Binley Woods Primary School

Home Page Pre-School

Year 6

Our Team:

Mrs Balmer, Miss Jones, Mrs Carlin, Miss Fallon, Mrs Vickers

Spring Term

In English this term, initially, we will continue with the text 'Journey to the River Sea' by Eva Ibbotson and then we will move onto the text 'Trash' by Andy Mulligan. These two novels build on the work the children have already been learning about in their Geography theme on Brazil last half term. Each novel provides a very different perspective of life in Brazil and the children will be able to study this closely.

Through the absorption of these two novels, the children will explore powerful descriptive writing in which they will become both authors and illustrators. Using Trash, we will then focus on formal letter writing, a police report and finally narrative writing which continues a high action scene in the text. The children will then be given the choice of which novel they would like the class to finish.

Reading:

For reading lessons, we will continue to focus on the skills needed to help them to pass their SATs. We will also use both our texts: Journey to the River Sea and Trash to continue to work on inference but also sequencing and summarising the texts.

We will also be exploring two picture books based on our new history theme of Colonialism, Slavery and the movement of people. The books are 'The Rabbits' by John Marsden and Shaun Tan and 'The Island' by Armin Greder will be introduced on World Book Day.

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. Spellingframe.co.uk 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 and Punctuation Glossary for Parents

SPAG.COM

https://spellingframe.co.uk/

https://www.cgpbooks.co.uk/resources/ks2-sats-online-10-minute-tests

Grammar glossary for parents

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)

For this term, our work in maths will largely concentrate on applying reasoning to the excellent progress made in arithmetic skills through the topics the children have not visited yet which will be: Algebra, shape, and space, statistics, ratio and proportion with a return back to fractions, decimals, percentages and also calculations. It will be very much on a 'teach-practice-apply' model where we will link the guided teach to SATs examples.

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.

Our driver theme this term is History but builds on our Geography of Brazil theme from last term.

Firstly, we will re-visit South America and study how the country has changed since the times of Indigenous peoples and tribes right through to the period of discovery and European colonisation of the continent. The children will study how this has affected modern-day South America in terms of its people, culture and languages spoken. We will then look globally at colonisation and empire, looking in particular at the growth of the British Empire. The children will weigh up the pros and cons of an era of empire in terms of globalisation and discovery along with how resources and people were exploited in colonised and empire nations. Using the books, 'The Rabbits' and 'The Island' the children will understand how and why people have moved and why people continue to move and travel across borders today.

This half term, in Science, the children will continue and build on the themes learned from last term by studying natural organisms and life around us in The Nature Library. They will classify life into different groups including animal kingdoms, vertebrates, invertebrates and types of plant life and micro-organisms. We will look at the wildlife around our school and classify it and study micro-organisms and bacteria.

The children will build on their knowledge of variation, adaptation and lifecycles to study how all life produce offspring that has similar characteristics and they will look at the different types of reproduction in all plant and animal life.

Other areas of learning:

This term the children will be learning various skills in cricket and hockey. P.E will be on a Thursday and Friday. The children can come in wearing their P.E kits on those days.

In art this term, the children will be continuing their topic on Cubism which they started in Spring 1. So far the children have practised using block colours and shapes. They have practised portraiture using a Cubism style. They have researched famous Cubist Artists such as Pablo Picasso and female artists such as Lyubov Popova and Natalia Goncharova. They have also practised using paints incorporated into Cubist still life and practised forming collage from geometric shapes.

These skills will build into their final piece this term where the children will be choosing how they want to express a Cubist interpretation of a perspective they can choose from the following:

- Researching and developing 'Favela Art' based on their work on Brazil.

- Visually interpreting a favourite poem through the use of Orphism Cubism based on a poem inspired by Sonia Delaunay

- Incorporate 2 dimensional 3 dimensional Cubist shapes into a painting or model of Cubism

- Making a still life arrangement of their favourite hobby and transforming it into a Cubist work of art using 'The Musicians' by Pablo Picasso as an inspiration

. In design and technology, the children will begin their unit on sewing towards the end of this term. They will be making decorative felt cases - they can choose the purpose that they want their case for.

In Religious Education the children will be studying Christianity and exploring the enquiry 'Is Christianity still a strong religion 2000 years after Jesus was on Earth?' The theme will focus on Easter.

In Music this half term, the children will be exploring notation further through the theme: 'How does music teach us about our community?'

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 'Healthy Me' where the children will be discussing how to keep their minds, their bodies and their relationships healthy.

In Spring 2, the children will be learning the unit 'Les Habitats' This will link well with our Science unit and enable the children to explore the French language through nature.

In Spring 2, the children will be using Purple Mash and a programme called 2connect to design their own text adventures and interactive story books.

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.'