Please see below for some examples of the amazing work we've been doing!

Year 6 have been both brilliant and resilient in their learning this term and we are so proud of them! Engagement has been terrific and we have seen fantastic attitudes from the children.

In our English learning, we researched and wrote adventure stories about Natural Disasters; building suspense for our readers and using different devices to advance the action in our stories. All of our excellent research and investigating into volcanoes was used in designing and building our own websites about disasters too. We considered the content, design and usability of websites to create our sites where you can explore, watch and learn all about hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural phenomenons!

In Science, we have been looking at the importance of diet and exercise in keeping our bodies healthy. We investigated the different food groups and the importance of a balanced diet, together with the negative effects that some drugs and alcohol can have on our bodies and their internal systems.

In Maths, we have learnt about measurements and how to calculate areas and perimeters of different shapes; applying our learning to a range of triangles, quadrilaterals and compound shapes and stepping up to calculate the volume of these shapes. These formulas then formed an introduction to our next topic of algebra! Code breaking at its finest!

Year 6 have been fantastic in their start to the 2022 Spring Term. We have written very well-researched discussion texts, asking: Is there too much technology in our lives today? Children surveyed friends and family and used this evidence to present the positive and negative aspects of technology in our lives. Overall, we agreed that technology was very important and - if not overused - a huge positive. In science, we have been learning about the circulatory system and exploring the role of the heart and lungs. We have seen how the pulmonary system functions and helps us breathe, and the important role that blood plays in keeping us alive and healthy. We look forward to conducting our circulatory dissections very soon!

In maths, we have learnt about the relationship between fractions, decimals and percentages - exploring this through the 'Chocolate Percentage Challenge'. We have been calculating percentages of increasingly difficult amounts while consolidating our place value knowledge and working toward a thorough understanding of equivalences between the three. We are now moving on to our measurement topic, exploring unit equivalents and have successfully applied this learning to real-life problem solving scenarios.

Our first trip of the year was to the excellent Design Museum; giving us a great insight into the role technology has played in our lives, and importantly, the materials and resources we have used to create them during this century and the last.

Using this experience, together with our learning in both our previous electricity topic in science and our programming skills - and our knowledge of Boolean Gates - in Computing we created our very own working reaction games. We then designed the exterior as a further extension to a highly successful DT project.

Home learning website recommendations:

https://family.gonoodle.com/ https://www.educationquizzes.com/ks2/science/ https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/category/play-and-win/games/

It has been another exciting time of learning in Year 6, with trips and new learning aplenty!

In Maths, the children have been working hard on new concepts such as multiplying and dividing fractions. The secret of their success is knowing when to keep, change and flip - this was demonstrated very enthusiastically with our round-the-grounds fraction hunt!

In English, we started the poignant story of Anne Frank; looking at our broader theme of World War II from another perspective. Researching life in Germany and the Netherlands before the war, we examine the life and the legacy of this ordinary girl put in an extraordinary situation. We also paid our respects to those who suffered and struggled during the conflict in Britain, by visiting St Mary’s Church War Memorial where the local chaplain spoke to the children about the experiences of local people during both wars.

In Science, we have been building on our prior knowledge of electricity by looking at key vocabulary, and misconceptions about how electricity travels. While for computing, we were incredibly lucky to visit the National Army Museum. A fascinating place to visit, Year 6 took part in the workshop ‘Robots to the Rescue’ and using block code, explored how robotic devices help the army in their missions, both in peacetime and during conflict.

Staying on the Science and Technology theme, we organised a terrific STEM day workshop, exploring how science, technology, engineering and maths plays a part in our world. Through a series of engaging experiments, we investigated how forces can be enhanced through strong design. Congratulations to those successful groups of engineers who landed their eggs!

And of course it would be amiss not to mention the wonderful new Ms Chalbot's and Mr Ripley's who arrived for work at Lowther on takeover day; organising terrific lessons from PE to computing, art to spelling!

Year 6 have continued learning and working at a rocket pace and are having a brilliant start to the year! We have begun swimming at St Paul’s and also visited Holly Lodge to learn about Richmond Park during WW1.

As part of our WW2 topic, we have been learning about the countries involved in the war and their leaders, focussing especially on the commonwealth countries that supported Britain and her allies. This was further explored during our Black History Month learning, where we learnt about the Windrush and the impact that this important vessel had on changing British society in the post-war years.

We presented our learning during the diversity assembly, and you can view our fantastic presentation (and more of our learning!) on our year group webpage on the school website :)

Our Holly Lodge trip was great fun, and we learnt how to dig for victory, send signals by semaphore, as well as bandage wounds! The guides explained to us the important role that Richmond Park played during both WW1 and WW2, and we saw at first-hand how the country changed during this period. We also used our time in the park to conduct a fantastic maths investigation, measuring the height of trees and estimating their ages.

In Maths this half term we have been learning about place value and operations, and applying these into different reasoning and problem solving contexts. We enjoyed learning about BODMAS – the order of operations to solve difficult problems – and using this knowledge to crack codes and break down multi-step challenges. This learning, along with long division (!) and the high expectations in Year 6, has been challenging at times, but we have seen great resilience from the children and a real appetite to succeed!

We have continued to learn about Light in our science lessons; investigating how light is refracted in a prism and how shadows are formed and can change size. One lesson that we greatly enjoyed was investigating how the human eye functions, and proving that we all have a ‘blind spot’ that can seriously inhibit our daily vision!

In computing, we have introduced the concept of ‘physical computing’, exploring the potential of Micro:Bits as hardware we can code and program to carry out a function in reality. We have been coding on the screen, using different instructions and computing languages, and then flashing this to the hardware to observe out algorithms come to life!

We are looking forward to more upcoming trips, including the National Army Museum and a special Science, Technology and Engineering day at school, as well as all the magic that Christmas at Lowther has to offer! :)

Book recommendation: Kay’s Marvellous Medicine by Adam Kay

Welcome back! We have had a busy start to the new school year: we have already been on two trips and eagerly started new learning and new routines!

Over the autumn term, our learning will focus around World War II. We will firstly look at the outbreak of war and what life was like throughout it, particularly for those living in London during the Blitz. Our English work this term will link closely to our theme on World War II and will include descriptive writing, writing newspaper reports and information texts.

We have visited a local air-raid shelter in Sheen and learnt about our local area, and spent an instructive day exploring the Imperial War Museum. Children (and adults) greatly enjoyed investigating the many vehicles, machines and artefacts on display!

We continue with the theme of war and espionage with our unplugged Computing lessons on Cryptology and how we can create our own codes using algorithms and different types of cyphers.

In Maths, we are ensuring our understanding of place value and operations are spot on, while our Science topic for the term is Light, and we have begun investigating how light travels and how we see colours. We have conducted a number of experiments around code-breaking, creating shadows and proving that light travels in a straight line. We are looking forward to building periscopes and finding blind spots in the coming weeks!