​This half term, we have been learning about what makes us all different. In this lesson, we reflected on challenges that face people in the world. We had to carry out an activity as a group. In our groups, we represented people in society who have a disability: blindness, paralysis, deafness and the loss of a limb. We learnt how important collaboration is and it helped us to understand the challenges that many people face in the world. 

​Year Six had our first Class Worship since the Covid Lockdown and we loved it! Our parents got to see all of our hard work: our scary stories; West African inspired masks; non-chronological reports and lots more. 

​As part of our thematic curriculum, Year 6 studied the work of Adenike Okundaye Davis, a famous Nigerian textile artist. Inspired by her designs, the children learned new sculpture techniques in order to design and create African clay masks. The standard was so high, they were invited to exhibit their work in a local exhibition, held at St Mary's Church. The children were thrilled to see their work displayed.

Building on our learning in year 3 when we learnt about forces (friction), we learnt about gravity and air resistance and how they effect objects on Earth. Space exploration is an exciting thing. So, as budding scientists, we came up with lots of questions about space and forces and settled on testing just one of those questions: What material makes the best parachute? To answer this question, we designed an experiment to test which material would make the best parachute for a water bottle (cotton, felt, net, black bin bag or blue tissue). Which material do you think would make the best parachute?

STEM is an important part of our everyday lives. As part of our careers week, we had two inspirational structural engineers come in and talk about their jobs (Zainab Adigun and Shahrukh Husain). They even planned a fun activity for us to experience and practice some of the skills that they use on a daily basis. In this activity, we  were asked to design and build the tallest, self-supporting structure that we could out of spaghetti and marshmallows. We had lots of fun!

We learnt so much about what we could do when we grow up this week. We had an architect come in to speak to us about her career and what her job was like. She even showed us some of her designs. A  doctor spoke to us about her job and answered all the questions that we had; she even showed us what babies look like and how they develop. Not only that, a film producer came in and spoke about his job. He showed us a project that he worked on and how he designed the locations for where they flimed parts of the movie (The film was one of the James Bond Movies). We have a lot of careers to choose from when we grow up; it was an eye opening and interesting week. Bring on the future!

We relished our trip to PGL! Facing our fears, building deeper friendships and experiencing new things was one of the highlights of our final year at St Mary's.

​We were challenge to get making and designing. This half term, we are learning all about the Vikings. As part of our DT learning, we considered what Vikings wore in the past and what their shoes were made from. Next, we were set a challenge. We were provided with a j cloth, thread, a needle, a pair of scissors and a marker. With the materials provided, we had to create a prototype for a shoe that could be worn and withstand a fit for use test (a sprint from the top playground to the bottom playground). 

We started by drawing the shoe that we wanted to create and then we constructed it. We found it tricky because the material was not as strong and hardwearing as the material used to make Viking shoes (leather). Nevertheless, we were able to have a go and use our knowledge of different stitches (running stitch and backstitch) to join pieces of j cloth together and even sew on some buttons.