Autumn 2 – Volcanoes

What a busy half term we’ve had! Not only did we have our Year 6 residential to Avon Tyrrell in November but we have also been working incredibly hard in the classroom with a particular focus on our topic – Volcanoes.

Within our English and Blended Reading sessions, the children have been reading and inspired by the true stories from the Survivors book. The children created their own survivors diary and story based on the experience of Sue Ruff and Bruce Nelson, who survived a volcanic explosion on Mount St Helens. Throughout these pieces, we revised our knowledge of different sentence structures, definitions of different clauses and word classes too.

During our Maths lessons, the children have revised their knowledge of fractions, measured and drawn a variety of angles and built our own nets for 3d shapes. We have also been refining our mental arithmetic skills and have had a real focus on building our quick mental strategies to enhance our efficiency and accuracy as mathematicians. Being able to confidently recite our times tables remains a real focus so please be sure to encourage the children to continue practising these daily.

Within our Art sessions, we were inspired by Indonesian batik artists. These fabrics inspired is to explore using glue to create a ‘resist’ piece of art. This new media required to us to use our resilience and patience. We also enjoyed exploring Volcanoes in Geography including identifying what’s known as Earth’s Ring of Fire. We focused on the country of Indonesia and learnt about the active volcano Anak Krakatoa, which only recently erupted in 2022.

Finally, Year 6 ended on a Christmas high watching a Panto, enjoying Christmas lunch altogether and learning about the Magi during the true meaning of Christmas day! We truly hope the children have enjoyed this busy half term as much as the adults have! Looking ahead to January, we will be starting our New Year learning about the Mayans. At the beginning of February, the children will also be involved in gaining their cycling proficiency with the Hampshire Bikeability team.

We look forward to welcoming the children back in the New Year as we have lots more fun and learning up our sleeves. We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas break!

The Year 6 Team

Autumn 1 - Ancient Greece

We have reached the end of our first half term in Year 6 and what a jam packed seven weeks we’ve had! The children have made a fantastic start to their Year 6 journey and have shown great curiosity and interest in our topic – Ancient Greece. We have been blown away by the level of in-depth discussion from the children and how interested they have been in this period of history. 

During our History sessions, the children have learnt about many aspects of Ancient Greek life such as The Olympic Games, Alexander the Great and daily life in ancient Greece. All of the children thoroughly enjoyed performing a ‘play-in-a-day’ where they took on different roles and brought our Ancient Greek topic alive through drama.

A highlight of the topic was definitely designing, cooking and tasting a variety of Greek-inspired dishes in their DT lessons. The standard of cooking was brilliant and the rest of the school's mouths were watering when the aromas of chicken kebabs and burgers were wafting down the corridors!

In English, we designed our own mythical creature using an AI tool. From this, we wrote a non-chronological report about our creature, followed by a myth starring the creature. 

In Maths lessons we have focused on consolidating our place value knowledge, revising the column methods necessary for solving calculations using the formal operations and we explored finding the area and perimeter of compound shapes.

During our Art sessions, the children used wax crayons to create some scratch art of an Ancient Greek amphora. They then used this design to make their own clay pot, using the coiling technique. The pots were admired by parents, carers and grandparents in a Year 6 afterschool art gallery. 

We have been so impressed with the children's efforts this half term and have loved watching them embrace challenges and demonstrate real passion towards our topic. We know that the children will love their volcanoes topic next half term, and will equally enjoy all of the challenges Avon Tyrrell has to offer. 

Welcome to Oak and Maple Class (Year 6) 2025-2026

Wow, what a start to Year 6 we have had! It has been fantastic to welcome the children back after a long summer break and hear all about their adventures over the holidays. The children have all settled in brilliantly and have shown great resilience to adapt to their new classes. They have certainly impressed us with their focus and determination to succeed in lessons so far and have been able to enjoy the perks of the exclusive Year 6 common area. All of the children have certainly adjusted to Year 6 life incredibly well!

Just to inform you, Year 6 PE will be on a Monday (Indoor) and Thursday (Outdoor) this year. The children will need to wear their PE kit into school to be worn for the duration of the day. 

Please feel free to drop us an email or call via the office if you have any queries or concerns, we are always willing to help where we can. 

Our current Year 6 staff team.

Mrs Osborne (Oak), Mrs James (Maple), Mrs Bush (LSA), Miss Menard (LSA), Mrs Browne (LSA)