Welcome to Year 6

Our class is called Monarchs and we are taught by Miss Abbott. Mrs Green is our teaching assistant. Miss Bourne also supports our class in the afternoons.

PE

Monarchs have PE lessons with a specialist teacher, Mr Stevenson-Leigh, on Mondays. Children will need to wear their PE kit to school every Monday and will remain in it all day. In the autumn term, Thursday's PE lesson is swimming. Please ensure that children have the correct kit so that they can successfully participate. 

Library

Children in Monarchs will have the opportunity to visit the school library every Thursday. They will be able to choose a book to take home to read. If they need to change a book, please ensure that they have it in school on a Thursday.

Home Learning

Give Me Ten - Children are expected to read for at least ten minutes every day and should record this in their reading record. Children should bring their reading record to school every day. In year 6, children are not expected to always read to an adult, however a parent/carer will need to sign their reading record to show that they have read at home. Further information and recommended texts can be found under the reading star at the top of the page. We hope to see lots of children becoming Reading Champions this year! 

Maths Magicians - There are a number of key mathematical facts that children should know and remember. These are, of course, taught in school but it is essential that children practise them at home too. You can find out which facts your child is currently working on by checking the record in the front of their maths home learning book. Further information and practice ideas can be found under the maths star at the top of the page. Children will be quizzed on their maths facts every Friday. As they progress through the different stages of facts, children have the opportunity to earn rewards and work towards becoming Maths Magicians!

Times Tables - Times tables (and the associated division facts) are a vital part of mathematical knowledge and understanding. It is crucial that your child practises these skills at home by logging onto the Times Table Rockstars website daily, for at least ten minutes. Their username and password can be found in the front of their maths home learning book.

Handwriting - Using www.letterjoin.co.uk, your child can practise their handwriting at home. There are desktop and tablet login details that can be found by clicking on the writing star at the top of the page.

Spelling - In school, we will teach the children spelling patterns and rules. At home, we would like the focus to be on learning and practising the Year 5 and 6 statutory spellings (you can find these by clicking on the spelling star at the top of this page)

English and maths - Children have English and maths written tasks to complete each week. The pages to be completed in their CGP books can be seen below. Home learning is set every Friday and should be handed in the following Wednesday.

This week's home learning is...

English - Pages 8 and 9 (what happens next) and 26 and 27 (prepositions and pronouns)

Maths - Pages 17, 18 and 19 (multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000 and multiplying and dividing with decimals)

Maths Magicians and reading daily.

Children could also practice Times Table Rockstars and handwriting - links to these websites can be found under the maths and writing stars at the top of this page.

If the maths or English task is taking your child much longer than 30 minutes for each, then please write a note in the book and we will look at it with them in school.

Autumn 1 Update - October 2025

What a brilliant first half term we have had in Monarchs! The children have quickly settled into school routines and have shown me what enthusiastic learners they can be. They have risen to the challenge of being top of the school and are striving to always demonstrate our learning powers and values. It was fantastic to see the number of children who wanted to take on leadership roles: our house captains, pupil parliament, maths and reading ambassadors, and digital leaders are already proving to be responsible. They are supporting key stage one at lunchtimes, leading school tours, adding maths puzzles to the weekly newsletter and more. I can't wait to see their impact throughout the year.

In the classroom, the children have been working extremely hard. In English, we first wrote narratives to entertain based on a picture book, 'Night of the Gargoyles'. The children thought carefully about how to build tension and create atmosphere through their word choice. It was lovely to see them sharing their work with year five after putting so much effort into their stories. During our second unit of work, we wrote about the planets in our solar system after reading a range of brilliant non-fiction texts that inspired us. Inventing our own planets was great fun; we had to consider the weather and atmosphere, habitats and life forms, position in the solar system and more. We tried to ensure that we kept the audience and purpose in mind when writing, using varied sentence structures and a formal tone. Throughout our writing this term, we have been concentrating on ensuring that every sentence makes sense and is correctly punctuated as well as trying to widen our vocabularies and make use of ambitious words and phrases. 

Maths this half term has predominantly focused on number and place value. This has involved ensuring that we understand the value of every digit in numbers up to ten million. We have been ordering and comparing numbers, rounding them, multiplying and dividing them by 10, 100 and 1000, and much more! We also learned how to calculate the areas of rectilinear shapes, triangles and parallelograms. We revised properties of number recently, in particular revisiting factors and multiples from learning in previous years. Understanding of this is particularly important as we move onto learning about fractions next half term. I've been pleased to see many children progressing through each Maths Magicians stage - this also helps to ensure that they can access our learning in class and feel confident to tackle other areas of maths. Keep it up!

