Welcome to Year 6! 

Townsend Class - Miss E Saville/Mrs N Godfrey

Eaton Class - Mrs L Saint/Mrs N Godfrey

PPA cover - Mrs S Lewis

Teaching Assistants - Mrs Pursglove, Mrs Cooke, Mrs Jackson, Miss Vardy

Whole School Well Being Mentors - Mrs Patrick, Miss Smith and Mrs Fox

Please follow us on Twitter for occasional news and pictures showing what we are getting up to in class and at events.

@ClarkeRjs

@TownsendRJS1

@RiddingsJnr

@RiddingsSENCO

@RJnrSport

Autumn Term 2024

It's lovely to be back in school with all of our fabulous Year 6s.

PRIDE remains central to everything we do and Y6s should model the behaviours and attitudes we expect of our children. They take the lead in organising the wide-range of activities outside as Sports Leaders, organise the school library and hall seating and are our first port of call to discuss school and learning with the many visitors we have.

Latest info:

Secondary school application leaflets came home this week - please check children's bags if you haven't received yours. Applications need to be made by the 31st of October and many local secondaries are running Open Evenings over the next few weeks.

We also sent homework books home this week. In Y6, we have three 10-minute weekly workouts for Maths, Reading and SPaG. These revise and consolidate learning covered previously in school but are also useful in helping children develop good study habits ahead of secondary school. 

Children can either spend just 10 minutes on each booklet and then stop. Over the year, they will see the number of questions they complete increase. Other children may prefer to spend however long it takes to complete all of the questions.  We suggest they record their time and then see how they speed up over the year.

We completed the first few questions together in class so children know what they need to do but please speak to one of us if there's an issue. (There are also answers in the back of the books for parents only!)

Homework books should be in school on Monday for a bonus teampoint, ready for marking together and discussing on Tuesday.

  Maths   

Maths continues to build on earlier learning in school and sets the foundation for secondary school education. Fluency and accuracy (being quick and right) as well as being able to reason, problem solve and explain are aspects of every lesson.

We will start with units on Place Value and Shape whilst weekly boost sessions will focus on speed and accuracy of arithmetic - our mantra is 'not practising until we get it right but practising until we can't get it wrong'.

As well as the Maths apps below which school purchases for all children, the following free sites may be useful:

https://mathsbot.com/primaryMenu

https://www.primarygames.com/

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

https://mathszone.co.uk/

English 

The majority of English is taught through our Units of Learning and Book Study with some stand alone units.

This term, we are starting our blocked learning with a writing unit linked to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwock. Children will consolidate their knowledge of sentence types and conjunctions as they write an exciting sequel where their lead character faces either the deadly Jubjub Bird or the frumious Bandersnatch!

Other writing this term will be linked to our Science Units of learning where we will write up experiments and Geography where we will produce informative double page spreads. We return to narrative writing as part of Remembrance using Martin Impey's WW1 series of books. Later writing will focus on character descriptions, including 'show not tell'.

In Book Study, we are studying Holes and our class novel is Crater Lake?

Spelling lists this term will concentrate on the Y5/6 statutory words which can add precision and impact to our writing. Regular practice on www.spellingframe.co.uk is important.

Children should read regularly from the school library or books of their own. By this stage of Y6, they should be reading for longer periods of time independently but it is still helpful for them to read aloud as this supports fluency and prosody (the rhythm of speech/reading) 

PE

This term our PE days are Tuesday and Thursday.  Year 6 children should come to school in their PE kits ready with uniform in their bag in case we get wet/muddy.

Wider Curriculum

Science Units of Learning are Light Up Your Life (Light) and Could you be the next quiz master? (Electricity)

PRIDE and British Values are key parts of our Remembrance Unit of Learning and PSHE where we look at Being Responsible. Anti-Bullying week's theme of Choose Respect could have been chosen just for us!

Weekly learning in PE will focus on Basketball skills and Games Sense-Invasion.

In Computing, we will look at how computing networks and systems communicate before working collaboratively.

Latin continues to focus on recapping word classes and word endings before moving on to speaking and writing simple sentences.

We've been impressed with how the children are spotting Latin links in everyday words and phrases and are answering the registers in Latin.

Perhaps ask your child to sing you our Latin Rap - we think you'll recognise the tune!

  Young Voices

Our Young Voices concert is always a fabulous experience and we look forward to learning our new repertoire of songs.

The concert is early next year, on Friday, 10th January - straight after the Christmas break - and we'll send further information shortly for those of you who want to buy tee-shirts, tickets etc.through school. The order window is very tight and is usually by the final week of September.