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, with Mr Faulkner taking another small class for English & Maths. We will be here to guide you along this new journey. We have caring and helpful learning support . across the year group who are especially here to help and support you throughout your learning. 

SEPTEMBER NEWS 2020 Video link

 

Churning our own Viking butter - 22/09/2020

What an incredible week Year 6 are having! Not only have they been making such pleasing progress with their writing – particularly with their vocabulary and punctuation – they have also thoroughly enjoyed churning their own delicious Viking butter this week in Science, which they all were thrilled to be able to take home to taste.

Designing & Creating our Viking Coats of Arms - 8/09/2020

What a fantastic start back to school we have had in Year 6! Children so excited to see their friends and teachers again, and so engaged in all their new, cross-curricular topics. In particular, all the children thoroughly enjoyed having the chance to design and create their own Viking coats of arms; some pupils even fashioned their shields into items of jewellery.​

 

Our Class Countries and artists

6CW: The country that we will be learning about this year is France and our artist is Georges Seurat, who painted using a technique called Pointillism.

6CC:The country that we will be learning about this year is South Africa and our artist is Blessing Ngobeni, who is an abstract painter.

English

At the moment, we are thoroughly enjoying learning how to improve the quality of our writing. Through reading high-quality texts, 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 writing as well-written and enjoyable to read as the ones we have studied.

As well as this, we will soon be completing our Star Reader assessments on our incredible new reading programme: Accelerated Reader. When 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  at the bottom of the spellings page 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://goodreads.com/shelf/show/year-6

100 best books for 9-11 year-olds here from the book trust:

http://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://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 Place Value and  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 thoroughly enjoy carrying out experiments in our new topics including:

Vikings

Evolution

Animals/including humans

Classification

Electricity 

Materials

Light

Music

Year 6 pupils will start by revising details of the symphony orchestra and the instrumental families, whilst focusing on the musical elements. Using the keyboards we will learn to play a piece which illustrates octaves and scales. Later on, we will compose short descriptive pieces based on mood and emotion.

We will use the keyboards to compose and study bugle calls as we approach Remembrance Day and then we will enjoy a whole class ensemble performance of a Christmas song.

Other new exciting topics thsi year include:

Magic Hands

Mood Food

We Will Remember Them

Christmas Crackers

The Lost Planet

Milonga Momentos

Mountain Kings and River Queens

My Heart Will Go On

 

Humanities

In Geography, our children will learn about Scandinavia, Mountains and Titanic.  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 Vikings, the history of Mountains and the Titanic Tragedy.

In Religious Education, 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 Hinduism 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://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.

French

In Year 6, we will be learning about clothes, family, habitats and even reading French fairy tales!

 Art

This year, we will be exploring Viking art and even creating  a Viking inspired warrior helmet! We will also be studying and creating mountain landscapes in addition to collages.

 

Computer Science

In Year 6, we will be creating multi-media presentations and Excel documents about the Titanic.