Year 6
Welcome to Year 6!
For most of you, it’s your second year at West Moors Middle School and you are no longer a ‘Newby’, so now is your chance to shine! This year is going to involve creativity, diligence and loads of laughter! You can now set an example to our new Year 5s and get the opportunity to take part in various clubs as well as become a playground buddy or a reading buddy with some of our new Year 5s.
Mrs Cope and Mrs Watkins are the class tutors in Year 6 and we will be here to guide you along this new journey. We have caring and helpful learning support assistants across the year group who are especially here to help and support you throughout your learning.
Our Class Country
The country that we will be learning about this year is South Africa! I wonder if any of you know why we chose that particular country?
English
At the moment, we are thoroughly enjoying learning how to write effective biographies by reading a wide range of high-quality and highly-entertaining examples, including Debbie Dynamite - accident-prone magician - and Sebastian Chambers-Anderson - award-winning gymnast, critically-acclaimed author and member of M15 for almost a quarter of a century. Through reading these excellent models, we are extending and improving our vocabulary and sentence structure in our own writing, so that by the time we have the chance to write our final piece, we will have developed all the skills we need to make our own biographies as well-written and enjoyable to read as the ones we have studied.
As well as this, we have all completed our Star Reader assessments on our incredible new reading programme: Accelerated Reader. Now that we have done this, we all have our own ZPD ranges, which help us to choose suitable books in our school library. Don't forget to get Reading Logs checked and signed each week - try to read for at least 30 mins each day if you can. Regular reading of appropriate books (like those in your ZPD level) is the best way to help keep making excellent progress at school.
Year 6 Suggested Reading
You can find a great list of suggested books for Year 6 children here:
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/year-6
100 best books for 9-11 year-olds here from the book trust:
http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/children/booklists/243/
The government have published a list of words that they expect years 5 & 6 to be able to spell. Please encourage your child to make use of the 'Spelling Shed' website to help support the learning of these spellings: https://www.spellingshed.com
New Curriculum Year 5 and 6 Spellings:
Maths
In Year 6, we place emphasis on using a Maths Mastery approach, we strive to develop fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills. We follow White Rose which encompasses the ethos that every child can succeed in maths. Resilience underpins our values at West Moors Middle School and by building confidence within maths results in an overall enjoyment and success in the subject.
To find out more and the White Rose approach, please visit https://whiterosemaths.com/.
We are also consolidating and extending our understanding of the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), making sure that we can apply what we have learnt to word problems. Remember to keep practising times tables at home regularly on TTRockstars to save time when multiplying and dividing.
We ask all parents to support children with learning their times tables at home; this is key to children being successful as Mathematicians. All children have a log in for Times Table Rockstars, please visit https://ttrockstars.com/page/features, which outlines the benefits of times table recall speed for your child.
Overview of Foundation Subjects within Year 6
Science
In Science, our children are thoroughly enjoying carrying out experiments in their Light topic. Watch this space for more exciting escapes through their journey of discovery…
Integrated Learning
In Geography, our children will learn about Mountains, North America and Rivers. They will get to explore amazing holiday destinations, far away countries and exciting journey’s people have gone on. Our environment is very close to our heart at WMMS and so great focus will be placed on caring for our earth and the creatures that share it with us.
In History, our children will get to explore the ancient Kingdom of Benin and its phenomenal importance in world civilizations. They may even get to create their own Benin Mask. We will then move on to discussing and discovering Crime and Punishment, and how it developed from the Romans to the 21st Century. Our third unit always attracts great enjoyment and enthusiasm as it is something we can all connect with. How Britain and British people were affected by the 2nd World War is a discussion close to many of our hearts and so the children find this unit exceptionally relative and interesting.
In Beliefs and Values, we will explore the importance of tolerance within society and how we should all be accepting of other cultures, beliefs and creeds. Christianity, Islam and Sikhism are three of units we discover throughout the year.
PSHCE
Across the school, we deliver PSHCE using the ‘Jigsaw’ programme. During the Autumn term we look at: ‘Being Me in My World’ and ‘Celebrating Difference’. Followed by: ‘Dreams and Goals’ and ‘Healthy Me’ and the Spring term and ‘Relationships’ and ‘Changing Me’ in the Summer term. Please visit: https://www.jigsawpshe.com/ to find out more.
PE
Fitness and a healthy lifestyle is very important to us at WMMS. We value our PE lessons and make sure the excitement is endless. Our children get to try out basketball, rugby, badminton, High 5 netball, gymnastics, indoor hockey, cricket, athletics and tennis! Some children will even get a chance to improve on their swimming skills.
Foreign Languages, Art, ICT and DT are all other subjects our children get to dabble in so watch this space for more info…