Year 6

Welcome to Dolphins

Class Teacher- Mrs Petersford

 

       

                           Miss Wickenden                           Mrs Beagle                           

Support staff

ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE EMAIL THE CLASS EMAIL ADDRESS AT dolphins@maybury.surrey.sch.uk

Class Timetable

Our PE days are Monday and Friday this half term.

 

Our VIP table, Selfie Station and Star Writers!

Last year in Dolphins we have introduced a new VIP table for very important people. It was such a success we have carried it on this year! if the children win our achievement certificates they then get to spend the next week on our table for very important people.

  

There are some perks to sitting on the VIP table, the children get to use our exclusive VIP stationery, wear our VIP badges, get to be the first to go ou to break and lunch, they can even request a drink of juice and enjoy a biscuit on the Friday! We will post pictures of our VIPS. Our VIPs this week chose to enjoy some mini chocolate doughnuts!

Our Selfie Station is another new addition to Dolphins, if the children are proud of their work they can take a pop a selfie clip in their books, we will copy it for the children to bring home and share with you. 

 

As a new addition this year, to show off our hard work in literacy, we have a weekly Star Writer! Their work is displayed in the classroom and then it goes on our wall of fame! Make sure you ask your children about their writing and encourage them to use the Selfie Station to share it with you at home.

May

It has been a very busy month for Year 6. The children have been working hard all year in preparation for their SATs tests. Last week our time to shine finally came! The children came in for a very yummy breakfast where they could choose between cereal, toast, crumpets, pancakes or pan au chocolates!

Once our tests were over, we enjoyed a few treats… we had a visit from the ducklings that have been in Starfish class. They were so cute and a lot of fun to have cuddles with!

On Friday, we spent the morning at Boundary Park. It was fantastic weather. We had football, skipping and the children played on all of the equipment. The children also enjoyed some tasty snacks and juice drinks!

It hasn’t just been about SATs; we have been busy with our art learning journey. The children have been making life-size sculptures of a human body inspired by Sean Henry the creator of the ‘Woking People’ sculptures that you can see around town. We made ours from sellotape, clingfilm, newspaper and paper mâché. Each person in our group was one of the body parts– we measured them and then created them. It was so much fun!

In computing this half term, children have been programming Micro: bit mini computers. They have had an amazing time adding variables and turning the Micro: bits into compasses.

During our Science lessons, we continue to learn about light, focusing on how shadows are formed and what affects their size, direction and shape.

We can’t believe that we are heading into the Dolphin’s final half term at Maybury. We have lots of fun activities planned for next half term, we cannot wait to celebrate everyone’s hard work this year!

April

This half term our Geography focus is the Americas. We have been using our map reading skills to find North and South America and identify countries in them. We have also looked at why time zones are different across the world and compared them to ours.

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In PE, we have been reading maps to create faces as part of our orienteering skill development. We had communicators who could give directions and builders who had to listen to the instructions and create the faces correctly. It was tricky to start with but we learnt some great strategies to organise our groups and speed up our building.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March

We need to start by saying a HUGE well done to Dolphins this half term for showing resilience during their Mock SATs week! You all worked so hard and really persevered, you should be very proud of yourselves!

This month, we went on an amazing trip to Milestones Museum linking to our History topic. We took part in workshops and learnt all about life during WW2. We found out what an ARP warden was and what their job entailed. It sounded very scary, but the children recalled lots of facts from our Mr Dilly workshop and listened carefully to what life was like during The Blitz. The children got to dress up and had a go at spotting enemy planes. We also learnt about rationing, during the war and used our ration books to buy our own sweets to take home.

March is also the month of World Book day! We were lucky enough to have a visit from Bookman. He was very engaging and played lots of games with us to help with creativity! It was a lot of fun. We had some great costumes in our classroom including some new characters we haven’t seen before so thank you for your help creating these!

