Year 6 Archive
Week Beginning 7th December
In maths this week we have been looking at all areas of arithmetic that the children may face in the SATs, as well as focussing on the areas that individual children have identified as areas of difficulty. This means that for home learning, I would recommend that the children look in their CGP books and work through any areas that they feel that they are struggling with.
In English the children are planning and writing a Christmas story set in World War 2. At home, I would recommend that the children write some fictional setting and character descriptions. Focus on expanded noun phrases, fronted adverbials, relative clauses and adjective pair openers.
Week Beginning 30th November
It has been a week of assessments and general finishing off of bits and pieces this week – hence no update until today. First, I need to say how remarkably well the children have done in their maths assessments (reading comes next week). They have all made astonishing progress since the beginning of September and should all be very proud of themselves. By now, most of the class know the progress that they have made over the last three months. The rest will find out on Monday (we ran out of time today).
As for home learning. I would advise spending this week / weekend getting used to the CGP books. The children all seemed appropriately excited to get them during the week, so have a look through those books with them. They will know the areas that they find difficult, and the books will absolutely cover those areas. There is also work posted on maths.co.uk to complete.
UPDATE: I have given the children some weekend thinking homework – next week we will be starting (hopefully finishing) our final piece of writing for the year. It is entitled “Christmas in an Anderson Shelter”. The homework is to think of an idea to base their story around. The only brief I have given is that it has to have some Christmas magic involved. Interpret that how you will!
Week Beginning 23rd November
The maths.co.uk I promised is running late, my apologies!
Week Beginning 16th November
This week we have kicked off by looking at ratio. It can be a tricky topic for the kids, but we have found that if you take one of two approaches to solving ratio problems it can be made quite simple. The two approaches are dependant on the questions that they face.
When faced with a question like “In 30 days, the ratio of wet days to dry days is 4:1. How many wet and dry days were there?” the best bet is to take the following steps:
- Calculate the total amount of ‘shares’. This means adding both sides of the ratio togather. in this case, 4+1, which is, of course, 5.
- Once you have the total amount of shares, calculate what each share is worth. This is done by dividing the total number of days (in this example) by the total number of shares. 30 divided by 5 is 6.
- Finally, as with fractions, calculate how many wet days and dry days there were (wet days = 4×6, dry days = 1×6). Following these steps, we know that there are 24 wet days and just 6 dry days in that 30 day spell.
The second method is similar to using fractions too. It would be used to answer a question where we have been given a ratio and have been given one of the actual figures involved too, for example “In a supermarket, the ratio of female staff to male staff is 2:3. If there are 36 male employees, how many female employees are there?”
- See what 3 must be multiplied by to make 36 (12)
- Multiply 2 by the same number – as with fractions, if you do something to the number on the right, you must also do it to the number on the left. 2 x 12 = 24, so there are 24 female workers in the shop.
Below are some of the shets that the chlidren have been working through. It will be useful to revisit the sheets that they have already done, and look at some of the ones that they haven’t.
There will be some English work up later in the week, we are currently looking at errors and misconceptions from last week’s assessments.
Week Beginning 9th October
More assessments taking place this week (lucky kids!) One of the main things to come out of the maths assessment is the need to improve on our percentage work – so here we are with a sheet of percentage questions that could come up in the SATs!
Further percentage work can be found on Maths.co.uk, click here.
In English, the kids have been writing a setting description for a trench. They have focussed on emotional language (particuarly sad adjectives… sadjectives), metaphors and similes and expanded noun phrases. It would be really useful for parents to have a look through their children’s book with them to see if they can find examples of these when the author is describing a setting.
Week Beginning 2nd October
Before and after half-term the children have been doing some brilliant work with fractions. Over the past couple of weeks we have covered finding fractions of amounts, equivalent fractions, simplifying fractions, multiplying / dividing / adding / subtracting fractions and finally the relationship between fractions, decimals and percentages. The kids have done an amazing job of taking on all of this information and have shown fantastic understanding of the methods involved. Attached are some reasoning questions that we are intending to move on to next week to consolidate and deepen their understanding of the processes. The answers are attached. The documents get more difficult as you go down.
Please see the videos above for a quick reminder of how to carry out the processes above, should any of the kids need it!
Wednesday 21st October
We have been looking at war poetry this week. Attached below are the poems that we have studied. The children would benefit from looking over them again and considering the comprehension questions that have been set. Further to this, they can highlight common features of the poem, and try to write their own version of a war poem based on those features. In class they have planned this using a spider diagram, if they want their poem to take a narrative form they could plan using a storyboard. I would love to read any additional poems that the children compose!
In maths this week the children have been looking at adding and subtracting fractions. We have encouraged the children to find common denominators by writing the times tables underneath the fraction (if they cannot see a common denominator immediately) . For some of the trickier subtraction questions (where there is a mixed number and the fraction that is being subtracted from is larger than the fraction that is being subtracted) the childrne have been shown how to borrow one from the whole number to make a top heavy frarction, then find the common denominator and continue with the calculation. If there are any problems / is any confusion please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Friday 16th October
Sorry for the radio silence this week, it’s been a hectic one! A little different layout for home learning this week – instead of a few days of work / videos, I’ll leave a selection of resources here to have a look at.
