Friday 21 April 2017

Welcome back!

Welcome back from the Year 6 team!


Wow! What have you done with your children over the Easter break? They have come back even more determined, hard-working and ambitious if that were possible. In the run up for SATs, our Year 6 pupils are applying themselves with enthusiasm and resilience every day and every lesson. What an impressive start!


In English, some sets have been writing mystery stories, whilst others have been exploring discussion texts. Perhaps some parents of the children in Mrs Renier and Mrs Wellham's English set could explore this debate: should the school day be extended? It would be helpful to discuss this issue at the dinner table. Which specific arguments for and against could your children come up with?


In Maths, we are revising all aspects of the KS2 curriculum (phew!) and the children are coping well with the new pace. Homework sent home is based on examples of SATs questions which help the children get used to the format they will be faced with in May.


In Science, we have started a new topic on Inheritance and Evolution. Might be an idea to explore family traits both with regards to personalities and physical appearances and discuss these? Could be good fun!


No spellings are sent home now as we are revising all the rules and spelling patterns in school. However, a revision booklet on the use of tense has been sent home. Parents are given some guidance in that booklet should they need to help their children. Reading comprehension has also been sent home to complete over the week-end. If you can, please insist the children do the following:
- read the questions once before they read the text
- read the text and highlight key words
- read the questions again, this time highlighting key words
- 2 mark question necessitate 2 points OR 1 point with an explanation and evidence


Finally, a heads-up for SATs week (you will be sent more details about the week nearer the time). Here is the timetable for the tests:
Monday: Reading Comprehension
Tuesday: Grammar and Spelling
Wednesday: Arithmetic and Maths Reasoning Paper 1
Thursday: Maths Reasoning Paper 2


SATs week, ironically, tends to be the children's favourite week of the year for the Year 6 at Crabtree. They get a chance to prove themselves and show off the progress they have made over their time at our school. However, they are also a little spoilt as afternoons give them a chance to relax and take part in fun activities. One of those activities will be designing and making Year 6 school journey t-shirts. For this, we will need the children to bring:
- a plain white t-shirt
- fabric they might want to sew onto their t-shirt
- any fabric pens/pencils they might want to use (although we do provide these at school)
- anything else they might want to add to their t-shirts.


We will email all parents the Friday before SATs week with a reminder of all the above and further guidance on how to best support your child during that week. That said, we believe that relaxed happy children perform better. Your children have worked extremely hard for the past two terms. We cannot expect more from them; in a way, they have done all the hard work already. Whilst they will want to show an excellent work ethic in the next few weeks, we are also committed to their overall wellbeing.


Have a lovely weekend.


The Year 6 team.