Welcome to Year 6

Year 6 is an exciting and busy time for your child! The children hit the ground running at the start of the academic year; learning well and completing all additional learning will stand them in good stead ready for the SATs (Statutory Assessment Tests) in May.

Year 6 have 3 classes:

6W - Mr Wells

6B - Mr Berry

6R - Mrs Revell

During the morning the children are taught in separate groups of a maximum of 20 children by the adults in year 6. The children are split into four groups for reading and mathematics and three groups for SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) and writing. The children are taught in groups to support and challenge them, based on their needs.

Specialist teachers are also used for ICT, music and PE, meaning that children get the best possible education across the curriculum.

Miss Libby Porter, who is very experienced in teaching year 6, is the Year Group Lead, supporting the children to achieve their potential and have a happy and successful year that will prepare them for the transition to secondary school.

The School Day

The school day runs as it did in year 5, with the exception of break time which is slightly later than previously:

8:50am	Gates open and children are welcomed into school-they read for pleasure during registration, do registration and make their dinner choice.
9:00am	Registers go to the attendance team - after this point, children are marked as late. Morning lessons begin.
10:45am	Children have a morning break-a chance to get some fresh air, play and socialise with their friends.
11:00am	Children are back to class for the remaining lessons of the morning.
12:45pm	Break for lunch. Children have 2 lunch choices, which are freshly prepared and either vegetarian or halal.
1:30pm	Children are back to classes for their afternoon’s learning. Most afternoons will also include a whole-school, year-group or in-class assembly. Additionally, some children will go to boosters (reading, SPaG- spelling punctuation and grammar and mathematics) in the afternoon which are to support them in achieving their targets; these are taught by members of the team who are able to support and challenge them best.
3:10pm	Children are finished for the school day. With their family and guardian’s support, children never stop learning and support given outside school is very valuable too.

As designated home-learning, children are expected to set time aside after school to read at least 20 minutes a day is encouraged. Further to this, children receive guided reading home-learning, usually in the form of a section of text (variety of genres) and accompanying questions. Every evening the children receive four arithmetic questions in mathematics and SATs style questions to be completed over the weekend.

Parents/carers: to support the children with their home-learning we ask that your child shares their reading with you, by asking 2 or 3 questions about what they have read their understanding will be deepened. Whilst it is important that the children feel supported with their home-learning, they must answer their arithmetic and guided reading questions independently as this will enable the teacher to know where there are gaps in their understanding.

Children have PE on a Tuesday (6D), Thursday (6P) and Friday (6D and 6P) they should have the appropriate kit for both indoor and outdoor PE. PE kits can be left in school, in a named bag, during the week.

Learning Line

The learning line represents the continuous learning journey that children and adults experience; at times learning is a challenge and it is here where learners can fall into a ‘dip’. Throughout the school children have been encouraged not to fear the ‘dip’ and rather change their perception of finding something challenging. In year 6 the focus has been on the four Ps to get children out of the ‘dip’:

Persistence
Positivity
Perseverance
Proactivity

Approaching their challenge equipped with the four Ps, means that learners are more able to get themselves out of the ‘dip’.

Curriculum

Reading

The following criteria outlines what children should be able to acheive by end of year 6:

Apply their growing knowledge of root words, prefixes and suffixes to read aloud and to understand the meaning of new words that they meet
Continue to read and recommend an increasingly wide range of fiction (including myths, legends and traditional stories, modern fiction, fiction from our literary heritage), poetry, plays, non-fiction and reference books or textbooks
Identify and discuss themes and make comparisons within and across books, distinguishing between statements of fact and opinion
Check that the book makes sense to them, discussing their understanding and exploring the meaning of words in context and asking questions to improve their understanding
Draw inferences such as inferring characters' feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions, justify their inferences with evidence and predict what might happen from details stated and implied
Consider the impact on the reader of language, structure and presentation and the author’s use of language, including figurative language
Retrieve, record and present information from non-fiction

Writing

The following criteria outlines what children should be able to achieve by the end of year 6:

