Welcome to Class 6 Autumn Term 2019
I hope you have all had a wonderful summer break and are ready for the new school year ahead. Year 6 is an incredibly busy year, but a great one too! Year 6 children will need to be very organised with homework, reading books and their personal belongings. Homework will be sent out on a Wednesday and should be brought back into school completed by the following Monday. Homework can be tricky in Year 6… if children need additional help, they are very welcome to ask during break times!
Sport and PE
This year, our PE lessons will take place on a Monday afternoon. We will begin our term with the topic of Dance and in the second half of the term, we will be building our competitive skills in team games. All children will need their Montalbo PE kit in school all week (in case our PE day changes due to weather or facilities). Children will need warmer clothing (hoodies, jumpers and tracksuit bottoms) as the weather turns cooler. We will keep you updated with the additional competitions and sporting activities as the year goes on!
Literacy
In our literacy work, we will be building upon the grammar skills we learned in Year 5. Developing our use of more complex sentences and grammar to develop a fluent and entertaining Year 6 style of writing. All of our literacy units will be based on a class text… and this half term we will be reading The Adventures of Thandie The Tandem. This will link to our class topic – The History of The Meet Parade and Bicycles. As many children in Class 6 will already know… books are so important to our success as developing readers. As little as 10 minutes independent reading per day can make a huge difference to the progress and confidence of children – read at home! You will be glad you did!
Below is a list of excellent and challenging stories that you could read at home. We will not be reading these as our class texts this year, so go ahead!
- Skellig by David Almond
- Holes by Louis Scahar
- Machine Gunners by Robert Westall
- Wonder by R J Palacio
- Once by Morris Gleitzman
Maths
We will begin the term by studying place vale and core number work. Later in the term, we will be looking at developing our knowledge of the four number operations. Problem solving and reasoning skills will be embedded in all of our maths work. Children can develop their confidence in maths at home by practising their times tables and solving everyday problems such as reading time tables, charts and graphs. Learning your equivalent fractions will also be a big help!
Science
In science, we are studying the topic of ‘Light’. We will be carrying out scientific experiments to prove that light travels in straight lines. We will develop our knowledge of how light can refract and reflect before looking at light phenomena. I know that Dr Greenwell already has some exciting extra-curricular science projects planned for the future so watch out for those!
History and Geography
This term, we will be studying our local area of Barnard Castle and learning how to read maps and plan trails. Children will take part in practical fieldwork activities and they will record information about human and physical features in our town/ local area. In history, we will be focusing our work on the history of the Meet Parade. We welcome any old photographs or information about the Meet Parade that you may have at home. As part of this topic, we will also be looking in more depth at the history of the bicycle and world famous bicycle events. In October, children will have the opportunity to complete their ‘Bikeability’ training and more information will be sent home about this.
Computing
This term, we will be continuing with our important e-safety work as part of the national curriculum. We will also be using the programme ‘Scratch’ to build our ‘coding’ and ‘computer science’ skills. We will be looking at using algorithms, including the use of variables within a fun and entertaining animated sketch about our town. We look forward to sharing these with you!
French
We will be revising our knowledge of numbers, months of the year and family members before looking in more detail at using adjectives in sentences to describe items around us. Last year, with Miss Bean, Year 6 produced some amazing French work in class. I hope that we will be able to share some of our excellent French work with you at parents evening this year!
Archived Class Work
You can also view our archived class work on our website.
