Term 4 - The Natural World
Our new topic is The Natural World: How important is it to adapt? and we will be focusing on Charles Darwin, as well as developing our geographical understanding of our beautiful world. Our Science learning will delve into Darwin's theory of evolution and how living things have had to adapt over millions of years. Here is our enquiry mat for the term.
We launched our new topic in a virtual story time, exploring our new class story of 'Darwin's Dragons', by Lindsay Galvin. We can't wait to find out what happens in this fictional tale of Darwin's voyage on his famous ship, HMS Beagle.
Our first lesson of the term started by exploring the life of Charles Darwin! We discussed what we already knew about his life, then explored his biography and began to examine the significance of him today. Remote learners and the keyworker children added their findings to our class Padlet: take a look at https://padlet.com/joe_hawkins/charlesdarwin.
After retrieving our learning of four figure grid references from Year 5, we learnt how to read and write six figure grid references. We examined the HMS Beagle's voyage across the globe, using six figure grid references to find precise locations.
Our Science lessons started by exploring the theory of Charles Darwin - evolution. We examined how living things have evolved over millions of years and what evidence there is for this. The children produced some fantastic work - both at home and remotely. Have a look at one example below sharing their scientific observations of how humans and elephants have evolved over time and considering why they had to adapt in this way:
Year 6 have been recapping features of biographies from last term, before researching and writing their on biographies of the brilliant Mary Anning. We have retrieved our learning from Science lessons exploring fossils in order to write some fantastic biographies about her life. Well done Deer Class!
Here’s a snippet of some of Year 6’s fantastic music learning this afternoon learning how to play the samba drums. We have developed our understanding of composition too, along with how to perform as a group. We have also learned the importance of listening to each other to ensure that we were in time. Thank you to @LMSlincsmusic for the expert teaching - we can’t wait for next week’s lesson!
Music lessons with Lincolnshire Music Service
Our Geography continued by recapping OS symbols learned from Term 1 - the children did a fantastic job in retrieving this prior learning. We then developed our understanding of the geographical features of the Galapagos Islands - famously visited by Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle - and created our own OS symbol map version.
In our Maths lessons, we have been recapping metric measures and how to calculate with these. In addition to this, our daily Arithmetic has been recapping key skills which we have learned this year - great job Year 6!
In Science this week, we investigated the Galapagos finches and how they have evolved and adapted in different ways. We now know that this happened due to the diet of the finches and their specific habitat within the Galapagos Islands. We investigated different beaks of finches to see which were more efficient for eating different types of food.
Our Art learning this term has focused on sketching skills, particularly with the different gradients of pencil and learning how to use these (with other sketching skills, such as cross hatching and shading). We applied our Science learning of Darwin's finches and how there are many varieties due to evolution. Have a look at some of our fantastic pencil sketches below.