Spell some words with ‘silent’ letters, distinguish between homophones and other words which are often confused and use dictionaries to check the spelling and meaning of words
Identify the audience for and purpose of a piece of writing, selecting the appropriate form and using other similar writing as models for their own, selecting appropriate grammar and vocabulary and understanding how such choices can change and enhance meaning
In narratives, describe settings, characters and atmosphere and integrate dialogue to convey character and advance the action
Use a wide range of devices to build cohesion within and across paragraphs or other organisational and presentational devices to structure text and to guide the reader
Ensure the consistent and correct use of tense throughout a piece of writing as well as subject and verb agreement when using singular and plural, distinguishing between the language of speech and writing
Using expanded noun phrases to convey complicated information concisely, modal verbs or adverbs to indicate degrees of possibility and devices to build cohesion, including adverbials of time, place and number
Recognise vocabulary and structures that are appropriate for formal speech and writing, including subjunctive forms, passive verbs to affect the presentation of information in a sentence and the perfect form of verbs to mark relationships of time and cause
Use higher level punctuation such as ellipsis, commas to clarify meaning or avoid ambiguity in writing, brackets, dashes or commas to indicate parenthesis, hyphens to avoid ambiguity and semicolons, colons or dashes to mark boundaries between independent clauses

The criteria that writing is assessed against in year 6

Maths

The following criteria outlines what children should be able to acheive by the end of year 6:

Use negative numbers in context, and calculate intervals across zero
Divide numbers up to 4 digits by two-digit whole numbers using the formal written method of long division, and interpret remainders as whole number remainders, fractions, or by rounding, as appropriate for the context, use written methods in cases where the answer has up to two decimal places
Use their knowledge of the order of operations to carry out calculations involving the four operations
Use common factors to simplify fractions, compare and order fractions, including fractions >1, add and subtract fractions with different denominators and mixed numbers, multiply simple pairs of proper fractions, writing answer in simplest form, divide fractions by whole numbers, associate a fraction with division and calculate decimal fraction equivalents
Multiply one-digit number with up to two decimal places by whole numbers
Solve problems involving the calculation of percentages and the use of percentages for comparison
Recall and use equivalences between simple fractions, decimals and percentages
Solve problems involving the relative sizes of two quantities where missing values can be found by using integer multiplication and division facts
Solve problems involving similar shapes where the scale factor is known or can be found
Solve problems involving unequal sharing and grouping using knowledge of fractions and multiples
Use simple formulae, express missing number problems algebraically
Generate and describe linear number sequences
Use, read, write and convert between standard units, converting measurements of length, mass, volume and time from a smaller unit of measure to a larger unit, and vice versa, using decimal notation to up to three decimal places
Convert between miles and kilometres
Calculate the area of parallelograms and triangles
Calculate, estimate and compare volume of cubes and cuboids using standard units
Illustrate and name parts of circles, including radius, diameter and circumference and know that the diameter is twice the radius
Find unknown angles in triangles, quadrilaterals, and regular polygons, recognise angles where they meet at a point, are on a straight line, or are vertically opposite, and find missing angles
Describe positions on the full coordinate grid (all four quadrants), draw and translate simple shapes on the coordinate plane, and reflect them in the axes;
Interpret and construct pie charts and line graphs, calculate and interpret the mean as an average

Parents/carers: If you wish to discuss any of these areas of learning with your child’s teacher, there are 3 scheduled parent consultations throughout the year and teachers are happy to make appointments before or after school to meet with you. In addition to this Mr Kevin Dobbs is on the gate every Monday morning and Miss Libby Porter is on the gate every Wednesday morning, if you wish to have an informal chat about your child.

The school uses the Cornerstones curriculum scheme which has the aim of providing, “A broad and balanced, knowledge and skills based curriculum with a creative edge.” Year 6 access schemes called Gallery Rebels, which looks at art as an act of rebellion; ID, looking at what makes them who they are; Hola Mexico, which explores the country of Mexico. Each of which covers the core and foundation subjects.

Tests and Examinations

As a culmination of their primary education, the children will sit their SATs (Statutory Assessment Tests) during the week beginning 14th May 2018. To prepare the children for their SATs week they will have four mock SATs weeks, two in the Autumn term and two in the Spring term.