Class 6 Newsletter

September 2011

Dear Parents,

We are now a few weeks in to the term and the children have settled in very quickly into the new routines and expectations of Year 6. We have lots of new and interesting topics to cover over the year with some new IPC units.  Over the next few weeks we will be following a unit of work on a theme that focuses on “Making the News”.

In History – we will be finding out:

How people read, watch and hear about the news today

How people found out about the news in the past

In ICT – we will be finding out:

About the use of email and fax

How to create a page of a newspaper

How to create a multimedia presentation

How to plan and create a storyboard

All of the work we are going to do has been specially written to help your child reach the learning goals. Children will be reading, researching, writing, illustrating, working on their own and working in groups. We will be checking to see how well your child has learned through particular activities and by asking children to explain their work, perhaps to you.

Watch television news programmes together and talk about how they are presented and how editors decide which stories are most important. Encourage your child to look at some appropriate stories in newspapers and tell you what they think about how they are written and what they say.

Numeracy

We are following the Numeracy Framework covering a range of topics this term, including times tables, using decimals, rounding, square and prime numbers, number sequences and patterns, properties of 2D shapes and a variety of different problem solving activities.

Literacy

“Making the News” IPC unit fits in perfectly with our Year 6 Literacy topic on Journalistic Writing. Children will listen to and compare a number of news reports. They will take notes as a means of engaging with them. They will then create a news incident (on which they will later be asked to report) and they will explore the incident through role-play and drama. They will identify key language, structure, organisation and presentational features, as preparation for writing.

PE

Our PE lessons this year are on Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons.  For this half term.  We will be taking part in circuit training to build up fitness levels and trying to improve our ball control in football.

Unfortunately, we are currently unable to go swimming at Duston due to building work being carried out this term.  If the building work is completed by Christmas, there may be a chance that we can continue swimming lessons in January.

Homework

Learning Logs will be set on Thursdays and due back in Wednesdays.  Now they are in Year 6 and only a short time away from secondary school I would be expecting the children to complete their learning log independently.  As a parent you only need to ensure your child has sufficient time to complete the tasks.  Each week all homework should take about 2 and a half hours to complete, including learning spellings and reading. 

Spellings are set on Thursdays and are tested on the following Thursday. 

Children should be bringing home their list of spellings for the week with their Learning Logs.

We have mental maths tests every Friday morning but there is no homework associated with this.

If you have any questions about the contents of this newsletter or any other issues, please do not hesitate to contact me either by phoning the school, calling into the classroom or making a note in your child’s reading journal book.

Congratulations to our new House Captains!

Mr Lee Harlin

Year 6 Class Teacher