Welcome to Year 6

Melbourne -  taught by Miss Willington and Mrs Watson

Sydney- taught by Mrs Dunbobbin

Our support staff are Miss Blackledge and Mrs Griffiths

Year 6 Information

111 KB
5.12 MB

A Fighting Chance
 

This autumn term our learning focus is entitled ‘A Fighting Chance.'

During this term, we will be studying World War II, exploring its immediate impact on the UK as well as how it shaped the country in the years that followed.

We will also consider how we can give animals a ‘fighting chance’ by learning about endangered species and the ways in which we can help to protect them.

English –Writing  

As part of our English curriculum, we use the PALS approach to support and develop pupils' writing skills: 

P – Purpose 

A – Audience 

L – Language 

S – Structure 

Through the use of exciting and engaging high-quality texts, alongside the PALS approach, children are inspired to write for a range of purposes and audiences. By considering these key elements, we will be learning how to make effective choices about the content, language and organisation of our writing. Throughout the year, we will explore a variety of writing genres, helping us to develop our creativity, communication skills and understanding of different text types. 

During the Autumn Term, we will have opportunities to write in a range of genres, including alongside other carefully chosen text types that support learning across the curriculum. The genres we will be covering are:

  • A packing letter for evacuation
  • A diary entry of an evacuee
  • A formal Army field report
  • A newspaper report of a discovered German pilot
  • A setting description for a German child at the start of WW2
  • A narrative between two very different German children
  • A survivor’s letter
  • A narrative within an occupied French café
  • A narrative between two young girls in occupied France
  • A speech for a war Memorial Day
  • Instructions for a website on how to protect endangered tigers
  • A leaflet about a chosen endangered animal
  • A persuasive non-fiction piece about an endangered animal

Our texts this term are: 

Rose Blanche by Ian McEwan - Twinkl
Over the course of the year, pupils will work towards meeting the following writing objectives:

  • Write for a range of purposes, using appropriate language for each genre.
  • Describe settings, characters and atmosphere effectively.
  • Use dialogue to convey character and advance the action.
  • Select vocabulary and grammatical structures that reflect the purpose and genre of the writing, including modal verbs, passive verbs and contracted forms.
  • Use cohesive devices, including pronouns, conjunctions and adverbials, to link ideas within and across sentences and paragraphs.
  • Use verb tenses correctly and consistently throughout writing.
  • Use a range of punctuation accurately, including inverted commas, commas for clarity and punctuation for parenthesis.
  • Use semi-colons, colons, dashes and hyphens appropriately to clarify meaning and structure sentences.
  • Spell most Year 5 and 6 statutory words correctly and use a dictionary to check unfamiliar words.
  • Produce legible, joined handwriting.

This progressive approach enables children to build confidence as writers and develop the skills needed to communicate clearly, accurately, and purposefully in a range of contexts.  

English - Reading         

In Year 6, children read a wide range genres to develop their fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Reading lessons use a skills-based approach, focusing on areas such as retrieval, inference, prediction, summarising and understanding vocabulary.

Children regularly practise applying these skills to a range of question styles, including those used in Key Stage 2 assessments. This helps pupils to understand what questions are asking, find appropriate evidence in the text and develop clear, well-supported answers.

Our aim is to build confident, thoughtful readers who are well prepared for their end-of-Key-Stage assessments and the reading demands of secondary school.

Our reading book for the first half term will align with our writing and will be Michael Morpurgo’s Friend or Foe.

During the second half term we will be reading a non-fiction text called The Story of the Second World War for Children by Peter Chrisp.


Maths

In maths this term we will be looking at:    

  • Place Value 
  • Four Operations 
  • Fractions 
  • Measurement - converting units 
  • Ratio 
  • Geometry – Position and Direction 

Useful Websites:

To help you along the way we have found some websites which they may find useful.   Many of these are interactive and use brief tutorials or engage the children to use their knowledge through the playing of games. 

 

Other areas of the Curriculum

Science: Light, Living Things and Their Habitats

PSHE: Being Me in My World, Celebrating Difference

PE: Sports Hall Athletics, Tag Rugby/Flag football, Inspire Create Perform (WW2), Solve Explore Challenge

History: WW2 Battle of Britain and the Blitz, Link with Remembrance, Evacuation, Timeline of events, VE day

RE: Why does religion look different all around the world? (parts 1 and 2)

Art: 2d drawing to 3D making

DT: Food - Write, create/cook a recipe and evaluate it against a set of criteria

Computing: Coding, Networks and Blogging

French: This is me, House and Homes

Music: Love Music Trust: Codebreakers and Musical Recycling

Weekly PE

This term the Year 6 children will have PE on a Wednesday with Crewe Alex and a Thursday with Mr Farrall.

