Monday 14th September 2015

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Welcome back to you all! I do hope that you had a lovely time with families and friends over the Summer break. As another school year starts, there is already great effort in the work that is up and running in class with this new Year 6. I know how much I am looking forward to the year ahead and helping prepare the children for their transition to secondary school. I know from previous experience that the opportunities and enrichment here at Theale Primary School, paired with your positive and valuable support, will do these children very well indeed. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Mrs Dobashi to you, who will be carrying out her teacher training with us this year.

As I’m sure you are all very aware the children take their end of primary school SATs this year and whether we like them or not, no one can deny that they are a huge part of the judgements made by the government about our school and your children. You may be aware that there have been changes to the curriculum this year implemented by the government, this year’s cohort will be the first to be assessed against the new National Curriculum criteria.

Please find below an overview of the topics that the children will be learning about within each subject area.

Subject / Overview
Maths / Reading, writing and ordering numbers to 10,000,000
Rounding
Decimal numbers, including multiplying them by 10,100 and 1000
Number sequences
Multiplication and division strategies
English / Biographies and Autobiographies
Setting & character descriptions
Historical stories
Punctuation, Grammar and Spelling
Science / Light
Electricity
History / The Victorians: When was the period? Who reigned over Britain? What differences did the introduction of railways make to Britain? How as this a turning point in British history and society?
DT / Biscuits: Making own biscuits, designing packaging, pricing and advertising.
Art / Public Art Sculpture, All about me and more about me.
RE / Sikhism: What is Sikhism? What are the values and beliefs? What is a Gurdwara? Who are the important people associated with the religion?
Christianity: Christmas – What does it mean and values reflected in life and through religions?
Music / Steel Panning , Exploring Rounds – singing and playing music in two or more parts. Exploration of harmony. Performing to an audience/School production. Music appreciation.
Life Skills & ICT / Life Skills: Employability and enterprise skills including career optionsand personal presentation techniques.ICT: Toexplain and program each of the steps in my algorithm to achieve a planned outcome.To evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of my algorithm while I continually test the programmingof that algorithm.
PE / Gym: Sequences and evaluating performances Games: Tag Rugby
Swimming Specialist Dance
Outdoor Education / Environmental studies and team building activities

Homework

Homework will be set on a Thursday, to be handed in on the following Monday. For the majority of weeks, there will be spellings with the focus not just on the words being learnt, but also on the spelling rules involved. In addition, there will be times tables sheets and other maths activities.

Specialist teaching

We are fortunate enough to have many specialist teachers across the school. In year six the children will have Music, Drama and Dance on a Friday afternoon. These sessions will be taught by Miss Watson, Carrie Jones and Debbie Camp. Madame Ison will continue to teach French language and cultural studies on a Tuesday afternoon. This year the children are really excited about learning to play the steel pans with Mary Genis and Danny on a Tuesday morning.

PE

The children will have PE on alternate Mondays and every Friday. Therefore please ensure that their PE kit is in school all week. Within the PE kit, the children should have shorts, a white t-shirt and plimsolls for indoor PE and tracksuit bottoms, a sweatshirt and trainers for outdoor PE. They should also have a change of socks. This is especially important for girls who will need to change from tights within PE lessons. Can I please also ask that for safety reasons, any ear-rings/studs are removed for all PE activities as soons as is possible after any initial piercing. Only during the initial ‘healing’ period will children be allowed to wear tape to cover these. I thankyou for your support on this as I have witnessed what can happen to caught jewellery previously and would hate for this to ever occur to a child, or anyone for that matter.

Outdoor Education

Please see separate letter.

Uniform

Thank you for returning your child to school looking so presentable. The smart appearance of our children is often noted by the public. It is school policy that children should tie their hair up if it is long enough due to health and safety requirements. We also request that children do not have any unnatural colours or extreme styles, for example no stripes, steps or shapes cut into their hair please.

Water bottles

I would like to take this opportunity to remind you of the school’s policy on water bottles. Children are kindly requested to bring a bottle containing water which they will have access to throughout the day. We ask for water instead of items such as orange because this can be very sticky when spilt and can do a lot of damage to books and equipment. Therefore, water is far better for the children to have within the classroom should any spillages occur! Having water readily available also helps to support our Healthy Schools initiative. The children may however have a separate drink of squash or similar (no fizzy drinks please) in their lunchbox. This drink can be drunk whilst they are having their lunch. Thank you in advance for your support in this matter.

I hope this information will be useful to you. Should you have any questions, please come and see me and I shall do my best to be available for you. Here’s to a progressive and inspiring term with, yes a lot of hard work for the children, although fun and opportunities mixed in!

Yours sincerely,

Samantha Wilson

Year 6 Class teacher/ Upper Phase Team Leader