Maple - Year 6
Maple Class 2024-25
Welcome to Maple Class!
In Maple you will find Mrs Baker and Miss Campos. We are having a brilliant time in year 6!
On this page, you can hopefully find the information you need about what's going on in Maple. It's also where we will share some photos and examples of what we have been up to.
In the first half of the summer term, our topic is South America. We will be learning about the physical and human geography of South America and comparing it to the UK. You can find an overview of our planned learning this term below.
Our PE days this term are Tuesday and Thursday so you need PE kit those days.
Homework will be set in class and posted on Google Classroom. You will be using Spelling Shed for practising spellings at home, and TT Rockstars to practise times tables.
I also expect you to read regularly and I'm looking forward to you sharing what you have been reading with us in school.
If you have any questions, you can use the form below to contact me.
Contact Mrs Baker
For any queries or just to say hello!
Maple Class 2024-25 Summer 1 Overview
Check out our amazing waistcoats! We designed them, prepared the fabric, sewed them together, added buttons and applique designs (and even a zip!), and finished them off by pressing them.
Serious game-faces on as we have dictionary races to practise our dictionary skills!
Sam visited us to run a Victorian Childhood workshop. We had a taste of what it was like to go to school in Victorian times; it wasn't great!
We wore our PJs to school to raise money for Red Nose Day
In RE we created freeze frames of different moments in the Easter story and thought about what the different people in each moment were thinking and feeling.
We carried out an investigation that mirrors some of the work Charles Darwin did on his voyage around the Galapagos Islands on HMS Beagle. We looked at how the shape of a bird's beak determines what food it can eat, and talked about the impact on evolution through natural selection. We decided that the poor pipette-beaked birds would probably become extinct because they couldn't eat any of the food, but the spoon-beaked and tweezer-beaked birds would do well on different islands.
As part of science week we had a workshop with Ruth from Devon Science. She showed us lot of cool smart materials and we made bracelets using photochromic beads - beads that change colour when UV light shines on them.
In science, we learned about Darwin's idea of a Tree of Life. We created our own diagrams of the evolution of biscuits, and realised that one doesn't turn into another, you just get more types of biscuit! We had to look very carefully at the biscuits and spot similarities and differences.
In DT we have started making waistcoats! We designed them with someone in mind and have cut out the fabric ready to start sewing.
Thanks to all our Mystery Readers in Book Week! We loved being told stories by a different person each day.
On World Book Day we celebrated poetry, sharing poems we love and creating our own poetry.
In Book Week we are focusing on the work of poet Valerie Bloom. We read two very different poems of hers about love. Her poem "You Are" inspired us to write our own metaphor poem together.
Our Big Question for this term is 'Will we ever live in a world without fighting?' Maple Class came up with some really interesting thoughts and had a fascinating discussion.
Brilliant Biomes models done for homework - well done!
In art, we looked at some work by American photographer Edward Weston, and created our own macrophotography images.
As part of Safer Internet Day, Maple joined in a BBC Live Lesson about spotting and avoiding scams online.
This afternoon we took part in a livestreamed lesson as part of Spoken Word Power - a poetry programme run by Eastside in London. We had loads of fun, wrote some amazing poetry and even had some of our ideas shared in the livestream! We're going to work on our poems and will be holding a poetry slam later in the year!
Look at our great photomontages!
We had fun learning about inherited characteristics in science today!
Lots of fun making Christingles!
Brilliant homework from Maple Class, finding out about our own links to WW2. We uncovered some amazing stories about some amazing people!
We had fun on our family learning morning, building our Anderson shelter models with our parents and grandparents.
In our collective worship we thought about ways we could help change the world.
We created some great blackout poetry using John McCrae's In Flanders Fields
We investigated how exercise affects our heart rate. We did some brilliant scientific thinking and talking about our investigation.
Well done Maple Class!
We have been learning about the Battle of Britain and how it was a turning point in WW2
On World Mental Health Day, we talked about the things we can do to look after our mental health and about the importance of both time with other people and time on our own.
Peer editing in Maple Class. We work together to find mistakes and make improvements to our writing.
We read In Our Hands by Lucy Farfort and thought about ways that we can be changemakers in our communities
How do we show our Christian Values in Maple Class?
Our class charter reminds us of our rights and responsibilities in Maple Class
We thought about how we show our Christian values around school and made posters to remind people.
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Maple 2023-24
A brilliant leavers' race to round off our last sports day! Well done everyone!
We had a really lovely morning at the church for our leavers' retreat. We remembered and celebrated all our memories from Upton Noble, thought about our worries about going to secondary school and talked about our hopes and dreams for the future.
