Hawthorn Class Page
Welcome to Hawthorn’s class page. We are now entering our final (and best!) year at Horniman, and we have lots to look forward to, including fantastic texts, exciting topics, interesting visits and, of course, our school journey and end of year play.
Check our page regularly to see what we’ve been up to and find our parent plans, class information and useful resources above.
Welcome to Year 6, Hawthorn!
50 Best Books for Year 6
The amazing website ‘Books for Topics’ has a fantastic collection of books. Here is a link for 50 books for year 6 children to read.
They also have brilliant lists for all different topics and subjects, from picture books to poetry, so check out their website for more information and inspiration.
Final pieces: Expressive hands
Final pieces: Expressive hands
’Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the spider to the fly…
THE SPIDER & THE FLY
Mary Howitt’s classic poem written as a cautionary tale to children is our latest core text.
We learnt the poem by heart and performed it to the class.
Art: Expressive hands
We’ve begun our sculpture project, looking at different artists’ work to inspire our own studies.
This week we looked at the work of contemporary artist, Antony Gormley.
We then experimented with line and shape to create form in our observational drawings.
Toto Kerblammo! at the Unicorn Theatre
Hawthorn visited The Unicorn Theatre to watch Toto Kerblammo By Tim Crouch. Wearing headphones, the children experienced Effy’s world through 3D binaural audio technology. It was an emotional and heart warming story about a young girl who gets sent to live with her aunt and uncle in a block that won’t allow dogs. What’s a girl to do? She smuggles her furry friend in, of course and keeps him under a blanket, feeds him biscuits. Ssh Toto, quiet!
The Arrival
Our first core text of the year is Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’ - a moving, beautiful wordless picture book.
The story unfolds in an unfamiliar land, with Tan inspired by images of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. It’s the perfect book to immerse ourselves in to learn more about our topic, Migration.
If you enjoyed The Arrival, I recommend you try some of Tan’s other books:
Learning in year 5
Scroll down to see previous posts from our learning in year 5.
Our trip to The South London Liberal Synagogue was really lovely. We met Rabbi Nathan who taught us about what his role and how a Synagogue brings people together.
Hawthorn teamed up with Reception for the whole school walk through Sydenham woods. Year 5 did an amazing job engaging them in conversations, helping them spot the hidden items and taking care of them. They should be very proud of themselves!
Sports Day 2024!
Dear Parents/Carers, thank you for coming and supporting us 😊
Brazil Celebration Day!
We had a busy day preparing cassava and dip, making placards (with Year 3) and then Samba drumming for our march around the school. It was very hot but we persevered with our instruments and the cassava was a big hit!
Arts Week fun!
We carved nature themed shapes into potatoes to print our pieces using ink pads.
Our trip to Surrey Docks Farm
We learned about different animals that live on the farm including cows, sheep, goats and pigs and admired lambs and baby goats that were just few days and weeks old. The children really enjoyed feeding the sheep and goats. Despite the constant downpour, we had a great day!
Our trip to Horniman Museum
An exciting start to our Brazil topic! We started by visiting the aquarium and spotting some animals from the rainforest, followed by a workshop in which we learned more about living things in the Amazon rainforest and had the chance to explore artefacts close up.
Science week investigation
We made pendulum timers and investigated how they can be adapted to swing for set amounts of time. We explored and learned about how mass, measure and air resistance can impact the swing of the pendulum.
Outdoor maths
Creating decimal numbers to 1 and 2 decimals places to represent tenths and hundredths.
We had a great visit to the British Museum where we explored artefacts from Ancient Greece. The Parthenon Gallery was one of our favourite rooms where we took part in an interactive virtual reality workshop!
Our visit to the Royal Observatory. It was a cold sunny day and we loved it! An exciting start to our Earth and Space topic in Science.
Learning about how parts of Ancient Greece were governed. We role played living in Athens under a democracy, where only men had the right to vote, and living in Sparta under an oligarchy, where a small group of people made all the rules. In the end, we voted which we would prefer but also realised that neither option was ideal at the time.
Exploring the structure of square numbers.
Hawthorn enjoyed participating in a Windrush workshop (along with Year 6) and learned about the experiences of the Windrush generation. They had the opportunity to design boats and write their wishes for the future on them. They also had a lot of fun tasting fruits from the Caribbean!
Y5 performed a magnificent version of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Greenwich Theatre. The children performed brilliantly and gave a confident performance filled with humour and fun. Thank you to the school adults who accompanied them, the parents/carers who came to watch, the PTA for funding the project and the children for working so hard in rehearsals. It was an amazing experience that the children will remember.
