Year 6

Newsletter 2 2009.

Dear Parents / Guardians,

Welcome to the second half of our first term. Year 6 have settled well into their new class and are beginning to rise to the expectation of the curriculum and are aware of their targets for May and where they are in relation to them at the moment.

R.E.

We will continue with our topic on Friends, reviewing the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation and how these make us friends of Jesus. We will then spend a week looking at the Jewish religion, the children will learn about significant traditions and rituals. Our final topic is Preparations where the children will recognise these as a means of celebration. We will identify the ways we prepare for these and link them to our Advent preparations. We will study what scripture said about the coming of the Messiah.

English.

The children will bring spellings home that must be learnt – these are now taking the form of past SAT spelling tests in order to prepare the children for the different spelling patterns and high frequency words that are compiled in the tests. They will be tested on these on a Friday

Children must continue to focus on their home reading – something I discussed with many of you at parent’s evening. Your child must read every night and have this recorded and signed in their planners. Using the information you were given on parents evening, discuss with your child what they have read, how characters and presented, how language creates feelings and themes etc to ensure your child understands what they are reading.

We will begin the half term by looking at poetry, how images are created and different kinds of poetry for effect. We will then move onto looking at balanced arguments and how to present writing to discuss a particular issue or problem.

Maths.

We will be working on confident use of the four number operations in order to solve word problems – interpreting questions and using more than one operation to find the answer. Children will be encouraged to explain their working out and reasoning behind the way they have gone about their calculations. We will also revise work on area and perimeter of simple and more complex shapes. Towards the end of the half term, we will work on fractions – finding equivalent fractions and cancelling larger fractions down. Children will convert mixed numbers into fractions and vice-versa.

Topic work.

Our topic for this half term will have a science focus, we will be looking at the three states of matter and identifying their properties. We will then look at how these can be changed and how new substances are made. We will conduct experiments to see what affects rates of change in solids, liquids and gases.

In ICT the children will look at ways of handling data and presenting numerical information.

To conclude our pre-holiday topic, we will be going on a visit to Armley Mills Industrial Museum on Tuesday 24^th November, where the children will spend the morning in the Victorian schoolroom and the afternoon in the museum. They children will need to dress up as appropriate for this, but I will send out further details nearer the time.

Children will still need PE kits on Wednesday and Friday. If the weather is too cold, lessons will be taught inside so tracksuits will not be needed. It is essential that the children have a pair of indoor pumps and also outdoor trainers for PE lessons.

Homework.

Children will continue to complete their learning logs – children are to be encouraged to produce their highest standard of work in these, using the two pages allocated to each project.

Thanking you for your continued support

Yours Sincerely,

Miss C Teggart

Assistant Head / Year 6 teacher