Thank you for taking the time to make your way to our little space on the internet. It is hard to believe that we are already in the Spring term and it is even more surprising how quickly January has appeared and disappeared! The children ended 2023 with a hip, skip and a hop and they have brought the same energy into 2024.
We are so proud of how hard they worked last term and the progress they have made already. They have each, individually, taken Year 6 in their stride and have continued to show us what they are made of with their efforts and determination.
Perhaps the most exciting thing that has happened this year so far, is the commencing of our SATs Boosters. We were blown away by the response from parents, and we are so grateful for your support. Thank you for your patience as we got them up and running- it wasn’t an easy feat! However, the children have been amazing and so enthusiastic in their sessions, so the time and energy that went into organising them was well worth it.
We hope you enjoy reading about all the wonderful things we have been getting up to!
Mrs Parkar, Mr Omer and Miss Bloomfield 🙂
ENGLISH: Writing
This term, we have been learning how to write to advise, in the form of an “agony aunt/uncle” style letter. Writing to advise has been a totally new genre for the children, and yet they have not ceased to amaze us with their fantastic writing.
We focused heavily on audience and purpose and how this impacts our language, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary choices. Take a look at some of the words the children have learnt how to read, write and apply:
| Contend | Communicate |
| Navigate | Advisable |
| Understandably | Despite |
| Anxious | Established/establish |
| Ensuring/ensure | Willing |
| Receiving/receive | Harmless |
| Adjust | Reluctant |
| Undoubtedly | Ought |
| Condition | Engage |
| Familiar | Consider |
| Regarding | Informing |
| Outgrow | Refrain |
| Relate | Apparent |
| Acceptable | Commendable |
| Beneficial | Essential |
| Deemed | Foremost |
Just WOW! The children have really exercised the value of empathy in this unit, as they have had to read “problems” written to them and had to discuss, brainstorm and identify solutions that were sensitive and mindful of the feelings inferred from the letters. Below are some examples of the short bursts of writing they have completed in this unit. The first being: Writing to advise on what to take on a camping trip and the second being: Writing to advise a new child on what to bring to school in their packed lunch. Their final piece was writing to advise a child who was worried about their friend.
The children have been learning new grammar skills as well as constantly retrieving those that have been taught previously. Below is our success criteria for this unit; including the tools of advisory writing, and we are confident that children are able to discuss and apply these skills in their writing.
At the start of the term, year 6 completed a short unit on the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carrol. In lessons, we spent time:
- Reading, listening to and familiarising ourselves with the poem-listening to the wonderful Benedict Cumberbatch reading the poem was a highlight for the teachers.
- Discussing poetic features and Carrol’s use of nonsense words and his creation of portmanteaus (go on look it up and find out what this is or even better ask your children).
- Creating their own versions of the poem making up their own nonsense words and following the structure of the original
After this, we began a unit (which we are continuing presently) on Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz. This is really handy, as our next unit of writing will be based on the same text.
Fourteen-year-old Alex is forcibly recruited into MI6. Armed with secret gadgets, he is sent to investigate Herod Sayle, a man who is offering state-of-the-art Stormbreaker computers to every school in the country.
In our lessons we are enjoying reading the book and using our reading skills to further understand characterisation, higher order vocabulary and structure.
MATHS: Ratio
SCIENCE: Classification
Before moving onto Evolution and Inheritance, we have been working hard to complete our unit on Classification. The children are finding out about how scientists identify and organise all creatures into specific groups depending on certain characteristics.
They are using decision trees to help them identify and classify certain creatures and are developing their understanding of the vocabulary of classification eg vertebrates, invertebrates, organism, micro-organism, genus, species to name but a few.
Within this topic, there will be the opportunity for some field-work where we will be using the outside nature area to investigate some creepy crawlies. So Year 6 (and Mrs Parkar) WATCH OUT!
Below is a knowledge organiser that depicts all the things we have been covering, including some of the key vocabulary:
GEOGRAPHY: Mapping the world
We started our unit just before Christmas, and have spent this half term continuing our learning about maps- specifically ordnance survey maps. We then planned and carried out some fieldwork in the local area. We focused on two enquiry questions: “How green is our local area?” and “How well looked after is our local area?” We focused on a range of indicators, including: litter, traffic, buildings, recreation, green spaces, up keep and garden types (to list a few). We then had a go at using Purple Mash to input this data in a spreadsheet in order to generate a range of graphs to present our findings.
