Class teachers - Miss Matthews, Mrs Taylor Jones, Miss James

• January - Determination and Perseverance

• February - Honesty and Trust 

• March - Learning and Effort

We discuss these every morning, and pupils are encouraged to share their experiences, knowledge and opinions. We will also discuss Children's Rights and Human Rights following the UNCRC format.

This year Year 6 will be continuing to follow the Literary curriculum. This curriculum consists of guided reading and Literacy Leaves.

In Literacy sessions, we will begin reading Polly Ho Yen’s The Boy in the Tower. The Boy in the Tower deals with themes such as isolation, depression and loneliness. Ade is a boy who loves living at the top of a tower block. He feels like he can see the whole world through his window. His mum doesn’t really like looking outside – but it’s going outside that she hates. She’s happier sleeping all day inside their tower, where it’s safe. But one day, other tower blocks on the estate start falling down around them and strange, menacing plants begin to appear.   Pupils will be writing packing lists, journals, formal letters, and non-chronological reports. Their main outcome will be creating narrative retellings. 

Children will continue with Guided Reading sessions, designed to work alongside the texts within the Literacy Currciulum by providing opportunities to practice spelling, reading, comprehension and engage in group discussions. We will begin reading The Explorer by Katherine Rundell. A group of children find themselves thrown together in a survival situation after their plane crashes in the Amazon. They develop routines and gradually adjust to their new life when they realise they are not alone and that someone was exploring before them.  How will they navigate their way through this vast and unknown territory to safety? They will need all the teamwork, determination and courage they can muster to survive…plus a little help from a ‘friend’.

We will deliver Welsh Literacy lessons every Friday. We will also be doing daily Helpwr Heddiw sessions. We plan to focus on providing the children with many opportunities to deepen their knowledge and confidence when using Welsh in and out of the classroom. We will be revisiting simple sentence patterns and extending our knowledge of the use of present, past and future tenses. Children will talk and write about holidays in Welsh using increasingly sophisticated language and will be encouraged to extend their sentences using achos, ond and weithiau. 

Reading for pleasure is very important, and we expect pupils to bring a book into school with them every day.  All children have access to the school library, where we will help them make an age-appropriate choice.  Children are welcome to bring in books from home as well. Pupils will take part in 1:1 or group reading during independent reading sessions and will be reviewing their book upon completion before changing. 

We will begin the Spring term by revisiting fractions with specific reference to calculating fractions of amounts using a combination of oral, written and practical methods.  We will then spend the first half term exploring Geometry, using grid references to specify location referring to the x and y axis. We will also be identifying the coordinates of missing points and using our shape knowledge to plot polygons across all 4 quadrants. 

During the second part of the term, pupils will use their number system knowledge to develop multiplication and division skills, calculating through practical activities and varying contexts such as percentages and decimals. We will then find equivalences across fractions, percentages and decimals.

All pupils are encouraged to practice their times tables at home to support their learning.  Times tables are central to mathematics and the ability to recall tables will assist pupils with more challenging mathematical problems.

Maths resources from the lessons can be found on Google Classroom. It helps to cement learners' knowledge if they revisit previous knowledge on a regular basis. This is a skill that we practise at the start of every lesson and may also be useful to use at home.

During lessons, we will examine emergencies, the systems that are in place, and what makes an emergency. We will compare emergencies on a smaller scale to larger scales in the UK and further afield. Pupils will also evaluate the impact of diet choices on the environment and propose eco-friendly alternatives, looking at food miles and value per meal. 

We will continue building our collaboration skills, working with other members of year 6 since new friendships have been forged, and encouraging them to work outside of their classroom setting. At the end of each day, we have a check-in session; this allows pupils to speak freely about their day, ask questions, develop empathy skills towards one another and identify ways to move forward. 

Practical health and well-being sessions will focus on badminton and netball skills. 

During the spring term, our focus is Global Environment. Pupils will understand the Earth's features and our role in protecting its resources. This unit of work will focus on geographical and scientific features of the environment - local and worldwide.  As part of the unit, pupils will explore Earth’s composition in more detail, including tectonic plates and how these impact the physical features of the landscape for human settlements and activity. Pupils will design and propose their own flood-prevention measures for our local area; building on learning from Progression Step 2. Pupils will continue to explore their responsibility to bring about social change by looking at the food we eat and its impact. They will learn about varying sources of energy through nutrition, both sustainable and non-sustainable, and compare the effectiveness of these in the long term. 

Children must remember to bring in a water bottle each day and weather-appropriate clothing; we aim to go outside each day; therefore coats are essential if forecasted wet weather. 

Health and Well-being sessions will take place on a Friday. Pupils should wear their P.E kit every Friday. 

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