Year 6

Welcome to the Year 6 class page. It is going to be a very challenging and busy year but also a time in your child's education where we will celebrate hard work and achievement. Please find some hopefully useful information below.

Autumn Term

Our topic during the Autumn term is the ‘Kensuke's Kingdom’, which most of the Year 6 writing will be based around. We are focusing on animals and their habitats for our science lessons, which will look at the classification system. Despite a busy timetable, we will be going on a trip to Alton Towers with the Year 5s to take part in some excellent workshops (and enjoy some of the rides!).

During the second half of the Autumn Term, we will be studying 'Goodnight Mr Tom' and our topic work will be focused on World War II.

Spring Term

We hope your children have had a great Christmas and a settled start to the new term. Our topic this term is 'The Romans' which we base our writing around. We will be reading Tiger Tiger as our class text. In science we will be 'working scientifically' by conducting investigations. 

Marvellous Me

'Marvellous Me' is our new positive communication tool  - parents and carers get an app on their phone and it pings you messages whenever your child has been marvellous as well as letting you know what they've been up to and what's going on. We were the first class in the school to have 100% of parents/guardians sign up! A big thank you for your engagement.

PE

PE is currently on Tuesday (Handball) and Wednesday (Archery) but this can often change because of the weather or the hall being unavailable. Therefore, can you please make sure that PE kits come into school on a Monday and remain in school until the end of the week. May I remind all parents that children are not able to take part in PE if they are wearing earrings. 

Homework

As a general rule of thumb, homework will be given out on a Monday and will be due in on the Friday of that week. Children have been given new SATs maths revision guides which will be set as their homework (we will have covered the homework in class) . Please encourage your child to take responsibility to complete any tasks that they are given – it really does make a difference come the end of the year, especially with their spellings and times tables, as well as helping prepare them for the demands of secondary school. The class earn rewards when everyone completes what is required and face sanctions if they do not!

We have created an additional list of innovative homework tasks which can be found at the bottom of the page. Children who complete these tasks will be awarded 'Marvellous Me' badges.

I have decreased the amount of spellings to 5 per week. The idea is that children learn how to use these words in context and improve their vocabulary. They can still practise them using their preferred method in their homework books. 

Reading

By the time children get to Year 6, many of them believe that the days of reading to, or with, their parents are behind them – I cannot stress enough how wrong this is! Please encourage your child to read at home; once children can decode most words the real challenge comes in showing deeper levels of understanding, so encourage them to talk about what they have read and ask them questions – this practice will prove invaluable for them. Children are expected to read at least 3 times per week. Please sign their reading diaries each week and feel free to add any comments. We will read these each Friday.

SATs

As you may be aware, SATs are in May 2019. The preparation in class gradually increases and you will probably want to help out at home too. You may want to have a look at previous SATs papers to view the content, however, I would not advise completing them with your child as we will be doing them in class at some point during the year. All papers can be found online for free. 

Here is a list of the useful websites yourselves or your children could use in preparation:

BBC Bitesize, The School Run, Primary Resources, Khan academy, Maths Made Easy (KS2).

'Arithmequiz' (which is free)  by Candomaths, is a really useful website which generates your own arithmetic questions and will cover content found on an arithmetic paper. Myminimaths - arithmetic is also an excellent and free resource. A few questions each day will only take 5 minutes to complete and could make a big difference. The questions and answers are done for you!

Year 6 is a really important year in your child's education and a great home-school relationship will help in their learning journey. Please get in touch with us if you feel you have any ideas, questions or concerns. 

Mr Toon & Mrs Harris