On these days we ask that children come to school in their PE clothes rather than their school uniform.

Weather dependant they can wear their shorts and school coloured PE T- shirt and House PE sweatshirt. If the weather is cold, then tracksuit bottoms/leggings would be more suitable. Trainers are preferable to pumps as it is possible the children may be outdoors for some lessons.

Please ask at the office if you are unsure on the expectations of PE kits.

Year 6 Weekly spellings. 

The Y6 spellings will be put onto the learning poster each week. 

To encourage the children to use an online system for homework (as they will at high school) and to promote sustainability in school, please note that these spellings will not be given out on paper. Children will be expected to access the website at home to learn their spellings.

Year 6 Homework

Homework is always set on a Friday and is completed by 8am on the following Wednesday. If a child is off on a Friday, the expectation is that the child will ask a friend/teacher or use the website for the homework before the Wednesday deadline. 

Y6 homework in a nutshell:

  • Spellings (test every Thurs)
  • Reading (3 times a week on Pageticker)
  • 15 mins of active learning on TTRS

Reading

Children in Year 6 are expected to read with an adult 3 times a week to ensure comprehension and decoding skills are in-line with the books they are reading. Recording reading on Pageticker is part of weekly homework.

Spellings

Spellings are added to the learning poster on the previous week and the children are tested the following Wednesday. The spellings we use are mapped in the school spelling curriculum and we may revisit some of them over the year to embed them.

Completing homework

To prepare the children for the demands of high school, homework is monitored by the class teachers each week.

To reward children for completing homework and learning spellings, there are lots of positive reinforcements in place to encourage them to make positive choices.

We will also let you know if your child has not completed their homework so that you are kept in the loop.

Thank you for your support.

SATS 2027 information

The KS2 SATs are scheduled for Monday 10 May 2027 to Thursday 13 May 2027. Please do not book any holidays during this time.

2027 SATs Timetable

  • Monday 10 May 2027: English grammar, punctuation, and spelling (Paper 1: Grammar/Punctuation and Paper 2: Spelling).
  • Tuesday 11 May 2027: English reading test.
  • Wednesday 12 May 2027: Mathematics Paper 1 (Arithmetic) and Paper 2 (Reasoning).
  • Thursday 13 May 2027: Mathematics Paper 3 (Reasoning).

Key Details

  • Conditions: Tests happen under formal exam rules.
  • Other subjects: Writing and science are assessed by teachers during the school year rather than through formal national tests.
  • Results: Schools receive the results in mid-July 2027, and teachers share them with parents before the summer term ends.

Reading paper

The reading test is a single paper with questions based on three passages of text. Your child will have one hour, including reading time, to complete the test.

There will be a selection of question types, including:

  • Ranking/ordering, e.g. ‘Number the events below to show the order in which they happen in the story’
  • Labelling, e.g. ‘Label the text to show the title of the story’
  • Find and copy, e.g. ‘Find and copy one word that suggests what the weather is like in the story’
  • Short constructed response, e.g. ‘What does the bear eat?’
  • Open-ended response, e.g. ‘Look at the sentence that begins Once upon a time. How does the writer increase the tension throughout this paragraph? Explain fully, referring to the text in your answer.’

GPS and spelling

Usually, the GPS test consists of two parts: a grammar and punctuation paper requiring short answers, lasting 45 minutes, and an aural spelling test of 20 words, lasting around 15 minutes.

The GPS test includes two sub-types of questions:

  • Selected response, e.g. ‘Identify the adjectives in the sentence below’
  • Constructed response, e.g. ‘Correct/complete/rewrite the sentence below,’ or, ‘The sentence below has an apostrophe missing. Explain why it needs an apostrophe.’

Maths

Children sit three papers in maths:

  • Paper 1: arithmetic, 30 minutes
  • Papers 2 and 3: reasoning, 40 minutes per paper

Paper 1 will consist of fixed response questions, where children have to give the correct answer to calculations, including long multiplication and division. Papers 2 and 3 will involve a number of question types, including:
 

  • Multiple choice
  • True or false
  • Constrained questions, e.g. giving the answer to a calculation, drawing a shape or completing a table or chart
  • Less constrained questions, where children will have to explain their approach for solving a problem

Results

After SATs, each child will receive a scaled score for each subject (reading, maths and GPS) and whether they have reached the expected standard set by the Department for Education.

The range of scaled scores available for each KS2 test is:

  • 80 (the lowest scaled score that can be awarded)
  • 120 (the highest scaled score)

The expected standard for each test is a scaled score of 100 or more. If a child is awarded a scaled score of 99 or less they won't have achieved the expected standard in the test.