Binley Woods Primary School

Home Page Pre-School

Year 6

Our Team:

Mrs Balmer, Miss Jones, Mrs Vickers

In English this half term, we will start by looking at persuasive language with a particular focus on travel guides. The children will start this by looking at hotels in Brazil and they will design their own hotel. They will then study the landmarks of South America and produce a tailor-made tour of the country which will include both persuasive and informative writing

After this, the children will explore discussion and argument texts and we will be using our new adopted pet ‘Peanut’ from The Donkey Sanctuary to focus on issues of animal welfare and zoos.

After this unit, we will have time to focus on our new text – Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson. This beautiful story is set in the heart of Amazonia in Brazil. We will supplement this with an information text about the Amazon River which will enable the children to produce their own fact pages about the Amazon River for Maia, who is the main character in the book. This will continue after half term where will compare this book to another, more modern-day book set in a Brazilian Favela.

Reading:

For reading lessons, we will be focussing on the skills needed to help them to pass their SATs but we will be exploring these skills using wherever possible our high-quality texts in our English lessons. Journey to the River Sea will be used to practise character inference questions and authorial technique. We will use our non-fiction texts to develop retrieval, find and copy skills and exploring lay-out features and summarising themes in the section of a text. We will use all of our texts to help the children develop vocabulary skills and widen their command of the English language. All of these skills are vital, not only for their tests, but also to help them get the very most of the books they enjoy reading. Poetry will also be explored this term in reading lessons and we will explore poems from Amazonia.

SPAG:

Spelling will continue to be taught using our No Nonsense Spelling program. The children will be taught new spelling patterns from the 5-6 word list, revise words from the 3-4 list and they be expected to apply this through all their writing and check their own errors regularly. There will be a greater emphasis on the children learning their own personal errors and they will be shown good learning techniques in school which they need to use in their own time to catch up on any gaps they may have. Logins will be coming soon for spellingframe.co.uk which provides excellent games and activities to help the children learn their spellings.

Grammar and punctuation skills will mostly be taught through the text type they are writing about, what is relevant to that text type and the targets they need to work on. Earlier skills such as basic punctuation, sentence cohesion and using some varied openers to their sentences will be taught and encouraged from the beginning. The children will also be encouraged to use SPAG.com to revise grammar test techniques. Their logins are written in their reading records. Please support your child where you can.

Grammar glossary for parents

SPAG.COM

https://spellingframe.co.uk/

Fun word searches, crosswords and more all based on Year 5 and 6 spelling words which you should know by the end of Year 6 (as well as the Year 3 and 4 of course)

In the first week, the children will be revising their calculation skills and addressing any arithmetic gaps that have arisen from their SATs tests last term. This will then be applied to reasoning questions. This will lead into their first unit on calculation and problem solving

We will then re-cap on decimal place value before our unit on measures where the children will convert measures, solve problems with measures and read scales. We also continue this with solving problems with time and reading and interpreting timetables and conversion graphs. We will finish the term with algebra.

In addition to maths lessons, the children will complete a 5-a-day reasoning challenge which will be part of their 'Maths Meetings. 4 times a week, there will be short separate arithmetic sessions to rehearse quick arithmetic skills.

For homework, every week, the children will be sent home the remaining two 5-a-day reasoning challenges and the arithmetic skills we have rehearsed that week. It is really important that the children spend a little time rehearsing concepts they have learned at school and practise test technique as much as possible for short bursts. Any help from home would be hugely appreciated.

I will also add extra activities to Maths.co.uk for those children who would like some extra practice. The beauty of this website is that it marks their answers instantly and enables you to see the areas that they struggle with. Their logins are written in their reading diaries.

For those that still don't know their times tables, they need to put a small amount of time on a regular basis to learn them. I will show them techniques in school.

https://www.timestables.co.uk/

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/tim es-table s

Our driver theme this term is Geography and is South America and Brazil. The children will use map skills to locate South America and identify its different countries and diverse physical geographical features before we focus on Brazil.

The children will explore and compare different types of maps and discuss the different geographical features that they show and be given the opportunity to sketch their own maps and devise their own key to show a geographical feature that they are interested in.

We will look at famous landmarks, the culture and the physical geography of Brazil and particularly focus on the economic development of the country. This will mean that the children will research the exports that Brazil has and how this relates to its climate and vegetation zones which they can link back to their studies on tropical rainforests in Year 5. The children will then look into the gap between rich and poor in Brazil and they will study the life of Brazilian street children in Brazil’s Favelas. They will compare this with life in the UK and look at the various charities there to help the poorest children in Brazil.