In P.E, we have become Gymnasts, we have been learning to balance, mirror and match. It has been wonderful to see our balance getting better each week. During our final lesson we watched our apparatus mirroring and matching pieces and then evaluated each other according to the skills we have been learning each week.

February

At the end of last term, we started our new World War 2 topic, ’Blitz and Pieces’, with a fantastic workshop with Mr Dilly. We learnt so much about the War and even got to role play being air raid wardens and being in the Blitz, it was very loud and very disorientating! The children had so much fun and over the half term they managed to remember a lot of facts from our morning.

In literacy, we are continuing to read ‘War Horse’ and the children are really enjoying it. So far, we have written: diary entries, a balanced argument and a newspaper report about the beginning of the Blitz. The children listened to old radio news reports and then worked on creating their own.

In maths, we have been continuing to look at fractions, decimals and percentages. We are focusing on converting them and solving problems including them.

In computing, the children have now finished their Scratch games with moving objects and they have evaluated each others by playing them. This half term, we are moving onto creating our own webpages! The children are very excited about this unit and can’t wait to get started!

In art, we completed our street art unit and had a go at screen printing  our own designs they had made using positive and negative space. The children were very pleased with their results.

In DT this half term, we are going to be creating our own phone cases. The children will research materials to use for it and then learn a number of different sewing stitches. The children will then plan their own design and select the stitch they feel is best. Once they are completed, the children can take them home and use them!

In PE, we finished our carnival dance unit and filmed our samba dances. The children did a great job at timing their moves and making sure they were all synchronised.

January

This half term has been a busy start to 2025! We have jumped straight into some new and exciting topics. WW1 is the theme of our History and Literacy lessons, with a focus on our class text of War Horse written by Michael Morpurgo. We have been busy creating propaganda posters and persuasive radio adverts to try to make people join up for the army to help out in WW1. It has been a very interesting topic and the children have loved learning about life in the trenches and the health conditions caused from spending months at a time on the front line!

In PE, we have started two new sports, tennis and dance. The children have shown great skill during our tennis lessons, so far we have practiced balance, coordination and returning the ball. We have also learnt the importance of the handshake grip and keeping a firm wrist! In our dance lessons, we are making links with music whilst focusing on rhythm and team work to learn Samba moves.

  

Dolphins have been fantastic Mathematicians this month, learning algebra. Children have enjoyed using function machines and substituting numbers in equations. We are now moving onto ratio which is also a challenging topic!

In Art, we have been looking at street art and the famous artist Banksy. The children enjoyed looking at a range of his art works and debated whether they thought it was art or graffiti, it was a very interesting topic! The children have been learning how to create depth in their art work by looking at positive and negative space and creating these in their work. We had some great results!

In RE, the children have been learning all about the Holy Trinity and what it means to Christians. We have looked at a range of art work that depicts the Trinity and explained what we think they represent and why. Rublev's is the most famous painting.

The children also had a go at creating their own Trinity pictures. 

 

December

In Year 6, we have had a very busy month. We were rehearsing for our Christmas performance. We created a class acrostic poem all about what makes Christmas special to us. We voted for our favourite ideas for each letter and put them together for the show. We also chose a lovely song to sing all about Christmas- Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’. The children loved learning the words and making up actions to go with the song.

We began this month with our much-loved Life Space workshop. It was our last visit with Mark and we even got to say goodbye to Harold the giraffe. We learnt about legal and illegal drugs and their effects on the body. We also talked about peer pressure and watched a video about a young boy being pressured by his friends.

In DT, we have finished our healthy packed lunch learning journey.  We have researched what would make a good healthy packed lunch, and looked at the differences between processed, pre-cooked and fresh foods. We then created a questionnaire for a friend to find out what they would want in a healthy packed lunch. We then used that information to plan what we wanted to include and created shopping lists to take home.  We also constructed nets to hold our packed lunch items.

 

 

This week, it was finally time to make our healthy packed lunches. The children did so well sharing ingredients and working together! It was a great day.

