Year 6
In our Science lesson last Friday, we learnt about Darwin's theory of evolution.
During Darwin's expedition around South America and Australia, he studied different species of animals. He focused particularly on birds and found that finches living in different habitats, adapted differently to suit their environments (slim and sharp beaked finches ate insects whereas finches with short beaks crushed seeds). When we looked at his drawings and found that the finches had different beaks in different environments, we found out that this process was called Natural Selection.
Then, we wrote as Darwin, who had misplaced a page of his notebook, outlining his theory of natural selection linking this to his findings of the finches he observed in the Galapagos Islands.
Below you can see some examples of our work!
Geography Field Work
Over the last two weeks, Year Six have undertaken a special Geography fieldwork activity for Mr Combe, which was based in Enfield Town. Each class was given a different task to complete and then they had to feed back to the other classes.
Hurricanes looked at the restaurants already available in Enfield Town to determine where the gap in the market was. They fed their ideas back to Lancasters, explaining that there was a gap in the market for a fine dining establishment.
Lancasters then went in search of vacant properties in Enfield Town and scored each property out of 20 under set criteria. They fed back their ideas to Spitfires, explaining that they felt the old Pizza Express building would be the best place for a find dining restaurant as it is already set up to be a restaurant, is a god size, has no competition surrounding it and has lots of people/cars travelling past.
Spitfires looked at the travel links in Enfield Town, with a specific focus on bus routes. They marked the different routes and what parts of Enfield link to the Town. They found that the Town was a good location as all the differing parts of this borough link to this area.
Defiants created a survey, where they thought about the questions they might ask potential customers. Mustering all their courage, they then asked a variety of adults in town (with teacher supervision) and received feedback from the public. This then helped them feedback their findings to Mr Combe.
This week, for Mental Health Week, as Year 6, we have been looking at charities and charity causes. We looked at some well-known charities discussing their causes. We then thought about setting up our own charities and used the Global Goals to help us come up with ideas for causes that help and support people and created a mind map.
For example:
Global Goal 4 is Quality Education. This was could be used as a charity cause that would focus on raising money for all young girls and boys to have access to education around the world.
Once we had all our ideas on our mind maps, we circled two of our final ideas that we would like to discuss in our groups. When looking at our mind maps, we had to compromise and decide on one agreed charity cause between the four of us.
During the week, we participated in the smiling minds meditation sessions. This helped us feel calm and balanced as we focused our minds on working positively and efficiently when in our groups.
After our mindfulness session, we thought about an event for our charity. We decided to set up our own charity event (UNCRC Article 15 - setting up and joining groups to support human rights).
In groups of four, each person had to do a different role/job that would help set up a fundraiser event. We thought about the jobs and decided in our groups, this took a lot of discussion and compromising as some of us wanted to do the same jobs as others. However, after a group discussion we all agreed on taking on different roles.
Gabriella - 'I think the person who is good at Art should create the logo and the rest of us can decide on the other jobs we would like to do'
Ryan - 'I enjoy writing so I wouldn't mind writing the paragraph'
Once we had completed our individual jobs, we then put together all our work on a poster. Every group then presented their charity and fundraiser event in front of the class. We discussed the event and answered questions about our cause. Below are some images of us presenting to our classes.
Later on, this week, the children will be faced with a challenge that they need to overcome in their groups!