This half term, in Science, the children will be exploring the theme ‘Everything Changes’ which focusses on Evolution and Inheritance. We will study how animal and plant life has changed over time, study Darwin’s theory of evolution and look at his expedition to the Galapagos Islands. This will lead to a further study on variations in similar species of animals and how animals adapt to their environments. The children will also get the chance to study fossils and understand how they are formed.

Other areas of learning:

PE:

In physical education, the children will have the opportunity to study basketball taught by Mrs Balmer in the school hall and they will also be learning dance skills with a specialist dance coach.

Art/D&T:

In art we will be studying Cubism through the medium of block drawing, painting and printing. We will explore bright, flat colour and abstract art through the work of Pablo Picasso but also Natalia Goncharova and Lyubov Popova.

R.E:

In Religious Education the children will be studying Christianity and exploring the enquiry about whether anything is ever eternal.

Music:

This half term's unit is called 'Gaining Confidence Through Performance' This Unit of Work celebrates a wide range of musical styles. The clearly sequenced lessons support the key areas of the English Model Music Curriculum; Listening, Singing, Playing Composing and Performing. There are options for assessment, deeper learning and further musical exploration.

PSHE:

Personal, Social and Health Education is not only taught as a standalone lesson but runs through everything we do. The children will be following our Jigsaw scheme. This term's unit is about 'Dreams and Goals' where the children will be discussing their aspirations and how to achieve them.

MFL:

In Spring 1, the children will be learning the unit 'Le Weekend' where they will use their increasing French Language skills to discuss leisure activities they can do in France.

Computing:

In Spring 1, we will be studying Blogging on Purple Mash but also continue the thread of online safety which underpins all the teaching we do in computer technology.

Comprehension tasks for the half term or after

Extra practice for the children this half term.

If you would like an alternative year group please visit the year group of your choice and complete 'Week 4’ unit. You can navigate to these by choosing the subjects button at the top, then choose the year group of your choice, then choose the subject.

Then you can simply choose the lesson you want to complete.

Other sites you may choose to access for additional or alternative learning:

We understand that all families are being faced with different demands and challenges and therefore some of you may feel that these alternative resources work better for you and your circumstances:

BBC Bitesize, choose the year group you feel more comfortable with :

All of the below will help you with working from home

Click the pics or links for useful websites

English:

Spag.com - Use this to complete their SPAG homework or catch up on activities they may have missed in class.

Accelerated Reader - Use this link to get onto our Accelerated Reader website at home, your child has their login.

Get Epic! - Use this website to access 100s of books online. This is great if you are learning online and can't access books. Your child will be given a class code and can be assigned books, or they can choose books in their AR range.

Use these links to find an interesting image. What do you think is happening? Can you describe what is happening in your exercise book? Can you write a story about it?

Audible has lots of free audiobooks for children while you're learning at home.

Maths:

Learning with parents: Much of our maths (and some English) homework and any online learning will tap into the resources on this site. Your child will have had a login sent to a parent email address. Please ensure they are used to logging on and can do this independently. The videos are an excellent way of seeing how they learn maths concepts in school, so you can support your child with assigned topics.

This website has LOTS of age appropriate maths resources and they have produced home learning packs for each year group with helpful videos and activities for each day of home learning.

This website has lots of interactive maths games.

This website groups games together well and you can search by subject.

Times Table Rock Stars - your child has an individual log in for this.

This is a story based maths game which your child can log into with their TT Rock stars log ins.

Other subjects:

This is a fantastic website with lots of videos, interactive activities and printable resources around all the subjects as well as current events. Great for exploring if you want some extra material in your home learning.

Once clicking this link, choose 'Espresso' from the drop down log-in menu in the top right hand corner. You will receive a username and password for this website.

This website often has child - friendly news items, and they will be uploading some free content when schools close.

With this link you can take a virtual tour around the British Museum, London.

This website has lots of activities you can do in the garden, as well a lots of information about animals and plants for research tasks.

Joe Wicks 'The Body Coach' has a series of 5 minute videos aimed at children. He is also running a 30 minute PE session every morning at 9:00 on his youtube channel.

Take a look at these:

Daily activities to dip into

SEND SUPPORTED

We work with a company called SEND Supported at school and they are releasing newsletters each week offering support and guidance to parents of children who many have additional needs in school. Please find below a link to these newsletters:

There are also lots of other resources and information available on their website. The 'Things to do Issue 2 - Resources' file has some lovely activities for all children regardless of whether they have additional needs or not. There are lots of great visual puzzles and games for children to play so please have a look if you can. There are also resources available now to support with developing children's memory skills in 'Thing to do Issue 3 - Resources.'