his life of luxury in the palace and saw old age, illness and death.  He realised that suffering came to everyone, despite their wealth, and everyone could be taught to find happiness.  We created our own comic strips to retell the story.

                 

In DT, our topic for this half-term has been hats!  We looked at a range of hats, thinking about their purpose and the material they were made from.  We were challenged to make a hat from newspaper before making a hat from cardboard to represent one of the Beech Hyde positive minds characters. 

    

Finally we designed and made a hat for our Mad Hatter's Tea Party inspired by a character from Alice in Wonderland.  We really enjoyed wearing them to the tea party!

      

      

In Year 6, we have thoroughly enjoyed preparing for Christmas – making Christmas cards and reindeer decorations, taking part in Christmas jumper day and our last Christmas lunch, running in the Santa dash, singing ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ in sharing assembly and going to the pantomime.

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Year 6 have made a fantastic start to the year.

Our class is called Tigers this year – we have enjoyed finding out about tigers and creating a class collage.  We use our own tigers on our daily check in board.

      

In English we enjoyed reading ‘Journey to the River Sea’ by Eva Ibbotson and have focused on writing setting descriptions.  We have also written persuasive travel brochures to persuade people to visit the Amazon and our own journey stories.

   

In art, we have worked hard on our unit on Portraits.  We have created self-portraits in the style of Julian Opie and Andy Warhol as well as creating portraits of Miss Rogers inspired by Pablo Picasso.

      

In science, we have been learning about light.  We enjoyed reflecting light using mirrors and investigating creating and changing shadows.

         

As part of Mental Health Day, we each made a network hand, thinking carefully about our support networks and who is there to help us when we need it.

We loved our residential trip to Kingswood.  We enjoyed the range of activities, including zipwire, abseiling, leap of faith, climbing, aeroball, archery, caving, shelter building, nightline and beach adventure.  We developed our team work, independence, resilience and definitely grew in confidence.  It was a super week that provided memories that we will always treasure.