Our Upper Primary Phase is designed to ensure that our students are fully prepared for their secondary education by the time they finish Year 6 with us - not just in terms of high academic achievement but also in developing their resilience, determination, adaptability and independence.
To help the children have a smoother transition into the secondary system, Year 5 and Year 6 students in Upper Primary will have enhanced specialist teaching across Humanities, Science, and Art & Design Technology (DT).
Learn more about the Upper Primary at BSB Sanlitun.
Year 6 have been doing a deep dive into the causes and effects of Climate Change, and are now looking at how we can learn lessons from past civilisations that caused problems for their own environment.
Our main assessment method has been to use something called a Harkness debate and you can see Eagles preparing for theirs here. The main aim of the debate is to ensure that all participants listen to the views of the other attendees and try to take account of different view points.
Despite having a lot of strongly held views about what courses of action our societies should take in the future. All the classes did really well and improved their knowledge whilst also learning new interpersonal skills and we will use this method again in the future.
Students in Year 5 have been learning about Space through Science, Art and Humanities. These lessons are linked thematically in a variety of ways. One day the children could be learning about geocentric and heliocentric models in Science with Mr O'Leary. The next day, they will be creating colour swatches of the planets with Miss Chambers for Art. That same week, they could be learning about the history of the space race with Mr Walker for Humanities.
Combining all these areas ensures that the children have a deeper understanding of the overall 'To Infinity and Beyond' topic, which is being covered in the Term 1 this year.
The Year 6 Eagles have been developing into talented artists in their specialist art lessons with Miss Mitchell.
They completed pieces of art based around the theme of Oceans and in particular the travels of Ernest Shackleton to the Antarctic. They began the unit by studying Isaac Newton's colour theory and from there they developed their mixing skills and learned to create different shades of the same colour. Look how amazing their paintings turned out and look at all the shades of blue and grey!