We had an amazing time at Wells Cathedral for our Moving Up Celebration, and then a picnic at the Bishop's Palace.
What an amazing time we had at Okehampton!
Today we had a DT day. We explored, designed, built, tested and evaluated doodlers - electrical products that draw on a piece of paper. We had to do a lot of 'tinkering' to work out the best way to build them and there were plenty of problems to fix in the designs. And it was really fun!
Look at our Doodlers go!
Doodler 1
Doodler 2
Doodler 3
Doodler 4
Doodler 5
We started off our new topic by mapping the countries and capital cities of South America.
Our waiscoats are finished - and they look amazing!
We're making waistcoats! We looked at some examples then designed our own. We've cut out our fabric and now we're sewing them together. We've also learned to sew on a button!
We had a great morning with Sam from the museum. We experienced a morning in a Victorian school. The Victorian teacher was quite intimidating and scary! Those if us who are left-handed had to write with our right hands and it was very different from modern school!
To kick off Children's Mental Health Week we set up our Zones of Regulation corner. We talked about identifying how we feel and what tools we could use when we are in each zone.
We drew pictures to show what we thought Syms was thinking at 2 different points in the chapter we read.
We made photomontages in art, thinking about how the different images would go together.
Practising our badminton racket skills in PE with a very competitve badminton cricket tournament!
In geography we practised our map skills using latitude and longitude to locate countries on a world map.
Today we took our science learning outside as we learned about how light travels to allow us to see things.
We found out about Save The Children's Christmas Jumper Day. We looked at lots of Christmas jumpers, decided what makes a good one and then designed our own!
We had fun building our Anderson shelter models this morning with the help of our parents and grandparents!
Some really amazing homework projects about our links to WW2 - well done everyone!
Look at our amazing blackout poems based on John McCrae's In Flanders Fields
We made posters to show what we have learned about the Battle of Britain
We have been thinking about our school motto - Let your light shine, Matthew 5:16. We drew pictures to represent the ways we can let our light shine
In year 6 we have some important jobs to do. Some are elected and others are chosen by application and interview. Well done to everyone who was successful!
Helping each other to edit and improve our writing in English
We're developing our skills in handball this term.
Democracy in action this morning as we elected our School Council representatives.
In French we have been learning how to describe items of clothing with Mrs Pritchard!
We had a brilliant time on our trip to Nothe Fort finding out what life was like for WW2 evacuees.
We thought about our inner and outer selves and made some self-portraits
Today in Maple we thought about the rights and responsibilities we have as part of our school community and we wrote our class charter.
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Maple Class 2022-23
We're reading The Explorer by Katherine Rundell. Using details from the description in the book, we drew pictures of what we the mystery man looks like.
We have looked at the work of Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes and now we are designing our own pieces in a similar style
In RE we found out about the Jewish festival of Sukkot and had a go at building a sukkah outside
We finished off our South America topic by finding out about some South American foods and made our own salsa!
Our Joaquin Torres Garcia inspired art work is finished and it's AMAZING!
We created algorithms and code to turn the micro:bits into step counters!
This Christian Aid Week Maple have been thinking about ways we could make the world a fairer place. We had some great ideas - some we could do ourselves and others that we would want governments and organisations to work together on.
Maple have been super-fantastic this week and showed all our Christian values of Resilience, Respect, Honesty, Trust, Love and Friendship in SATs week. We are so proud of them all!
Work is underway on our Joaquin Torres Garcia inspired art works.
This afternoon Mrs Dunk led a whole class ELSA session for us.
We thought about challenges we have faced in the past and how we got through them, to remind us that we can get through when things are tricky. We thought about encouraging words that we can remember.
She also taught us some strategies we can use when things feel a bit too big for us deal with.
In science we built circuits and explored what happened when we added extra bulbs or extra cells.
In computing we have been learning how to write programmes for the micro:bits. We made them into 'fortune tellers' that would give a yes, no or maybe answer.
WW2 Spring term overview
Lots of fun in Maple celebrating World Book Day.
Experimenting to show that light travels in straight lines.
In our first Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds activity for Children's Mental Health Week we were visited by Alice who helped us think about how emotions are expressed in art. Then we had a go at expressing our own emotions through colour and line.
We've been learning about the circulatory system in science this term.
In RE this afternoon we drew and retold the creation story from the Bible.
We've been reading The Tyger by William Blake. This is our own version of the poem that we wrote as a class trying to use the same structure.
In our class collective worship we looked at this term's Christian value of resilience. We talked about what we are going to do this year and how we will show resilience.
