Welcome to Year 6, Spiders Class

Spiders class consists of Mrs Holt, the class teacher, supported by Mrs Perry, an additional class teacher who will be teaching the children on Fridays. We are also extremely lucky to have the amazing Mrs Harris, our class teaching assistant and most importantly, the wonderful children who make each day in the classroom lively, exciting and full of giggles! InY6 we ALL work really hard but have LOTS of fun and make every day special and rewarding for the children.

Year 6 is a key year in the life of a primary school child. Not only are they embarking on their final year at primary school but they have to sit their SATS in May (11th-14th). These are national tests that every Y6 child in the country has to sit at the same time. But panic not...they will be the most well-prepared children ever by the time May comes! 

Below is some information about how we organise our week.

Timetable

When the children come in at 8.45am they complete their Early Bird Maths questions - this will really help with their arithmetic but also gets their brains warmed up for the day. 

At 9:00am, we teach spelling, learning the rules and conventions of different spelling patterns. 

Maths follows at 9.30am with children working hard to complete their tasks. 

After break, we start our English lesson with children commonly working in groups, pairs or independently after the initial input. 

We then run our Guided Reading session from 11.30 to 12.00. This is a class session, with Teacher/TA support given.

Foundation subjects, including Humanities (History/Geography), Music, PSHE, PE, Spanish and Computing are taught in the afternoons across the week. RE and Science are also taught once a week.

We have decided to hold Art and DT days this year. The children will have whole days to plan, design, create and evaluate their fantastic work. More details about these will follow. 

PE/Forest School timetable 

We will also be having additional PE days where we spend a day focusing on gymnastics, dance or outdoor education. 

Homework

All children in Spiders, regardless of their ability, are expected to read for at least 25 minutes each day to increase their reading skills, vocabulary and knowledge of grammar and punctuation. Their reading records should be signed by an adult at home and must be handed in each Thursday. Children are then entered into the reading raffle if they have read at least 4 times a week, so please do encourage your child to bring their record in. 

In Y6, homework also consists of:

1 piece of SPAG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) homework

1 piece of maths (usually arithmetic based) and

a list of spellings to learn.

Each term there will be an optional project to complete with the focus being on our topic for the term. There will be a choice of different ways to complete it. 

Homework is set on a Friday and to be handed in by the following Thursday, giving plenty of time for it to be completed. We expect all homework tasks to be completed by children as this is really good preparation for the increased volume of homework that children will receive in Year 6 and in Secondary School.

If homework is not handed in, the children will spend half of their Thursday lunchtime completing the work. If there are issues surrounding homework or children don't have a quiet space to work at home, we can support them at school but we do need to know about this. 

As revision ramps up in preparation for the Y6 SATs, homework will be more focused around revision papers. 

Trips

We have many exciting school trips to look forward to in Y6. In Autumn we visit Winchester Science Museum focusing on our Science topic, The Circulatory System. We also get involved in the local community as part of our work on Fairtrade. In Spring we will be focusing on our topic of Climate change and the changes to our local environment and further afield in the Arctic.  We take a trip to Studland beach to see first-hand the effects of climate change in our local area.  In the summer term, we will be taking part in an activity week, the Dragon's Apprentice project plus many other fun leavers' activities to look forward to. 

Please remember, we have an open door policy – please come and speak to any of the Year 6 staff if you have any questions or worries.

We look forward to a fantastic year in Spiders Class.

Best wishes,

Mrs Holt and the Y6 team.