Year 6 – Holy Family RC Primary School

Welcome to Year 6! Mrs Hall is the class teacher, who is supported by Miss Boniface.

Year 6 will be working very hard this year, but will have lots of fun, too. We will be historians and scientists, mathematicians and writers, artists and speakers of French!

This is the year that all Year 6 children will complete their Standardised Assessment Tests (SATs) in the Summer term (week beginning 13^th May 2024).

In order to support your child as much as possible, there will be additional booster classes put on after school this term, to support certain areas – particularly in maths.

Homework

To support their learning this year, School has purchased a new online learning platform known as Learning By Questions (LBQ). You may have seen some pieces of homework using this platform already, as we have been experimenting with it throughout the term. From this term onwards, this is going to be the main platform used for homework and revision activities. All children are able to log on and enter their Independent Study code in order to access their homework activities – we have had lots of practice at this in class.

I will be putting activities on this platform EVERY THURSDAY – these will include a Maths activity and an English activity and one other, depending on what they have been doing in class throughout the week. It would be good practice for the children to have a look at the activities on the Thursday evening if possible, so if they need further help with it, they can ask on the Friday at school. Homework activities will develop their current learning further and deepen their understanding of new topics, helping the information to ‘stick’.

As well as supporting with their LBQ home learning, we also ask that you keep up with hearing your child read at home, at least three times a week. Reading books will be taken in whenever it has been read and these books will be changed straight away. Reading is monitored and if a child has not completed any reading within the week, they will do so in their own time at school.

We have found a VERY strong correlation between those children who read regularly at home and those children who achieve higher scores in their reading assessments. Reading expands children’s knowledge of words and their understanding of different genres of writing. This in turn, helps them with their reading comprehension.

Children who read a lot at home, are also more able to use their reading experiences to help their writing – they have more ideas and are more familiar with different grammar structures, vocabulary and spelling. It is a very important skill to have – not just for SATs, but for life.

TTRockstars is also available for children to use to keep their Times Tables knowledge fresh in their head. Even in Year 6, we find that here are still children in class who are not confident with their Times Tables knowledge, and as they have found, this affects many maths concepts; not just multiplication, but division, fractions, ratio, algebra etc. Even if your child knows their times tables, it is important that they still practise on TTRockstars, so that they are quick as well as confident.

Thursday – Homework will be given for completion over the weekend. This is to be handed in the following Monday for us to go through as a class.

Please support your child to complete all homework activities.

P.E.

Thursday – children are to come in PE kits for the whole day. Their PE kit consists of a blue school PE T-shirt and maroon shorts. Pupils are welcome to wear dark-coloured (navy blue or black) tracksuit bottoms / leggings over their shorts during the colder months.

They can wear their school jumper for extra warmth over their t-shirt if needed. They do not need to bring an extra hoodie / jumper. Children will need trainers / pumps for PE. They are not allowed to wear trainers on any day other than their PE day. Jewellery is also not permitted.

Reading:

Children will be given a reading book to read at home. They need to have their Reading Records signed by a parent or carer each time they have read at home. It is expected that children in Year 6 read for at least 20 minutes each evening. As Year 6 children often read longer books or novels, they will be changed as and when required. We do not expect pupils to read a whole book every week, but we do expect them to read at least three times per week. Reading Records will be monitored daily and if a pupil has not handed in a signed Reading Record by the end of each week, they will be asked to do some reading in class during their free time on Friday.

My Happy Mind:

Your child’s wellbeing is important to us and we have started an amazing scheme to educate and support them with understanding their big emotions. This term we are learning about our relationships with others and how positive relationships can improve our mental health and well-being.

Year 6 Timetable for Summer Term 1

Year 6 Timetable

Getting Ready

One last thing that could help support your child on the run-up to SATs is ensuring that they attend school every day and on time. There will be lots of revision happening this term, as well as new concepts being introduced. The curriculum moves at a very fast pace in Year 6 and even being absent for a couple of days could mean that full topics are missed. Children who are absent for long periods find it difficult to catch up with things that they have missed, and regular absences mean that topics are never being fully covered, which leads to gaps in your child’s knowledge.

Despite SATs being a little daunting and intense for some children, we will do everything in our power to ensure that they are prepared and able to tackle these tests confidently; and afterwards, we will have a lot of fun making memories and getting ready for the next step on our academic journey – Secondary School!

A reminder of Key Information for Year 6:

The day starts for Year 6 at 8.45am and finishes at 3.30pm.

Lessons will start straight away, so pupils need to arrive promptly to ensure that they don’t miss anything.

Monday – Spellings will be given out and tested the following Monday. Please help your child to learn these spellings as this will help them enormously with key topic vocabulary, reading and writing.