Year 6

Easter Holiday Update

As the next two weeks would have been your Easter holiday, children are not expected to do any work and we would like you to take a break. See the article below.

https://www.fieldingprimary.com/news/detail/coronavirus-covid-19-easter-holiday-childcare-and-/. We will next update our webpage on Friday 17th April and then continue to update every Friday. 

Ealing Council have released this flyer with a variety of great holiday suggestions and home-learning advice: https://search3.openobjects.com/mediamanager/ealing/directory/files/holiday_activity_newsletter_easter_2020_-_home_edition.pdf

In the meantime, here are some tips and suggestions to help you stay healthy and happy over the Easter break: 

MindUP

Practise daily brain breaks to keep yourself feeling calm and positive.

Focus on the new value for April of:  Reflecton and Self-regulation. Think about how you are showing these values during the Easter break. Reflect on how they link to the MindUP concepts of mindful awareness and mindful sensing. CAn you practise any mindful sensing at home? Choose some MindUP activities that you feel you would benefit from:

https://mindup.org.uk/mindup-activities/

Yoga 

Try daily Cosmic Yoga 

https://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga

Get Crafty!

If you are feeling crafty, try some of the following ideas. Remember to use recycled materials! 

Be inspired:

https://onelittleproject.com/easter-crafts-for-kids/

https://crazylittleprojects.com/25-easter-crafts-for-kids/

Some other ideas to keep you entertained... 

* Try cooking some of Jamie's delicious recipes

https://www.jamieoliver.com/features/category/get-kids-cooking/

* Make a rainbow for your window to support the NHS and other key workers 

* Write gratitude cards to thank people who are caring for you in your home

* Create and decorate an optimism jar - add positive thoughts daily

* Write and send a letter to a friend who you are missing from school to cheer them up

* Compose a song with or without lyrics using whatever instruments you have in the house (you could even make your own instrument!)  

* Create your own mindful colouring picture for a family member to colour

Have a fantastic Easter break, look after each other and stay safe! 

Covid-19 School Closure

We know that this is a difficult time for families, access to devices might be restricted due to multiple needs within your family. Therefore we are not setting any work that needs to be completed and sent back into school. We would however encourage you to create a routine for your child. This could include time where your child continues to focus on practising and rehearsing their basic skills. We have provided some links to websites below that you might find useful for this. In addition to this children will also get a lot out of the following activities:

• Reading regularly
• Lego or other construction kits
• Practising multiplication tables and number bonds
• Jigsaw puzzles
• Board games
• creative home learning (though no expectation to complete) 
• work through CGP English and Maths books (no expectation to complete)

Talking to your child about Coronavirus

A child friendly leaflet to share with your child is uploaded below.

You can also access Mindup activities here:

https://mindup.org.uk/mindup-activities/ 

These would be useful for your child at home. There is also an audio of the Brain Break. 

Also look at the links below for how to talk to your child about coronavirus:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51734855

https://youngminds.org.uk/blog/talking-to-your-child-about-coronavirus/

https://childmind.org/article/talking-to-kids-about-the-coronavirus/

PE

It is important to look after your physical and mental health during this difficult time and staying physically active is a great way of doing that. Although many of us are practising social distancing and staying at home more than we may do normally, there are still lots of things you can do at home to keep your physical activity levels up. Below are 2 very good resources to get you started. Please let Mr Thomas know via email if you have any questions or suggestions.

For the coming months we are also going to change the criteria for our Fielding Sporting Stars page on the website. We want to see videos or photos of what you are doing at home in order to stay active. It could be taking part in one of the ideas below, doing some cosmic yoga or a fitness video online or absolutely anything else. https://www.fieldingprimary.com/fielding-sporting-stars/

Also keep an eye out for the new ‘Fielding’s Always Active’ Challenge which will be coming soon to the website.

Stay active and stay healthy.

home.jasmineactive.com  Email: parent@fieldingpr-1.com Password: fieldingpr

‘Real PE at home includes an online programme which supports families to be active, play and learn together. It includes a programme specifically for children in Early Years and Key Stage 1 with 12 themes, 6 areas, over 250 activities and challenges and 1000s of hours of fun and activity. This programme is also great for family play and fun.

It also includes a programme for children in Key Stage 2, with daily and weekly guidance provided for both programmes (starting from next week) in addition to an option to choose your own themes and activities.

https://plprimarystars.com/news/home-learning-activities-school-closures - ‘Maths, English, Physical Activity and Health and Wellbeing for Key Stage 1 (5-7 year-olds) and Key Stage 2 (7-11 year-olds), with fun activities to keep children active and learning at home’

Every Friday we will continue to upload ideas on this page with links to good websites.

Take care and thank you for your continued support, we wish you and your families well, see you soon 

The Year 6 Team 

CGP Homework Books - voluntary contribution

Homework books are now being used well in all four classes. A voluntary contribution of £6 per child can now be made on laser. 

Home Learning

Top education researchers tell us that homework has minimal impact for primary age pupils, unless it requires children to rehearse and practise.  We have therefore adapted our routines to reflect this. The routines for children in this year group are as follows:

• Weekly Grammar and Maths home learning in practice books where they will go back over the skills learnt in class.
• Reading and/or talking about their reading to an adult for at least 20 minutes, 5 times a week. This will be evidenced through reading being recorded in reading records. Reading records and reading books should be coming into school daily. Reading records will be signed by teachers to check regular reading is occurring.
• Learning spelling patterns linked to age-related expectations ready for use in dictation towards the end of every week. These spellings will be on year group notice boards and should be practised at home. 
• Reciting multiplication tables to increase their fluency so that they can be applied in other areas of maths and problem solving. These will be  tested in our weekly times tables challenge and will be sent home.
• Half-termly creative home learning will be set at the start of each half term and will celebrated and fed back on during our creative home learning showcases.