We have been immersed in our World War II history topic this half term. Our young historians have amazed me with the knowledge that many of them already have as well as their determination to find out new information about this interesting period in history. We learned how the war began and which countries were involved, made WWII rations, created comic strips depicting the Battle of Dunkirk, made model Anderson shelters, compared sources of evidence when predicting who won the Battle of Britain, and much, much more! The highlight, of course, was our exciting trip to RAF Hendon where we got to see and handle WWII artefacts, learn about key figures who helped us win the Battle of Britain and found out more about the aircraft that were used in the war. Year six were praised by the museum staff for their effort and behaviour - it was great to see our learning powers being used throughout the day.

In science, Monarchs have been investigating living things and their habitats. We have learned about classification of living things using keys developed by an important scientist, Carl Linneaus. Using classification keys proved to be challenging but, with resilience and curiosity, we were able to answer questions that helped us to sort and group various living creatures based on observable characteristics. We learned that living things are sometimes much smaller too - we have carried out two investigations into micro-organisms and found that some types of bacteria can be harmful, whilst others are much more useful. Over time, we watched the effect of bacteria on food items and saw how mould grew. As well as this, we found out that yeast played a positive role in cooking as it helped us to bake bread that rose.

In RE, this half term, we have been learning about Humanism. Through our enquiry, we have looked at famous people (Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Alice Roberts) who may be role-models to Humanists and how their words or actions correlate to Humanist beliefs. We learned that Humanists try to live by the 'golden rule', which is to treat other people as you would like them to treat you, and noted that this concept is found in most religions. We found that Humanists believe in reason, questioning and science. They focus on human achievement and scientific discovery rather than learning from a sacred scripture. We learned that Humanists do not believe in life after death and think that the impact we have in this life is what lives on. I enjoyed hearing the children respectfully share their personal beliefs about inspirational people and note similarities and differences between their own faiths and Humanism.

In computing, we have been learning about systems and networks, with a focus on communication and collaboration. We learned how data is sent from one computer to another using IP addresses and data packets. We discussed methods of online communication, such as email, social media, video sharing sites, instant messaging, video calls, and more. We thought about the benefits and drawbacks of each method including how private they were and whether they had age restrictions. Next, we used one method of communication, Google Docs, to work on a collaborative project with people who were sitting on opposite sides of the room to us. Linking this learning to WWII, we created fact files about Adolf Hitler or Winston Churchill.

I've been impressed with the developing French knowledge and understanding in Monarchs. This half term, we have learned how to understand longer and more complicated texts based on WWII. The children have learned to pick out key words from previous units of learning, as well as using cognates and near cognates, in order to decipher extended pieces of writing. Children have gained a deeper understanding of the role of nouns, verbs, articles/determiners and adjectives in sentences. The medium of WWII helped to provide context for lots of new French vocabulary.

This half term's PSHE unit was titled 'Being Me in My World' and involved us thinking about our goals for this year as well as universal rights of children and how our behaviour and choices can impact others. We compared things we want with things we need and thought about how there are many people, less fortunate than ourselves, whose needs are not met at all. Monarchs have also taken part in 'Hello Yellow' - a day to raise awareness of young people's mental health - and showed racism the red card recently. During October, we learned about influential black people and ensured their stories were told as part of Black History Month. We also took part in the NSPCC 'Speak Out. Stay Safe.' programme through which we learnt about types of abuse and how we can reach out for help if we ever need it.

Our PE lessons have included tag rugby and swimming this half term. I have heard lots of excellent things about the successes in swimming, with children showing great self-belief, swimming further and developing stronger strokes. Tag rugby lessons have included lots of skills development. The children have learned passing techniques, how to defend, the key rules of the game and more. Mr Stevenson has been really impressed with their effort in lessons so far and the developing sportsmanship. 

In art, Monarchs had undertaken a drawing unit of work involving looking at different styles of street art, understanding and applying chiaroscuro and created symbolic and expressive drawings. this topic encouraged the children to form their own opinions about art, understand the impact of techniques and convey messages through their artwork.

It was a pleasure to meet many of you at parent consultations this week. Many of the documents referred to, such as reading lists and practice maths quizzes, can be found by clicking on the relevant star at the top of this page. Thank you for your support this half term - through working together we can help your children to reach their full potential. 

Finally, what a jam-packed half term it has been; I hope the children enjoy a well-earned break next week and I look forward to seeing them all again on Monday 3rd November.

Kind regards,

Miss Abbott