At St Michael’s our aim is to provide a rich curriculum and a wide range of opportunities that will build the habits of ambitious, capable learners.
As this is an important year in preparation for secondary school, please continue to encourage your child to focus, work hard and enjoy the learning opportunities so they are ready for their move to Key Stage 3. The Year 6 SATs usually take place in May, however, we are currently awaiting guidance regarding SATs for 2022. Please support your child with the weekly homework tasks as these will assist them in acquiring the skills and strategies they need.
Here is an outline of what the Year 6s will be learning during the Autumn Term:
Literacy
We will be developing the children’s reading comprehension skills by studying the book ‘Private Peaceful’, using a whole class reading approach. They will also have opportunity to practice their Reading Comprehension in preparation for the SATS. It is important that children can read for at least an hour, with sustained concentration, so we want to emphasise how important it is that they read at home every day and read a variety of texts – fiction and non-fiction.
In writing, the children will be given opportunities to apply their knowledge of grammatical features and will develop their skills as independent writers through a range of genres including diaries, letters, persuasive writing and non-chronological reports.
Numeracy
In addition to embedding the children’s mental maths skills, through our daily CLIC programme and BMBT (Big Maths Beat That), we are following the White Rose Maths curriculum, which covers the whole content of the National Curriculum. This term the focus will be:
- Place Value
- Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication & Division
- Fractions
- Geometry: Position and Direction
The children should also know all their times tables off by heart.
TOPIC (History/Geography)
As part of their History curriculum, the children will be learning about World War I. The First World War saw fighting across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa between 1914 and 1918. Also known as the Great War or World War I, it saw the introduction of new types of weapons (including tanks, aircraft and submarines) and new types of fighting. Battles were fought in terrible conditions and trench warfare was seen for the first time. No one had any idea how terrible the war would be or how many millions of people would be killed. By the time the war had ended large parts of the map of Europe had to be re-drawn. The destruction across Europe was on such a scale that the League of Nations was set up to stop a conflict of this size and horror ever happening again.
In the second half of this term, the children will be learning about ‘Changing Landscapes’, as part of their Geography curriculum.
Science: ‘light’
The aim of this unit is to teach children about light, how we see, shadows, reflection and refraction. We want the children to build up their knowledge of how light travels and how this enables us to see objects and exploring mirrors and the angles of reflection and incidence. The children will have the opportunity to develop their scientific skills by investigating refraction and experimenting with the effects of bending light.
Religious Education
In RE we learn about the 6 main religions in the world, and this term our focus is on Christianity. Our topic is Eternity and we will be exploring the key question: ‘Is anything ever eternal?‘
We will also be dedicating some time to deepen our understanding of our school values of ‘Respect’, ‘Resilience’ and in the second half term ‘Hope.’
PE
The children’s PE slot is on a Wednesday. This half term the children will be focusing on hockey skills – they will have the opportunity to develop their skills in travelling with the ball and keeping it under control when dribbling. They will be taught to link movements such as dribbling, passing and shooting together fluently while on the move. They will make tactical decisions within their performances and as a team.
CREATIVE CURRICULUM
In addition to all the learning already outlined, the children will also be given ample opportunity to do Art and DT (linked to their topic, but also a whole school art project), to participate in Music lessons, to take part in drama & dance activities, to develop their health and relationships education (HRE), to learn computing skills, including online safety and to learn a language other than English, which will be Spanish.
HOME learning
Home learning will include:
- A Mathletics task which will be set on a Monday and should be completed by the end of the week.
- Weekly spelling words to learn (children will be tested on a Friday).
The children will also be given a weekly comprehension (written) task on a Tuesday, which must be completed and handed in by the following Monday.
Children will be awarded DOJOs points for completing their homework.
stay in touch
If you wish to speak to us, please contact the school office via schoolmail@stmichaels.lewisham.sch.uk and we will be happy to address any questions or concerns you may have.
Thank you for your continued support.