Year 6 - Who's the real Henry?

The children in year 6 have settled in quickly and made an excellent start to what once again promises to be a busy half term. On the first Friday back all the children participated in an exciting whole school project day. The year 6 children spent their morning designing and painting pebbles for a whole school display and writing their own imaginative stories based on a well known children’s book. There is much to look forward to this term for Year 6, including farm school, new topics in lessons, sports fixtures and the Christmas Concert.

This half term in Maths we will begin by reviewing factors and multiples, which will lead us nicely onto multiplication and division. In Year 6, long division will be a particular focus and we will take our time learning and practising the method. As always, there will be lots of opportunities for the children to attempt reasoning and problem solving questions to challenge their newly learnt skills. Once the children are confident with using the four operations we will move onto fractions. This topic will include adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions, as well as ordering fractions and finding fractions of amounts.

This half term, in addition to our continued reading of ‘Boy’, we are getting to know Shakespeare. We’ll be finding out about the man himself, although much about his life remains a mystery, and learning some of his language. In particular, we’ll be studying Macbeth. This gory story will be our drama focus too and should be a really enjoyable and challenging unit. This week in drama, the Y6’s recreated a prep session at Roald Dahl’s boarding school, where boys were to be seen and not heard. They were supervised by the vindictive Captain Hardcastle, who was marvellously portrayed by several children. It’s such fun to recreate these horrible memories of Dahl’s time at school, all the time secure in the knowledge that these cruel practices have been left in the past.

Year 6 children have had an enriching term so far. One of the standout moments was our activity, "Who's the real Henry?" where we examined a line up of portraits claiming to be Henry VIII. Surprisingly, all the portraits turned out to be depictions of Henry at different stages of his reign, shedding light on the evolution of his image over time. Our exploration of Tudor maps has further provided a unique perspective. Comparing these to modern counterparts sparked discussions about the reasons behind the similarities and differences. This learning has been skillfully applied in a homework project, resulting in the creation of impressive Tudor-style maps, some even featuring authentic Latin inscriptions and mythical sea creatures.

As we move forward, the Year 6 pupils have much to anticipate. Shifting our focus from monarchy, we'll delve deeper into the lives of both the affluent and the less privileged during Tudor times. This term promises to better understand life at the time, with some very "hands-on" lessons planned to explore crime and punishment, health and medicine, professions and livelihoods, and the culinary landscape of the era. It's an exciting (if slightly grizzly) journey ahead, as we continue to further explore this period in more detail.