Year 6 Blog
Date: 8th Sep 2016 @ 1:56pm
Friday 21st April
The children have hit the ground running with just 2 weeks left of practise before SATs week beginning 8th May. We have one more set of practise papers to do next week and then go through and discuss.
Please ensure PE kits are in school at all times, especially whilst the weather is starting to improve...
A letter detailing what is happening with breakfast club will go out next week.
Mr Goodall, the Weaverham head of Year 7, will be in on Wednesday morning to talk to the class about transition. I will be passing on the children's current abilities and friendships - this is just a recommendation and the high school may not pair your child with either of these requests.
We have exciting news of a Lego workshop involving circuits - this has been booked for after Whit half term. The current term's overview has now been uploaded to the class page.
Monday, 23rd January
A couple of weeks in and we're going all guns blazing now! In Guided Reading, we've started looking at old reading papers, styles of questions and how to answer them in new mixed ability groups. In Literacy, we've already produced two pieces of writing - a narrative and an information text. This week, we are writing a biography of Charles Darwin, the creator of the Theory of Evolution.
In maths, we have been looking at converting metric measures, now we're moving onto imperial measures and solving word problems containing conversions of measures. The children need to learn their conversions off by heart.
This week, we will start looking at Beatriz Milhazes, a Brazilian artist and compare her work to Romero Britto. In Science, we are continuing to work on evolution after looking at what we inherited from our parents last week. In computing, we are starting to produce a quiz linked to our South American knowledge from last term.
Wednesday, 21st December
The last blog of the term and what a long term it has been! The children have worked so hard and I'm really proud of their efforts and attitude. Their writing is picking up apace now they are taking ownership of the skills they need to produce. I see fantastic evidence of this in their editing skills - please encourage your child to do this more. Some of our topic work is spilling over into next term - work on evolution and Charles Darwin will be the focus of our first half term - so lots of non-fiction writing! After half term, we will shift focus to World War I and the local area. However, revision will start to dominate as we approach Easter.
Have a good break Year 6 - make sure you keep your skills ticking over: use Bug Club and Sumdog to hel;p you do this.
Mr White
Thursday, 8th December
Where is the time going? 2 and a bit weeks until the Christmas holidays and we have lots still to do! We've begun our extended narrative writing - looking at openings in detail. They are due to be edited today. Spelling dictation on ice/ise homophones tomorrow! We've been looking at prepositions and conjunctions this week in grammar - please ensure your child can identify these within sentences.
In Maths, we've been finding fractions of quantities and equivalent fractions/decimals/%ages. Today, we are finding percentages of quantities and using these within problems.
We have so much work to finish at the moment - book week writing, art work, topic work that our afternoons seem to be full of finishing. We have begun looking at the book: What Mr Darwin Saw to explore the topic of evolution - we will be spending a couple of days of focus work on this topic in the last week to catch up our Science work!
Next week is the pantomime trip, which we are all looking forward to!
Friday, 2nd December
This week we have worked on applying our fraction skills to solving problems. In English, we have been writing our descriptions linked to our art work from book week, which we have been completing over the week.
We our improving well in our arithmetic scores, keep practicing Year 6!
Friday, 28th October
It's been a very busy time with many sporting events and a push on getting things finished before half term. We've continued working on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division - problem solving using the bar model, use of BODMAS, mental calculations and written methods. I would advise practising all of these until your child is very confident as they are a key part of the curriculum.
In English, we have completed news reports linked to our animals we created on our trip. These, along with maps of the physical features of S.America, have been part of our topic work.
After half term, we are switching to narrative and spending a long time working on producing an extended piece of writing. In maths, we will be working on fractions for several weeks - equivalence, converting, adding, multiplying, dividing, finding fractions and percentages of quantities, converting between fractions, decimals and percentages. Any prior work you can do for this will support your child.
In Science, we will be looking at Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution.
Thursday, 6th October
Another hectic week but we are all looking forward to our trip to the Manchester Museum tomorrow! Please come early... The children have been working hard on preparation for their trip by producing work on rainforests, this is still ongoing.
The children have finished their christmas cards, which look amazing - thanks to Mrs Broadbent for her artistic creations. More work is needed on our written methods of multiplication and division next week and then we will be looking at solving problems and using the bar model to support our understanding of problems.
