Croeso i Dosbarth Barcud!
In Year 6 our teacher is Mrs Halley. Miss Weaver also teaches us during the afternoons, along with Mrs Koscinska who works in our classroom as a HLTA and who leads our learning in PHSE.
We share our class information as well as lots of the things that our class have been learning about using Seesaw. Should you need a link to your child’s Seesaw account please contact the school office or speak to Mrs Halley at the end of the school day.
Teaching and learning in our school changes each year according to the needs of the children in our classes however we would still like to give you an insight into what a year in Dosbarth Barcud looks like!
To help us to do this, we would like to share some of their adventures from last year….
At the start of the year, our theme was ‘No Outsiders’, and we learned about the importance of everyone in our school being different but equal. This was a chance for Mrs Halley and Miss Cannadine to get to know us and all of the things that make us unique and individual.
Next, we learned about Sustainable Development Goal ‘Peace, justice and strong institutions’. PC Hulley visited school to teach us about the role the police play in the community. Later in the year, we also visited the Senedd in Cardiff where policies affecting the whole of Wales are debated and passed. Both experiences helped us understand about the ways in which our country is managed and run.
At this time, Queen Elizabeth passed away, and we took time to find out about her life and the way that she served the country.
In line with thinking about peace, we used WW2 as a case study and referred back to it in subsequent inquiries. In October, we asked ‘What makes food so important?’ and considered this from the point of view of people who do not have access to food. We helped Year 1 to take their food bank collection to a local charity and investigated and discussed Jamie Oliver’s campaign for all children to have free school dinners. We also learned about rationing in WW2 and followed recipes to make soup out of seasonal vegetables as part of Harvest celebrations. We recognized the importance of food in the community and bonding and shared our soup with Year 1 who had made bread and invited our families in to enjoy it too. In our science lessons with Miss Cannadine we began to learn about food groups and how a balanced diet helps us to keep fit and healthy.
In the run-up to Christmas, we learned about the need to ‘Make do and Mend’ during WW2 and reflected on what we can learn from this nowadays when we have ‘throwaway fashion’. We designed items that we could upcycle from clothes, such as dog toys, skipping ropes, bags and pillows from items of clothing that were donated, and sold them at the school Christmas fayre.
We had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas with highlights being the pantomime in the Stiwt. Who could forget Mr Bourdial’s cameo?! Another trip we enjoyed was the visit to Explore!
We started rehearsing for Edith’s wartime scrapbook play which we finally did in March. It was filled with singing, dancing, and wonderful performances. We put in a huge effort to learn a wonderful dance which was choreographed by Miss Cannadine. We had to work so closely together as a team to put on such an amazing performance and went out of our comfort zones to achieve so much. Our teachers were so proud of us.
To find out more about Wrexham during WW2, we visited Wrexham Museum and made our own ‘Wartime Scrapbooks’ with the page based on the scenes from the play and what we had learned.
In the Spring we answered the question ‘What Makes Wales Special?’ and learned ‘10 stories from Wales that every child should know’. We retold them in our own ways from writing and performing puppet shows to making stop motion animations. It was wonderful seeing everyone’s own interpretations of the stories and them using so many different ways to show off their understanding.
In the summer term, we started our new inquiry based on the theme ‘Life on Land’. We worked based on ‘Don’t Let them Disappear’, a book about the damage humans are doing to animal habitats. We answered the question ‘How can we increase biodiversity within our school grounds?’ and explored ways that we could do this, from taking care of the tadpoles (with the frogs now rehomed in the school pond) to planting bee-friendly flowers and building bug hotels. We researched the 12 most endangered animals from around the world, made databases with information about them, and used this to create our own websites about each of these animals.
One of the highlights of the year was our visit to Cardiff. We visited The Big Pit on the way down and then visited the Senedd, the National Museum and Cardiff Castle. We took the Princess Katherine boat into the city, had a movie night, went bowling, and even went to the arcade. The speedboat was phenomenal! We had so much fun, being supportive friends, taking risks, and experiencing things we never have before while taking care of each other while we were away from home.
These are just the ‘big events’, but the year was filled with so much more than these too. From laughs and smiles which take place on a day-to-day basis, special moments with our friends, and sharing the day to day joys of school life to being patient, kind, and caring with each other on the days which are trickier. We spend 6 hours a day together, 5 days a week – some weeks, this is more than we are at home. We’ve done this for 8 years! We pick each other up, and whatever we’ve faced, we’ve faced together; despite the fact that many of us are heading in different directions in the coming months, these memories and this time together have given us a very special bond. One that will remain, whatever high school we go to!