Year 6 – One World Week 2017

What a week we’ve had! Year 6 celebrated One World Week by focusing on a particular country – in our case, Poland.

The week kicked off with a geography quiz on Poland, which put Y6’s atlas skills to the test. We learnt that a total of 7 countries border Poland and that it has a coastline on the Baltic Sea.

Our Polish history learning took us to Auschwitz and the culmination of anti-Semitism in WW2. The children wrote poems to reflect on the atrocities of the Holocaust, and I have to say that I was blown away with the quality of writing from the class.

Following on from this, we learnt about the life and sacrifice of St Maximilian Kolbe in RE. Kolbe was a Polish priest imprisoned in Auschwitz for trying to help the Jews during the war. He volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the death camp, because the stranger had a family. We looked at the Beatitudes that Kolbe lived out through his sacrifice.

With the help of Gloria’s mum and Mrs McDonald, the children all had a go at making Pierogi (Polish dumplings). We filled ours with strawberry jam, but the variations are endless, both sweet and savoury.

In Art, we used the Polish paper-cutting technique called Wycinanki. Using symmetry, the children cut intricate designs based around nature – particularly trees and roosters, as is traditional. They really took their time to make some fabulous designs.

We also learnt a Polish song about passing bananas on a ship, which became a real tongue twister as the tempo got faster and faster!

Well done for the wonderful research on Poland that you brought in for your Home Learning this week. You put a lot of effort into those, and it looks like you all learnt a lot through doing it; there are certainly a lot of facts that you’ve taught me! Thank you to Gloria for showing and telling the class about traditional Polish clothes – the embroidery was amazing!

Finally, we were treated on Friday afternoon to an exciting workshop with the Young Shakespeare Company. The children acted out Hamlet whilst predicting what would happen next. We definitely have some budding actors among us, and we are all really looking forward to going to the Wyllyotts after half term to see the play being acted out by professionals!

Thank you to all the parents that came along to our Celebration Morning to have a look at the children’s learning from this week and the rest of the half-term. I am so proud of how hard the class have worked over the past seven weeks. Well done for putting so much effort into your learning; you deserve a nice break! Have a great half-term everyone, and I’ll see you all nice and refreshed on Monday 30th.

Miss Donatantonio

Half-term Home Learning letter