Year 6 Friday 7th January 2022

Date: 7th Jan 2022 @ 3:37pm

Welcome back to our first blog of the Spring term. We hope you and your family had a great Christmas and New Year and are all healthy and keeping safe.

Our learning in Year 6 this week:

• In Maths, we have been revising our knowledge of place value with numbers up to three decimal places and developing our understanding of negative numbers.
• In English, we have started our new novel, ‘Tom’s Midnight Garden’, and have begun to understand the main characters of Tom, Aunt Gwen and Uncle Alan.
• In RE, we started a new topic, ‘Sources’, where we discussed what kind of books inspire us and why. We then wrote about our favourite book and how it affected our lives.
• In PE, we managed to fit in a session that we missed (due to Bank Holiday Monday) so we could assess our learning of team games through Hockey and Dodgeball. Remember, you can bring in a hat and gloves whilst it is cold to use during our PE lessons.
• In History, we discussed how we know about the past and what chronological order means. We then created our own timeline about our lives so far.
• In Music, we have been practising B, A and G chords on the recorder.
• In French, we learnt about how French people celebrate La fete des Rois- the Feast of the Epiphany, A special cake which contains a lucky charm is shared. Whoever gets the lucky charm in their slice becomes the King or Queen for the day.
• In Science, we began our new topic, ‘Health, the Heart and the Circulatory System’. We have started to look at the function of the heart, blood vessels and blood, then we research how to have a healthy heart and why it is important.

Home Practice all relates to this week’s learning. These are the tasks needed to be completed:

• Reading – Continue to read every night for 30 minutes. You also have a Reading Journal/Diary that must be used for the title of the book and any reading challenge chosen.
  • The days when you can change your book:
    • Monday – Roller Coasters
    • Tuesday – Big Dippers
    • Wednesday – The Waltzers

• Spellings (challenge words)
  • Sumdog (Suffixes Sp1 wk 1/2)

Next week we will be investigating the effects of suffixes on root words with -ing, -ed, -er, -est, -ly, -less, -ful, -ness

Caring, friendly, physically, nicest, happiest, hopeful, beautiful, careless, discussed, equipped, bruised, consciousness, attached, continued, luckier

• Maths challenges:
  • Counting:
    • This week we have been counting in whole numbers steps. Try to do the same out loud or with paper.
    • Draw a line with some marks on it like I do in class. You could write the numbers as you count up or down, then double check it to make sure you have said the correct numbers.
    • Start with these numbers: 400, 165, 5000 and count up 10 times then back again in 25:

                           400, 425, 450, 475, 500, 525, etc

                            and in 250:

                            400, 650, 900, 1150, 1400, etc

• Number facts:
  • To help your maths even more, please continue to learn your numbers facts, 6 + 8 = 14, 8 + 7 = 15.
  • The best way to do this is to simply have someone in your home quiz you with questions like (8 + 6, 6 + 5, 3 + 8, 5 + 9, etc)
  • Then get them to change the place value of these digits (0.8 + 0.6, 0.06 + 0.05, 0.5 + 0.9, etc)

• Sumdog (Times tables x6, x7, x8)
  • Each child has their own tables target which they should know. The Sumdog challenge may relate to their target but if not, you can always use the ‘trainer’ section of Sumdog for extra Tables Practice. Every Tuesday there is a tables test.

• Sumdog (Negative numbers)
  • For this challenge, there will be questions related to positive and negative numbers. The questions will ask you to decide which number is the most or least. This will be great practice for your learning next week.

Keep working through the Maths and Spelling Training. As you know, we set weekly challenges that are linked to the learning that takes place in school. As an extra feature, the maths and spelling training sections will provide a tailored challenge for your child to practise skills, facts and words that they find difficult. Once your challenges have been completed, use this feature for challenge in both spelling and maths.

Spend some time training so the program can learn the skills your child needs to work on and practise.