Building timelines in history to help us identify ways life in Britain changed during the Victorian period.
We played 4-in-a-row to help us practise adding and subtracting mixed numbers
We had a great morning when Sharon from Southwest Heritage came to teach us about Victorian childhood. We experienced a Victorian school and looked at phots and artefacts to learn about what life was like for children.
Our biome landscape paintings are finished. We painted the background with watercolours and added detail with acrylics and the finished pieces look brilliant.
In science we learned about Darwin's finches and explored how the shape of birds' beaks has evolved according to the food that is available for them to eat. We tried picking up different types of 'food' with different 'beaks' in the Battle of the Beaks!
In art, we've been working on the colour palettes needed for our biomes landscape paintings.
Look at Maple's Biome models - what amazing creativity!
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Maple Class 2021-22
As part of Wellbeing Week we read the book Bottled by Tom Brassington and Joe Brassington. Then we drew our own bottles of emotions.
On our Christian Values afternoon this week we thought about trust. We read some Bible verses about trusting God and heard the story of Jesus calming the storm. We saw lots of paintings and pictures of Jesus calming the storm and then made our own.
Summer 2 Learning Overview
We rounded off our half term by preparing some South American food - chicken and salad wraps with our own salsa made from scratch. Delicious!
A very sporty week in Maple, with both cricket and tennis coaching sessions!
Celebrating a week of amazing work in Maple with a great game of rounders!
Some pretty impressive moving toys using cam mechanisms.
Kicking off our South America topic this term with some map work.
We love reading in the sunshine in Maple Class!
We took our PE lesson outside today - working on our upper body strength and fitness.
We have been investigating whether being taller means people have larger feet, hands or heads. We used all our science skills - asking questions, making observations and taking measurements, recording our data and drawing conclusions.
As part of our work in British Science Week we investigated whether it is possible to estimate a person's age by measuring their height.
Look at this amazing daisy chain - 5m 20cm long!
This afternoon we enjoyed a dance and movement workshop based on The Lorax by Dr Seuss
In science we observed and compared the features of different biscuits built cladograms to show the 'evolution' of biscuits.
Maple Class were great representatives of Upton Noble when we visited the Somerset Rural Life Museum to find out about life in Victorian times.
In Book Week, we read Once Upon A Tune by James Mayhew and focussed on The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Then we listened to The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens and made our own collages like the artwork James Mayhew created for the book.
We used drama and freeze frames to retell the story of the Sorcerer's Apprentice
We spent the morning talking about our Christian value of Love. We read 1 Corinthians 13 which talks about what love is like and wrote our own poems based on it. Then we drew cartoons to go alongside our poems on display.
We made posters about wellbeing in Children's Mental Health Week.
In science we investigated how different beaks are best suited for eating different foods
Look at the incredible biome models Maple Class have made as part of our learning about different environments and habitats and how life has evolved and adapted to survive.
We learned about inherited characteristics in science
In RE we used pictures to retell the Genesis creation story
We played Guess Who with photos of ourselves and looked at different characteristics that we can see
We are reading The Nowhere Emporium by Ross MacKenzie. We have come up with our own Wonders, described them and written an extra scene for the book, set in our Wonders. Today we made models of them.
This term we have designed and built model Anderson shelters. We had to think about how to strengthen them so that they held the curved shape and how to fasten the pieces together.
We found a new friend wandering around at school today! We talked about how he must be getting ready to hibernate for the winter.
Look at our non-chronological reports about WW2. We've really tried to focus on our presentation and they look great!
Reverend Helen came to see us to talk to us and answer our questions about Messiah.
We're enjoying our daily run. We're adding up our laps to see how far we can run before the Christmas holidays. So far we've made it 47 miles, which could get us to Southampton or Cardiff!
In science we explored reflection and how we could change the direction of light using mirrors
Our amazing blackout poetry using In Flanders Fields
Some great work going on today as we used John McCrae's In Flanders Fields to create our own 'found poetry'. Tomorrow we'll publish and illustrate them.
Today we represented our school community by laying a wreath and holding a two minute silence at the memorial in the church yard.
We investigated how light travels, and found that it travels in straight lines.
We've been practising the rules for making words plural this week. We came up with some amazing irregular plurals that we were very proud of!
A real buzz in the classroom as we tackled some pretty tricky maths problems and puzzles - great maths talk going on.
We've been using Google Slides to make presentations about the circulatory system
We're reading The Silver Sword as our class novel, and today we thought about the characters of Ruth and Ivan.
We started our topic on WW2, and came up with some questions we would like to find the answers to.