Homework is a new set of spellings and a mental task linked to balancing equations - we showed that we needed to work on understanding these types of questions. Please ensure that your child is able to explain to you why the answers are as they are.
Monday, 3rd October 2016
After a very busy week last week culminating in book fest and lots of weird and wonderful Roald Dahl costumes, I think we were all exhausted by Friday. Please ensure that your child is getting lots of sleep as we are pushing hard and I'm seeing quite a few tired faces every morning!
This week is another busy week, with our trip on Friday the highlight! We have nearly finished our first literacy topic of diaries and the children have produced some wonderful work linked to our class novel - watch out for these in their topic books! In Maths, we have finished our place value work and moved onto addition and subtraction last week - we are all strong on the methods however, when faced with a problem to solve, we found this more challenging...We are working on multiplication and division methods this week, consolidating work from Year 5.
In Science, we are preparing for our trip by looking at the different classification of animals - mammals, insects etc and researching the Amazon rainforest and animals that live in that habitat. Our work in PE has been focused on indoor atheltics due to the weather last week and we have set benchmark distances and scores for four field events. Next week, we will look at throwing Javelins. This is all in preparation for the indoor athletics next month.
I am out this wednesday on a course and Mrs Gatiss will be in covering, the children were certainly delighted to hear that she was coming in to teach them.
Mr White.
Thursday, 15th September 2016
Today is meet the teacher meeting at 3:30 and 7pm, I hope that I get to meet as many of you as possible - there are some important messages to hear especially at the start of the year and as Year 6 is such an important year. I have put the powerpoint slides on the website for you to look at if you didn't manage to get to the meeting. Any questions or queries, please contact me.
In school, we have been practising using cohesive devices such as adverbials to link our sentences and more importantly our paragraphs. I have noticed some issues with writing paragraphs - extra writing homework may be sent home to support this as this is an expectation in year 6. I hope that the children are enjoying their time in the classroom - we have hit the ground running and a credit to them all for the way they have responded to that. Today, we will be preparing to be playleaders: tomorrow afternoon we will be teaching KS1! The children that is!
Mr White
Tuesday, 13th September 2016
An amazing improvement in the children's tables challenge scores and times today! 29 out of 32 children improved something - fantastic. Keep working at it. Once I am satisfied that the children are working quickly enough at these, I will move them on to decimal tables - I'm sure they are excited about that! In english this week, we are looking at all the grammar that makes up diaries - use of questions, modal verbs, cohesive devices to give order, informal writing. Next week we will move onto planning and beginning to write our diaries.
Our Science topic kicked off yesterday looking at classifying animals according to their features - we had the difficult task to choose and explain which creature we had chosen out of 4 similar ones using only their features. Next week, we will look at the scientist Carl Linneaus, who is seen as the father of the classification system.
We are continuing to work on our Year 3/4 spellings and these are being highlighted in our homework books to go home to be practised and learnt. Thanks for your support on this.
Mr White.
Thursday, 8th September 2016
Welcome to the first blog entry of the year. A huge welcome to all the children in Year 6 - they have a hard year of work ahead of them! A great start by all, I've been really impressed by their enthusiasm and good behaviour so far! This week, we have agreed our classroom rules, discussed routines and even written a diary entry! We are currently working through assessing the children's spellings against the year 3 and 4 spelling list - any incorrectly spelled words have been highlighted in their homework book to be practised and learnt at home: there are several methods to do this, the most common being look, cover, write, check. If the child gets it correct, they can tick it - 3 ticks and they have that spelling. I have included the year 5 and 6 spelling list as well, which will need to be practised for later in the term.
Reading remains a hugely important part of their homework and the children should read a minimum of 3 times each week, reading a range of genres of writing. Please encourage your child to read more and check their understanding and comprehension of what they are reading - we are currently focusing on the structure and presentation of texts and the effect this has on the reader.
Each child is bringing home a tables challenge sheet, which needs to be filled in within 10 minutes. They are trying to beat their previous score and time set in class this week. The expectation for Year 6 is that they complete the main grid within 6-8 minutes. As the children get more competent, I will move some onto decimals.
I hope that is clear enough for all, any questions please ask. I look forward to meeting you next Thursday at the parent welcome meeting where I will detail more about the routines and expectations within class plus you will have the opportunity to ask questions.
Regards,
Mr White