Spelling 

Spelling pattern   Curriculum words

(ible and able)

adorable                 cemetery

understandable       language

possible                  shoulder

considerable          occupy

visible                    recognise

suitable          

Previous week: 

Spelling pattern   Curriculum words

(ible and able)

responsible            community

comfortable            convenience

reasonable            rhyme

dependable          leisure 

reliable                immediate

terrible                

Letters

Keeping safe

Knife crime awareness

Ealing Council has sent this letter to all schools addressed to parents and carers. The content maybe more relevant to older pupils who attend High schools. In our PHSE curriculum, we talk about coping with peer pressure, including alcohol, drugs and knives. Our local PCSO also visits to talk about knife safety to pupils.

Dealing with peer pressure in PSHE

Our new PSHE unit is called "Say NO!" where we will be talking to the children about the subject of peer pressure and how to react in different situations.  Each lesson will discuss different scenarios including the dangers involving drugs, alcohol. smoking and knives. These are important areas so we approach these in a gentle discussion way where we discuss children's current knowledge and then focus on scenarios to help children consider how to act. We will be following up on the subject of knives  and peer pressure through a lesson with our local Police community support officer in March as well as follow up lessons on peer pressure throughout the year if needed. 

Cooking and Gardening

We are very proud to provide a fantastic opportunity for our pupils to attend class cooking sessions during school hours. Sessions commenced in September and an annual voluntary contribution of £12.00 to cover the cost of ingredients has been uploaded to your Laser school cashbook. Your prompt payment is really appreciated.

Mental health and well-being

Please see the links below which include useful information and details related to the menta health and well-being of pupils, including guidance, tips and helpful websites.

Reading

'Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body' - Richard Steele

• We encourage the children to read at least 5 times a week, recording each time in their reading records/planners. They should be signed by an adult at least once a week please and will also be signed by class teachers. Children must bring them in daily. The diary and organisation of this resource will prepare the child for further independence. 

• We have spent the first few days assisting the children in choosing appropriate level books, which include books from the recommended reading list. These are the books we would like the children to read. They will also be having the opportunity to choose books from the library. 

• We will also focus this year on reading high quality texts to the children due to a wide range of academic research on the benefits of this. We now have a daily story telling session where will we read to the children a focus book which will be a book we are reading in English or a book from the recommended reading list. 

Our focus books

• The railway children
• Hansel and Gretel
• The diary of Anne Frank
• Street child
• The Hobbit
• Macbeth

Year 6 recommended reading list

The English team in school have worked hard to identify 40 appropriately challenging books for the children in Year 6. The recommended reading lists contain 40 age-appropriate books for children in Year 6 which will capture the children's imagination. The lists contain colour-bands and a description of the books so that the children are able to 'cherry-pick' their favourites according to their book-band level and their personal interests.

While it is not compulsory for the children to read these books, it is highly recommended as it will deepen your child's inference, retrieval and vocabulary skills while also strengthening their love for reading. 

At the end of each half-term, teachers will award bronze, silver and gold certificates in reward assembly to pupils who have read a set number of books from their year group list AND completed a short reading response activity. The children have been provided with a lined A4 book to record their response activity in. 

Ideas for these short reading responses might be any one of the following; 

- Describing settings and characters from the story

- Identifying possible alternative endings

- Predicting what might be in a sequel (the next book if the story was carried on)

- Summarising the story in 6 bullet points 

- Writing a book review

If you have any queries or questions, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s class teacher.

Times Tables Rockstars!

Times Tables Rockstars is a online programme we have introduced to encourage children to have fun with multiplication facts while improving fluency, recall and speed. Children can access it in their own time on any IOS, Android or Windows device.

What is it?

Times Tables Rock Stars is a carefully sequenced programme of  times tables practice. This programme has very successfully boosted times tables recall speed for hundreds of thousands of pupils over the last 7 years in over 4500 schools - both primary and secondary - worldwide.

How does it work?

Incorrect answers are always immediately corrected in front of your child so that they start to associate the correct answer to every question. The clever code behind the scenes works out which times tables facts each child is consistently taking longer to answer and then it gradually starts to present these facts more frequently until they have mastered them. It will also ask related division questions 20% of the time in order to reinforce division facts.

Is this instead of the times table challenge completed in class?

No, this is to supplement the times tables challenge, giving children a fun way to practise and challenge themselves.

Where does this fit with National Curriculum expectations?

From June 2020, all pupils at the end of year 4 in England will take an online multiplication tables check .The national curriculum specifies that pupils at this stage should be able to recall the multiplication tables up to and including 12x12.

The check aims to support pupils to master multiplication skills, which are essential for future success in mathematics. It will help to identify pupils who have not yet mastered this mathematical concept, so additional support can be provided.

How do I log in?

Log in here: https://ttrockstars.com/login, use your child'd details that came home at the end of the Summer Term, lost them? Speak to your child's class teacher.

Learning This Week

Maths

This week, we are working on geometry.

English

We will be writing a narrative and autobiography based on the events of our current book, Street Child.

Fielding Learning Challenge Curriculum - History - Why was Queen Victoria so iconic?

 Follow the Year 6 link below to our Knowledge Organisers designed for each challenge. This will provide you with the key information we aim for children to have learnt by the end of each challenge. 

Specialist subjects