We had a fun and engaging workshop with Joshua from the Shakespeare Schools Foundation. We learned the 5 top tips for being great stage actors and told Joshua our plans for our upcoming performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Exploring common multiples in outdoor maths
Our Core Texts
The Barnabus Project by The Fan Brothers
In a world built for Perfect Pets, Barnabus is a Failed Project, half mouse, half elephant, kept out of sight until his dreams of freedom lead him and his misfit friends on a perilous adventure.
I Talk Like A River by Jordan Scott and Sydney Smith
Even the river stutters. Like him. "I talk like a river," he says.
Outdoor Learning
This week we have been looking at statistics and graphs. We recorded continuous data to plot onto our line graphs. Some of our data including hula hooping, running laps of the pen and some old-fashioned star jumps!
Our Core Texts
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pearce
Thirteen! Tom races down the stairs and out the back door, into a garden everyone told him wasn't there. In this enchanted thirteenth hour, the garden comes alive - but Tom is never sure whether the children he meets there are real or ghosts . . .
Cinnamon by Neil Gaiman
Think Just So meets Indian fairytales with Gaiman's own particular perfume and stunning illustrations by Divya Srinivasan.
In a hot, hot country, ringed with mountains on one side and jungle on the other, lives a princess called Cinnamon. Her eyes are made of pearls, which means that she is blind. And, for reasons her parents the Rajah and Rani cannot fathom, she will not talk.
Residential Visit: Carroty Wood
In March, Hawthorn stayed for three days at Carroty Wood Adventure Camp.
We enjoyed lots of new experiences and adventures such as abseiling, high ropes and archery. We went swimming, had camp fires and went on woodland night walks.
Take a look at the photos below!
Outdoor Learning
We have taken to the woods! Hawthorn have been enjoying taking maths outside of the classroom. Using natural resources and observing the world around us, we have applied our mathematical understanding to the natural world. Identifying, representing and sequencing are just some of the skills we have focused on when learning about fractions.
Creating number lines between 0 and 1
Making representations of mixed numbers and ordering
Showing equivalent fractions using sticks
Our
Core Textss
Pax by Sara Pennypacker
‘I have a fox. I had a fox. We left him by the side of the road.’
After a shocking first chapter, we are sent on not one, but two journeys. Peter, a young American boy is on the hunt for his adopted pet fox, Pax. However, Pax seems to be on his own journey: one of discovery and life in the wilderness.
The Ways of the Wolf by Smriti Prasadam
‘Majestic and fierce, proud and strong, the wolf has always been a source of fascination - and fear.’
A lyrical, documentary style non-fiction book which overturns the dangerous nature of wolves. With its beautiful illustrations and interesting layouts, it gives a new spin on the boring information text.
Our topic this term is…
World War II
Poet’s Corner
We have been writing poetry inspired by our English text ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ by Shirley Hughes. We used repetition and figurative language to create imagery and focused on intonation when delivering our spoken word.
Evacuation Day
We kicked off our topic with a visit to the past: a church hall decked in patriotic union flags and adorned with antiques of the 1940s.
Dressed for the occasion, we became members of the WI and joined the ‘Make do and mend’ campaign, we heeded the advice of Dr Carrot and made rationed carrot biscuits and enjoyed being questioned by the imposing billeting officers.
Our experience gave us an insight into how evacuees were treated and what life during the time would have been like.
Factor Families
We have been investigating links between factors and multiples. Using our times tables knowledge, we represented different arrays and used these to find out all the factors pairs for different numbers. We noticed that some had an odd number of factors and some only had two factors because they are prime!
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Newspaper Reports
We became detectives investigating the suspicious and mystery ‘Vanishings’. We conclude possible outcomes and created newspaper reports to alert other local cats to these strange crimes.
Enterprise Day
Our brief this year was to create a set of six identical pop-up Christmas cards. We worked in mixed groups between years 4, 5 and 6.
‘I enjoyed working with this year’s brief,’ said Sonny.
Pattern Spotting in Maths
We have been learning our multiples of 12! Using cubes and counters, we create arrays and identified different patterns between the factors.
English: Varjak Paw
Our text this half term is Varjak Paw. We have been delving into the wonderful world of Mesopotamian Blue cats and exploring their habitat. Of the family of cats living in the Contessa’s house, there are some unsavoury characters which we have compared and contrasted using conjunctions and antonyms.
Budding Detectives
This week we learnt about the different parts of flowering plants and the important jobs they do. We made observations of the flowering plants in Forest School to find out what we knew already and what we wanted to find out.
Artists at work
Our Animals topic has led us to explore textures. We used watercolours to mix shades and layering to create scales.
