Year Six - Classes Cygnus and Eridanus

Teacher welcome

Information for parents

• The Year 6 school day starts at 8.45am and finishes at 3.15pm. Please drop off and pick up your child promptly using the Hall entrance.
• Parents should queue up the pavement on Howard Street and wait for their child to be called in/sent out. Y6 children who walk home alone will be sent out first.    
• P.E for Year 6 takes place on Wednesday - please ensure that your child has a labelled P.E kit on this day. It is important that your child does not come to school wearing jewellery or earrings on this day as they will not be able to participate.
• In Year 6, we expect a certain degree of independence from our children. They are tasked to bring in their books at swap from the class bookshelf at their own leisure. Additionally, our library timeslot is on Monday afternoons, so please ensure that children have brought their books in on these days. Reading is embedded into our English sessions, and we have two guided reading sessions per week.
• With regard to homework,  it is created and designed to target the needs of the children; this often takes the form of past papers.
• At the beginning of the academic year, children were provided with the list of Year 5/6 spelling list. Spelling will be taught discretely twice every week and children will be assessed on Monday mornings.
• Year 6 teachers will provide parents with more information about the morning booster sessions. 

Parent Information

'SATs' stands for Statutory Assessment Tasks and Tests (including some Teacher Assessment) and they're usually taken at the end of KS1 and KS2. As you may be aware, children in Year 6 will be sitting their SATs in May during this academic year. National tests are an important milestone in school life. They give useful information to your child’s teachers and to the government. But it’s important to get them in proportion. They are just one of the ways the school works out how well your child is doing. They shouldn’t be stressful -  in fact many children enjoy the change in routine, as long as they know they have your support and understanding. Look at the video below for more information on the SATs.

Our Class Rules and Rewards

Our class rules were created with the children at the beginning of the year. The children have agreed to follow these rules unconditionally; these include:

• Listen when the teachers and others are talking;
• Put your hand up to answer or ask a question;
• Keep our classroom tidy and respect other the property of others;
• Concentrate and finish our work on time;
• Most importantly – have fun!

In addition to these, we have a new class target each week which is designed to help us to be the best year group that we can be.

In Year 6 we also utilise the ‘Going for Gold’ scheme which provides a consistent and fair approach to behaviour management; clear systems to reward good behaviour and sanctions for inappropriate behaviour; a system that allows children to take ownership of their behaviour and their rewards.

Going for Gold:

Our classroom

Welcome to our Year 6 learning environment! 

Upcoming and exciting events

We are incredibly passionate about maximising opportunities to take the children on trips and visits to enhance their learning. We believe that the broader range of experiences that the children have and places that the children visit, the more they increase in confidence and self-belief. Every visit that the children enjoy is utilised as an opportunity to further develop social skills, cultural understanding and language development, alongside the key academic aims of the visit. Class Teachers are always looking for new and exciting opportunities to enrich the curriculum and welcome volunteers to accompany the children in their adventures!

In the Autumn term, we will be visiting Thackray Museum in Leeds. We will investigate the lives of real Victorian people in Leeds, see where they lived, find out what they did for fun and discover the everyday health hazards they tried to avoid!

In the Spring term, we will be taking a local walk to Wilton park to further investigate our Science topic: Living things and their habitats. 

After SATs, we are hoping to take our pupils to our nation's capital city for a two-day residential trip to London!

In the final week, we have a ‘Graduation Day’, where we will celebrate the achievements our lovely Year 6 children. Our special graduation assembly will highlight the contribution each child has made and each pupil will be individually presented with a certificate from the Head. This will no doubt be an immensely enjoyable and emotional occasion for our parents, children and staff.

How parents can help at home

As timing can be quite pressurised during SATs, it would be greatly appreciated if parents could read to and with their children at home. Increased fluency would help to ensure that children meet their full potential. It would be great if parents could ask probing questions in everyday contexts. For example, ask ‘Why do you think he/she did that?’ in relation to a film or television series; this would enhance their inference skills. As problem-solving is an essential part of Mathematics, we would appreciate if parents could help to bring Maths into a real-life context at home. This could be as simple as measuring ingredients for a recipe, calculating a bill at a restaurant or even asking children to work out the percentage difference in a price reduction.

For more information on how to help your child, please refer to the Parents Workshop PowerPoint presentations for more information on how you can help.

Moreover, in a few weeks, there will be a meeting between parents and the Year 6 staff. During this meeting, parents will be provided with exam materials to work with their children. We will also provide tips on how to enhance their learning at home. When children are completing exams at home, they would ideally do so under exam conditions so that they are as prepared as possible for the tests in May.