In maths this week we have been looking at fractions. The children have done remarkably well and managed to cover and show a good understanding of finding equivalent fractions, simplifying fractions and comparing / ordering fractions. To get a good look at what they have retained we have completed some reasoning questions which you can find below.
In English, the children started the week with some assessments. If you want to have a look through them with your child they can be found here: SPAG, Reading.
We have also looked at reported speech, have a look at the video below for a bit more help. Try and write your own sentences that use reported speech.
Friday 9th October
We have finished the week off in style with some maths assessments (the kids have made great progress already this term, having looked at the results).
I think it would be a great bit of home learning to have a look over these papers at home, with parents and go over any areas that the children remember finding tricky or were confused by. Click this link to access the exact papers we tackled (arithmetic and two reasoning papers) along with the mark schemes (you’re welcome… Y6 maths is hard)
Wednesday 7th October
We have been consolidating our knowledge this week in maths with methods of multiplication and division being covered and reasoning questions being attempted. As such, the maths home learning is taking the form of perp work for next wek when we will look at fractions. Log on to maths.co.uk (the kids have their login details in their homework diaries) and have a go at the challenges on there.
In English, we have been looking at reporting direct speech. I forgot to mention in the video that it is important to remember that everything that has been said should be included in the speech marks, as well as any relevant punctuation (paying a lot of attention to exclamation and question marks). So, without any further ado – here are the videos!
Tuesday 6th October
No video today, just a link to the work that we looked at in English today. This was a reading comprehension that focussed on retrieving information from and explaining pieces of a bit of writing. Good luck!
Thursday 1st October
We have had a look at a letter from another letter from the trenches. This time there is some key information missing. The children can have a look at some of the clues surrounding the missing information to try and predict what the brave and heroic act might be.
In maths the children have been using the multiplication method (see Wednesday 16th September) to multiply numbers with decimals. Some of the questions are below.
Tuesday 29th September
This morning the children used a storyboard to plan a letter from the trenches. A terribly sad letter, announcing the death of a soldier to his family. The children looked at expanded noun phrases, fronted adverbials, relative clauses and interesting vocabulary. Having a go at writing one of these letters at home following my plan, or creating a plan of their own would be a fantastic way for the children to consolidate what they learned today.
Monday 28th September
As mentioned above, here you can download the text messages intercepted from our time travelling, text messaging soldier! They were sent under a lot of pressure though, so they might need a bit of correcting! Luckily, he used a lot of our spelling words! There is plenty of grammar and punctuation to correct too… See how I used too and to there too? Something to keep an eye on (there is a helpful little video about that underneath the messages too… oop there it is again!)
If you want a challenge, you can have a go at adding fronted adverbials and expanded noun phrases to some of the messages to make them even better! Below the messages you can find our addition and subtraction reasoning problems to have a look over. Enjoy 🙂
Friday 25th September
Spellings! This week our spellings are mostly related to our topic, World at War. The words for the children to learn are:
demise
sorrow
testament
overwhelming
grief
sincerely
battalion
brigade
trenches
mourning
As well as the following four words from the Year 5/6 word list:
programme
mischievous
nuisance
prejudice
The children can learn these words in whichever way suits them best.
Tuesday 22nd September
A little reading video here. We are looking at reading comprehension, with a focus on word reading and inference. You can have a look at the comprehension done in class below. You can also have a go at some of the challenges mentioned in the video if you would like. My favourite of these is writing a reply to the letter. This would help with the prediction skill which is an important part of reading comprehension.
There are maths questions below the video too, we looked at place value to ten million today. These questions are different to what was done in class, so if you were in school today you can have a go at these too!
Place value to 10,000,000 questions
Monday 21st October
I hope you all had a great weekend. The children have come back raring to go. In this video you’ve got me (you lucky devils) explaining the bus stop method for division. There are some questions to have a go at underneath, as well as the appropriate page of the Calculations Policy.
Click here for division questions
Wednesday 16th September
Rose is explaining how to complete the column method of long multiplication. As with subtraction and addition, it is important to ensure that children understand the column that they are working in (ones, tens, hundreds, thousands etc) and that they might not be calculation 4 x 3, but in fact 40 x 3 etc.
Tuesday 15th September 2020
Here is John explaining some subtraction! When I am explaining subtraction to the children I always make sure I stress the importance of Hundreds, Tens, Ones etc and remind them that when we ‘borrow’ from another column, we are not necessarily just taking one, we are actually taking one ten, one hundred, one thousand etc.
Monday 14th September
This week is baseline assessment week across school, we are assessing where the children are academically to help our teaching moving forward (don’t worry, we are going to ensure it is a nice week for the children and not too heavy!) As such, I’m going to be putting up resources for key skills this week, starting with Ella explaining addition. Below you can find the relevant page of our calculations policy and some practise questions to have a go at!
Remember, this homework is due in week beginning 28th September.
