Miss Allatt - mallatt@st-peters.wakefield.sch.uk

You can find out what we are currently learning on our Curriculum Newsletter.

A big hello and welcome back to school! I hope you have all had a fantastic, safe summer and I look forward to a hard-working and exciting year ahead!
Just a note to parents/carers that if there is anything at all that I can help with throughout the year, please don’t hesitate to ask!

In Year 6, we encourage the children to be organised and prepared for each school day. We aim to further develop their independence and organisational skills in order to help prepare them for their next step in education. Your continued support in every aspect of your child’s learning is always very much appreciated.

Important Information

Homework

English and Maths homework will be set on a Friday to be due back in school the following Friday.

New spellings will be given out each Friday and tested the following Friday. Every child has a log in for Spelling Shed where spelling tasks will be set weekly to aid in your child’s learning of the set spellings.

It would be really appreciated if you could encourage your child to complete their homework at home to support their learning journey.

Maths

Every child has a log in for Mathletics and TT Rock Stars. They will be set weekly Mathletics activities to complete and should try to access the activities set as often as possible. As a school we have a focus on ensuring all children know their times tables up to 12x12 and your help will be much appreciated with this as times table knowledge is essential and relied upon in many aspects of maths. The children can access TT Rock Stars to help practise their tables at home.

English

Reading plays an important part in children’s learning and therefore we ask that your child reads for a minimum of 20 minutes every day. It would be great if you could read with your child and for them to read on their own as well. Please don’t forget to fill in and sign their reading record and ensure reading records and books are in school every day! Each Friday, reading records will be checked and raffle tickets awarded for reading 5 lots of 20 minutes a week.

Every child has a log in for Reading Eggspress. This resource can be used alongside your child’s reading book to enhance their reading for pleasure and comprehension skills. It would be fantastic to see 6Willow at the top of the scoreboard this year!

PE

Our PE sessions will be on a Tuesday and Wednesday. The children should bring their PE kit in a bag and will get changed for PE at school on these days. These lessons will take place outside. Please make sure that your child has an appropriate outdoor kit (white round neck PE top, black/dark jogging bottoms or shorts, trainers).

Half-term Overview

This half-term our topic is A Pollution Solution. We will be studying all about the effects of plastic pollution particularly in our oceans. Did you know that plastic can take between 20 to 1,000 years to decompose?

We will also be learning about living things and their habitats: What does a taxonomist do? What is a classification system? What are microorganisms?

This half-term, in PE, we have been developing our netball skills. We ended our unit this week with playing in intra-competitions with our friends. 

In Art, we have been analysing the work of Christina Balit to help us with our own illustrations. We used a variety of materials to generate patterns that are found in the Middle East where Christina grew up. 

Our theme on Science day this year was 'Our Diverse Planet'. In 6 Willow,  our focus was on Anthropology (the scientific study of humanity). We completed our own research into the diversity of the people in our own class through gathering statistical data and finger print evidence – a great time was had by all!

To start our new topic - Gods and Mortals - we celebrated all that is Ancient Greece in a day. We really enjoyed dressing up, writing our names using the Greek alphabet, designing and creating our own Greek pots, tasting Greek cuisine and participating in a mini-olympics. 

After learning all about WW2 shelters in our History lessons, we put our new knowledge to use and created our very own models of Anderson Shelters. Please ask us what the difference is between an Anderson Shelter, a Community Shelter and a Morrison Shelter. 

We have loved our DT project this term - designing, making and evaluating a product for a year 2 child to improve their hand-eye co-ordination and knowledge of WW2. It was great to be able to test our products and gain the opinions of our intended user. 

We marked the start of Anti-Bullying week by wearing odd socks to school for the day. Marking kindness is something we try to show every day in 6Willow, however, we created our own odd socks to symbolise the importance of it. 

We visited St Peter's church to explore the question 'What do Christians say to us when life gets hard?'. We had a fantastic morning: working in small teams to complete challenges, learning about lamenting and reflecting on what we could do when life gets hard. Thank you Kathryn!

In Science, we have been investigating the question 'what is electricity?' 

We had lots of fun experimenting with balloon to create static electricity and understand the importance of protons and electrons. 

We had a fantastic night at the school disco dancing the night away with our friends! Even Miss Allatt joined in! We can't wait for the next one! 

In Science, we have been learning about the components of our blood. Using a range of ingredients to represent the components we had lots of fun making blood smoothies. Please ask us what ingredients we used to make our smoothies and what they represent!  

We have been using our maths knowledge of the four operations to help us calculate the amount of people who have relocated to the UK, Germany and France. 

In PE, we have been training to become games leaders. Working in groups we have discussed what makes a good leader and have planned games that we can use with others in the playground.