Welcome to Year 6

Welcome to Year 6! During Year 6, the children are guided and supported through their final year of the primary curriculum. Throughout the year we develop the children’s confidence, allowing them to fulfil their potential as they become ready for the challenges of the Key Stage 3 curriculum at their chosen secondary school. The Key Stage 2 Standard Assessment Test (SATs), taken in May, are part of Year 6 and this experience supports the pupils’ development of resilience, independent learning and maturity.

Our curriculum is enriched with a residential trip to Bryntysilio Outdoor Education Centre in Llangollen, Wales, which helps build the children’s resilience, their confidence in their abilities and how to work collaboratively as a team with a range of problem-solving skills. Other wonderful adventures in Year 6 always includes a trip to the theatre at Christmas time and horse riding in Woodgate Valley in the summer. We also have exciting visitors to Year 6 such as The Loudmouth Theatre Company who deliver their ‘Bully 4 U’, ‘Helping Hands’ and ‘My Mate Fancies You’ PSHE drama workshops (always a favourite) throughout the year and a World War II gentleman who helps the children learn about the war from the British and German perspectives. Other favourites include our Ancient Greek workshop day and designing our own hoodies with F2D!

In Year 6 our Topics will be:

Reading Opportunities

Year 6 children are always provided with the opportunity to read for pleasure every day which why it is so important that they have their reading books in school every day. Adults in school also listen to the children read every day.

Year 6 children are expected to read at home every night for 30 minutes and respond in their reading diary with the date, page numbers they have read and a short summary about what they read. They must read to an adult for at least part of that time to help practise their expression when reading and to work out tricky words. Reading journals are monitored. Children are rewarded for reading at home.

In the classroom, we dip into the VIPERS reading curriculum where we have focused weeks studying certain types of reading questions. VIPERS stands for Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, and Summary. Children learn how to answer these question types for the reading SAT, but also as part of learning to read for pleasure as we talk about what we are reading. It’s always fun to talk about a good book or character!

We begin the year reading Marcus Rashford’s new book The Breakfast Club Investigators, which has proven to be a huge hit! Other texts that we enjoy reading as a class are: Alex Rider Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz, Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse, Who Let the Gods Out by Maz Evans plus anything the children request! In Guided Reading, we read Holes by Louis Sachar, Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo, Shadow by Michael Morpurgo and Coraline by Neil Gaiman.

Writing Opportunities

Writing in Year 6 follows the Talk for Writing approach which enables the children to read and write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes. A key feature is that the children internalise the language structures needed to write through ‘talking the text’, as well as close reading. The approach moves from dependence towards independence where we guide the children using shared and guided teaching to develop the ability in the children to write creatively and powerfully.

We cover many writing genres, which include narratives, character and setting descriptions based on an abridged version of The Hobbit called ‘Bilbo and his Pocket Watch’; instructions to help improve sentence structure using the model text ‘How to Trap a Dragon’; and non-chronological reports on our own mythical beasts.