In computing, we have wrapped up our spreadsheet lessons with a big event! The children needed to plan and budget for a big party. They had a pricelist of items to choose from and they worked with a partner to create their spreadsheet using the function inputs we had learnt about. They then created and inserted pie charts to show their spending.

November

This has been another very busy month for the Dolphins. We finished our first class text and now have our new one, ‘Street Child’ by Berlie Doherty.  It is based on a young boy Jim Jarvis and his life in the Victorian times. We have been focusing our Literacy learning around this text and producing different pieces of writing about Jim and his life.

In science, we have started a new topic ‘Evolution and Inheritance’ and we have been looking at maternal and paternal inherited characteristics. The children produced some great homework for this and it was lovely to see the family photos so thank you for helping!

The children have been learning about evolution and adaption which has included looking at fossils and comparing them to modern day relatives of animals and plants, this was very interesting to see the changes that have happened and think of reasons for this.

In DT, we have started a new project about making a healthy packed lunch for a friend in the class. The children will be setting questionnaires to find out what their friend wants in their lunch. They will also be writing a shopping list for items they will need to bring in for our making sessions in a couple of weeks. Once they have been completed the children will be getting feedback to see if they fulfilled their brief and whether the packed lunch was a success. We will include some pictures in our next newsletter article.

In PE, the children have been learning skills in football and hockey. We have been focusing on the skills and making sure they are embedded we will move onto using and applying those skills to mini games. The children are very competitive so really enjoy showing off the skills they have learnt.

October

This month the Dolphins have been very busy!

In PE, we have been practising our passing and defending skills in netball. We then learnt the different positions and how they can move in the game. Once we knew this, we could move onto playing mini-games. The children loved applying the skills to their games!

 

In RE, we have been learning all about Hindus and how they worship. We have learnt all about the Puja tray and what each of the artefacts are for. The children chose their own pictures of the Puja tray and then added labels with information.

In maths, the children have been consolidating their understanding of the four operations: adding, subtraction, multiplication and division. We had a lesson on BIDMAS and the children absolutely loved it! We have now moved onto our fractions block which has been tricky but rewarding to watch the progress in lessons. 

In art, we have been learning about Lowry, a famous artist from the Victorian era. We have been practicing different skills he used to create his paintings and this week we are going to be creating our own Lowry inspired art work! Some of the best pieces will be chosen to be displayed in the waiting room at Woking train station, this means friends and family can go and see our art work on display for the public to see.

In history, we have been comparing the Victorian era to our lives. The children have looked at schools and decided they did not like how the Victorian children learnt, they decided it is much nicer in 2024! The electronics we use make our learning much easier and quicker. The teachers also used to hit the children which was a real shock!

We have completed our science topic all about the circulatory system and how to keep our bodies healthy. The children really enjoyed these lessons and recalled lots of facts during our retrieval quizzes!

September

This month has been a very busy for Dolphins! The children have settled into our new classroom environment well and are keeping up with the demanding schedule.

 

We began the year learning about our class sea creature, the dolphin. The children researched them and found lots of fun facts to create a fact file. The children also chose their own medium to create dolphin pictures. They are on display in the corridor.

In Literacy, we have started reading 'Pig Heart Boy' by Malorie Blackman. This is a very interesting text with some very controversial issues regarding organ transplants. This text links well with our Science topic which is all about the circulatory system, last week we made our own blood and learnt about the different parts that make it up, it was lots of fun!

'Pig Heart Boy' has a controversial story line which has lent itself well to debating in Literacy. The children chose a side, researched facts and evidence to support their viewpoints and then learnt debating skills. This week of learning resulted in us having our own debates at the end of the week. It was great to hear the children giving reasons and evidence to support their opinions!

In science, we have been learning about our circulatory system and how our heart pumps blood around our bodies. The children loved making their own blood in one of our lessons.