Year 6 have been researching about the Victorians and how they lived.

Below is a few examples of our research into the slums.

Victorian slums.

It was very hard for the Victorians to make money when you live a hard, unsuccessful life. They survived on not much food and wore horrible clothes. If you were poor you would possibly have a bath once a month or even longer.

London slums were the worst houses because they were very small and you would have had to share a house with many other people. It was possible for you to share a place with total strangers. The Victorian slum houses were very smelly and very different to the houses we have now in the 21^st century. A Victorian house (slum) would have been all on one floor you would not have had not a lot of things in the house.

By Tiarno and Misha

Victorian Slums

A Victorian slum is like an apartment building where the poor used to live. There was only one toilet, one bathtub and a place to get water, all in the courtyard. If you couldn’t pay the rent you would get kicked out of the slum or be forced to live in the doss house. The doss house was where you would sleep in coffin like bedding or sleep hanging over a rope. There was a small shop in a slum where you could buy goods like bread, butter or fish. The people who lived in slums would make match boxes, grew cress and make wooden handles to earn money.

By Damon

Victorian slums

Slums were places where poor people went to live and work to get money for food. They were grimy, horrible buildings with lots of people living there. The “neighbours” weren’t very friendly. They would only have one or two beds, depending on how rich they were. The rooms were cramped up, with wallpaper falling of the mouldy, stained walls. The less fortunate may have had to share a room with another family. In one slum, they had one toilet so everyone had to take turns. If they were really unlucky, they had to use a bucket and brush and every time someone used it… they chucked it out the window!

By Inaiya and T

During art lessons we have been looking at the works of the Victorian artist William Morris. We particularly liked the way he used repeating patterns. In the coming weeks we hope to take our designs  and produce   clay relief tiles.

During PSHE this week Year 6 continued to talk about safety. Children discussed with their peers the different types of risks which they are aware of and suggested ways to avoid these risks.

During our topic lessons this week  we have been making flower heads inspired by Georgia  O’Keeffe. We initially  planned our designs then we used wire to make the outline  then attached the petals using wire. The next step  was to add tissue  paper to  the frame to create colourful petals.

In  Maths this week Year 6 have been looking at calculating  area ,perimeter  and volume. We applied the formulae we learnt throughout the week  to our work.   We were able to use this knowledge to find the  volume of cuboids.

We  are getting ready  to apply this knowledge to SATs questions.  

During PSHE, this week, the children discussed what made a religion and the similarities between different religions. Working in groups, the children created mind maps of what they felt a religion should be.

The children decided some of the most important factors of a religion are values, moral code, saying thanks and being together (spiritually) .

Using their Dot Com journals, Year 6 then identified the importance of tolerance and respect within a community, what might happen if we didn’t have this and how it would feel.

Article 30: Every child has the right to learn and use the language, customs and religion of their family, regardless of whether these are shared by the majority of the people in the country where they live.

Miss Akers

During science on Monday Year 6 investigated electrical circuits. We used the science apparatus to make the circuits and to test if the circuits were complete or not.

To become scientists we asked the questions

What if we added more bulbs to the circuit? Would it become brighter or not?

This week, in PSHE, we looked at the service provided by ‘999’. We were able to identify what the services is made up of, discuss why it is valuable and share our ideas on why the service should be respected.

We discussed the meaning of a ‘hoax call’ and the impact this could have on others. As a group, we were able to create mind maps to show what we knew at the start of the lesson and what we knew at the end.

We now know in an emergency we phone ‘999’ and if we want to speak to the police for advice, or to report a crime we call ‘101’.

Next week, we will begin to look at the importance of tolerance and respect within a community.

Miss Akers