The children of Year 6 have worked incredibly hard throughout their gymnastics unit and this week they were able to combine all of their skills in their final springboard jump. 

Across the unit, the children have learnt a range of jumps (including pike and straddle) and they also learnt how to use the springboard safely and correctly. Despite some of the children feeling quite daunted, they have persevered and worked hard to improve. 

This week Year 6 visited Holly Lodge Centre in Richmond Park to take part in the Junior Citizenship programme. 

The citizen days are an opportunity for pupils to learn how to deal with different types of dangers, as well as get to know their local police officers and firefighters. They learn top safety tips first hand from emergency service workers, including council officers and electricity company representatives.

The programme involves 10 interactive sessions with the different organisations, which let the children ask questions and play out scenarios they could realistically come into contact with.

The children were given the opportunity to telephone emergency services to report a fire. They discussed safe routes in the event of a fire and the importance of fire alarms.

This week, the children in Year 6 completed area and perimeter investigations as a part of their measurement topic. They thoroughly enjoyed working in pairs and the teachers were very impressed with the mathematical vocabulary the children used. Have a look at the attached question, that the pictured children are solving. You can see that some children chose to solve this problem by using squared paper; other children calculated the area of each square and then found possible factors of the area of the rectangle. 

We have loved this week! The children have had the opportunity to research and evaluate tomato sauce by taste testing a range of commercially available sauces. They then used this information to develop their own recipe. We practised knife skills, including using a bridge and claw grip, and finely diced onion and garlic. We then headed to the kitchen and got sautéing. We enjoyed adding our own ingredients to the basic sauce including chilli flakes and fresh herbs from our school garden. We then taste tested our own sauce and evaluated it against the same criteria as earlier.

This week, the children have been very excited to start learning about salsa music. Salsa originated in Cuba and we discovered that salsa means 'sauce' in Spanish, which is rather appropriate as many countries have since added their own 'flavourings' to this style of music. 

What a wonderful week! On Monday, Year 6 visited St Leonard's Court air raid shelter as a conclusion to our World War II topic. It was interesting to see the impact the war had on our local area. The following day, we were lucky enough to be visited by the author Grant Strong, who talked through the process of writing and explained how important daydreaming is. Our fun filled week was finished off with a STEM Day.