Year 6 Lomas
Welcome to Year 6L!
Welcome to a new and exciting school year for the Year 6 students. It will be their last at St. Thomas of Canterbury and definitely the best! We've got lots of enjoyable learning to do this year and we can't wait to see the progress that the children will make.
Year 6 is an extremely important year as we prepare for the children to become independent and reflective learners. As well as enjoying a broad and balanced curriculum, the children work incredibly hard and take on many extra responsibilities. All children in Year 6 are considered role models for the rest of the school and make a valuable contribution to the wider school community.
For all year 6 pupils, school is open from 8.30am if they wish to complete any additional work or simply settle into the morning by reading their favourite book. Well done to the children who are already taking full advantage of this!
Doing what they do best... DRAMA!
Journalistic Writing
World Book Day!
Take a sneak peak at a few of our non chronological reports...
Year 6 Residential
What a spectacular time we had exploring the lake district! We had an action-packed three days away including: orienteering, walking in the hills, exploring caves and even taking a boat ride!
The children were well behaved throughout and we had many members of the public stopping the teachers to tell them how fantastic they were!
Residential
6L get evacuated to the countryside!
What a fantastic start to the year we have had! In our second week in year six, we time-travelled back to 1939 and dressed up as WWII evacuees. We bid our parents farewell and boarded a steam train to our new homes. Most of us were chosen by various business owners, but some were left behind and had to knock on the door of villagers, begging to be taken in.
Journalistic Writing with The Business Enterprise Partnership
Maths
During our first few weeks back, we have been consolidating the children’s understanding of time, moving onto solving difficult time problems. It is important that the children continue to practise telling the time, interchangeably between analogue and digital clocks, in everyday, real life contexts. Please continually question your child about the time on a daily basis in order to embed these learnt skills.
The following skills and facts will be practised and daily to secure the children’s mathematical understanding:
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Times tables up to 12 x 12 and related facts e.g. 40 x 90;
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Counting forwards and backwards in positive/negative numbers as well as decimal numbers from any given starting point;
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Formal written methods of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division;
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Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of fractions;
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Explaining and reasoning;
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Problem solving to ensure thorough understanding.
Our Class Novel
With Year six's first topic being WWII, our class novel is ‘Letters from the Lighthouse’ by Emma Carroll. Set in February, 1941, twelve-year-old Olive Bradshaw and her little brother Cliff are subjected to months of bombing raids in London, finally resulting in them being evacuated to the Devon coast. The only person with two spare beds is Mr Ephraim, the local lighthouse keeper. But he’s not used to company and he certainly doesn’t want any evacuees.
Desperate to be helpful, Olive becomes his post-girl, carrying secret messages (as she likes to think of the letters) to the villagers. But Olive has a secret of her own. Her older sister Sukie went missing in an air raid, and she’s desperate to discover what happened to her. And then she finds a strange coded note which seems to link Sukie to Devon, and to something dark and impossibly dangerous.
I am incredibly excited to see what the children think of this thrilling book... the book that brought their teacher to tears...
We will use this story as a basis for our writing throughout the term, reading sections, paragraphs and chapters at a time. This will then allow the children to explore different text types and styles of writing. For example, they will write precise summaries, plot predictions, diary entries, emotive letters, character and setting descriptions, alternative chapters and endings.
Handwriting
Handwriting is a focus for us this term as they cannot be assessed as year 6 expected level without writing legibly and fluently, in accordance with the school’s handwriting policy. All children are now mature enough to be writing in pen, rather than pencil by this stage and should be expected to join consistently, excluding the break letters b, p, q, y, g, and f. They might still need reminding of certain rules such as: never joining capital letters to the following letter.
Reading Comprehension
Children in Year 6 will be taught explicit skills to help them in their understanding of difficult texts, including top tips of how to answer questions to prepare them for their assessments in May.
They will be encouraged to read a wide range of stories, non-fiction texts, poetry, plays and textbooks in order to understand that texts are structured in different ways and written for different purposes.
Children will be reminded to check their reading makes sense, discussing their understanding of the meaning of certain vocabulary as they read. They might also be encouraged to ask questions about the text to further develop their understanding of what is going on and draw inference about character actions, speech or motives, providing evidence. Inference involves using the clues in the story or picture to make a good guess. It involves figuring something out which isn’t fully explained and draws on a child’s existing knowledge of the world. They may story map in order to follow the story or re-read sentences or sections.
They might also be encouraged to make predictions based on what they’ve already read, summarise key points to show good comprehension and look out for interesting phrases that authors uses.
PE
As the children are now in year 6, they are allowed to come to school on a Friday in their PE kits, consisting of black shorts (they may wear tracksuit bottoms to come to school in), a white t-shirt and pumps or trainers. They will be working with our sports coach throughout the year to develop various skills. Some of these skills will be tailored to meet the on going competition calendar. Your child may therefore be asked to represent the school in various competitions throughout the year, both within and after school time.
What can you do to help your child in Year 6?
- Purchase a watch for your child so that they can read the time throughout the day;
- Ensure your child reads every night. They do not need to read to an adult and they do not need to read for hours at a time! Ten minutes every night is fine as long as they are reading and they have understood what they have read. Your child will have a focus for their reading diary so they know what they have to write (we are beginning with summaries).
- Allow your child access to a dictionary so that they can check the meaning of words which they cannot work out themselves.
- Expose them to different experiences and different places to extend their understanding of the world.
- Homework will be set as and when required to assist the children in their learning. Encourage them to complete homework on time. If your child is struggling with anything, they should ask a teacher for help - that is what we are here for!
- Most importantly, make sure they have plenty of sleep and early nights so that they are ready and able to learn.
It is important that in year 6, we support and encourage your child to allow them to fulfill their potential. It is also paramount to prepare and develop them so that they are ready for their move to high school. To ease this transition, your child will move between the two year 6 classes for the teaching of various different aspects of the curriculum and they will be taught by different adults including Miss Lomas, Mr Stenton, Miss Chronnell, Mrs O’Hagan and Miss Downie, so that their learning is tailored to their ability.