Year 6 - Aslan & Gryffindor

YEAR 6 - ASLAN & GRYFFINDOR

CURRICULUM FOR SPRING 1

This half term our focus is on History and World War 2. We will begin by learning about the events leading up to WW2. This will include exploring arguments for and against appeasement. We will learn about Winston Churchill and his significant role during the war. Additionally, we will link our learning with Geography by mapping the ‘Axis’ invasion across Europe. We will also learn about the impact of The Blitz and rationing on the British people.

AS READERS 

We will read the text ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ by John Boyne, while continuing to build core reading skills including vocabulary and word meaning in context, inference, prediction, retrieval and summary. We will consolidate our understanding of the novel by using reading comprehension questions to assess our knowledge of plot, character, language and themes. We will analyse characters and explore the key themes of friendship, racism, ignorance, childhood, innocence, good. vs. evil and segregation. We will develop our understanding of key characters through empathy using discussion, hot seating, drama and writing activities.

AS WRITERS 

We will be writing a range of both formal and informal texts in a variety of genres linked to World War 2 and our core text ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’. We will build on our writing skills and become more cohesive and sophisticated writers, to produce texts that are engaging and appropriate for the intended audience. Children will write both fiction and non-fiction pieces of extended writing. Developing our descriptive writing skills for characterisation and setting a scene, we will focus on character perspective through letter writing and internal monologues. We will be linking our non-fiction writing to our history topic ‘World War 2’, focusing on the historical aspects of the novel to explain the effects of WW2.

AS MATHEMATICIANS 

We will be continuing to develop our number fluency as well as arithmetic and reasoning problem skills. Our main areas of learning will be converting units of measurements, ratios, position and direction, and consolidation of arithmetic skills. SATS Assessment week will take place in week 4, to ascertain the children’s progress in accordance with national standard levels. 

 

AS SCIENTISTS 

We will study Electricity. We will begin the unit by discussing the impact electricity has had on our lives. Using recognised symbols, we will represent simple series circuits in diagrams and then construct them to make complete working circuits. We will associate the brightness of a lamp/volume of a buzzer with the number/voltage of cells used in the circuit. We will also compare and give reasons for variations in how components function (e.g. the brightness of bulbs, volume of a buzzer).

PE 

Lessons will continue to take place on Thursdays. This term, pupils will be playing hockey and focusing on fitness levels. Please ensure pupils have the correct PE kit each week. 

HOME LEARNING 

In Year 6, pupils will receive English and Maths homework every Friday that must be handed in on Wednesday of the following week, which will be marked as a class. Please remind your child of the sanctions that are in place for non-completion of homework. In addition, pupils will be given a list of 20 spellings from the statutory spelling list each week, which they are expected to learn in preparation for a spelling test every Monday. (Pupils are expected to demonstrate learning using EdShed or, if this cannot be accessed at home, by writing spellings in their homework book).

Please continue to read regularly with your child at home, as reading regularly will help your child’s vocabulary knowledge, spelling and writing skills. Furthermore, we ask that you encourage your child to learn their multiplication tables up to 12. This is an ongoing expectation until your child can confidently recall them in a mixed order and using inverse operations. (Times Tables Rock Stars should be accessed to help them).