Year 6
Rights Respecting Articles in Child Friendly Language
If you’re always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.
- Maya Angelou
Transition for secondary school slides 2024
In year 6, we encourage the children to be curious, independent and resilient learners. Our curriculum is broad, balanced, ambitious and relevant so that children are encouraged to become global citizens who can make a positive contribution to society. We do have external tests (Wandsworth Tests and SATs), which we prepare the children for, enabling them to feel empowered and confident to achieve their full potential. Children will feel ready for secondary school as we nurture this next, important step through purposeful transition opportunities.
Important dates:
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KS2 SATS week – Monday 12 May to Thursday 15 May 2025
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France trip - Thursday 12th June
Meet the team
Mrs Gilmore (6G) - Year Leader
Mrs Walker (6W) - Class Teacher
Mrs Hitch (6H) - Class Teacher
Support Staff - Miss Pink, Mrs Hayden and Miss Haq
What we do and when
Our learning
Autumn Term
To start the year, we read our whole-school book, The Spaces In Between, written by Jaspreet Kaur. We focused on her top tips for mindfulness and created our own strategies which we have displayed in the Year 6 block. We loved meeting Jaspreet when she visited Penwortham and the children enjoyed asking her questions about life as an author.
As artists, we practiced our sketching techniques and drew a still-life drawing of flowers, focusing on various shading and hatching techniques.
In English, we planned and wrote our very own autobiographies. We celebrated and shared our published pieces at a ‘publishing party’ where the children loved learning new facts about one another. We loved the freedom that this writing project provided and enjoyed writing with freedom and creativity!
As scientists, we started our unit on light. Students can explain that we see things because light travels from light sources to our eyes, or from light sources to objects and then to our eyes. We used the idea that light travels in straight lines to explain that objects are seen because they give out or reflect light into the eye.
As historians, we investigated our ‘Big Question’: What was the Tudors’ legacy? We have examined how the Tudor dynasty started and enjoyed re-enacting the War of the Roses. We have also started to make links between some of the features of Tudor society and present-day Britain, describing trends over time and focusing on our right to be listened to and taken seriously (no matter, for example, what our gender is).
We used the VR headsets to explore what Tudor life would have been like. We had a look around Hampton Court Palace (prior to our school trip there) and looked for clues as to which rooms each of Henry’s wives had lived in.
Previously...
In English, Year 6 loved becoming journalists during Book Week! We learnt about all the different roles that make up journalism, including editors, interviewers, camera and sound technicians, reporters, writers and presenters. We also learnt about bias in the news and the importance of reading multiple news sources to find a balanced point of view. We were so lucky to have special visitors who taught us more about the skills and qualities needed to pursue journalism
As artists, we enjoyed a visit from the famous war artists George Butler. He taught us how to use negative space in our artwork. We felt so honoured that George visited our school. He helped us think about the impact of war on humanity and the stories of those whose lives have been forced to change because of conflict, both past and present. We practised skills using watercolour, charcoal and collage, including mixed media and were truly inspired by George who gave us some great top tips for our final piece.
To end our history topic ‘The World at War’, we experienced what life was like in the local area with our own WWII day. We discovered what it was like to be evacuated through studying artefacts, including a diary written by someone who lived opposite our school! We also discussed rationing and made carrot cookies using rations.
We are creative! We enjoyed starting the year by showing our self-expression through self-portraits in art.
As readers, we explored how and why we read using our school book ‘All the Wonderful Ways to Read’. We worked together to create our own class poems about all the different ways, places and things we like to read.
To mark ‘Refugee Week’, we created a virtual exhibition of our artwork from our ‘World at War’ topic from the spring term. Please click here to watch it.
To help us with transition to Year 7, we enjoyed our Geography, Textiles and Philosophy workshops from our local secondary school. It was really helpful having the Year 7 children visit us too; they showed us their planners, taught us how to put on ties and helped calm our nerves.
For Arts Week, we were lucky enough to: take part in a rap workshop, an African dance tutorial, Sounds Steps performance, play the steel pans and learn how to print using lino. What an incredible week!
We loved our visit to ‘The London Central Mosque located’ in Baker Street, as part of our RE learning about Islam. We were able to explore the grounds of the mosque, the main prayer hall, the Mosque library and some exhibitions.
How can you help at home?
- Daily reading for a minimum of 20 minutes is an expectation in Year 6. Children need to bring their reading record and book into school every day. It is still really important to listen to your child read at least 3 x a week - please record any reading at home in your child’s reading diary.
- Visit Mathletics: http://uk.mathletics.com Children have their own log-ins for Mathletics where they will be set weekly tasks to complete.
- In order to complete mental and written calculations quickly and confidently, children should already be fluent in their times tables (1 - 12) by the time they reach Year 6. Please support your child with this to ensure they feel ready.
Useful websites:
- LGfL and Scholastic resources
- Parent information - Mathletics
- Recommended Reading lists: School Reading lists or Book trust
- Free online SATS practice
- Free online Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning practice
- Verbal reasoning practice (free)
- Non-Verbal reasoning practice (free)
- More Non-Verbal and Verbal practice
- Oxford Owl
- Epic Reading
- TTRS
Transition to Secondary School resources:
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Preparing for secondary school (Penwortham checklist)
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Supporting children's transition to secondary school
Join our community
Do you have skills, knowledge and have lived experiences that could be beneficial to our pupils at Penwortham? For example, you may be a practising Buddhist or be of the Windrush generation. Your line of work may involve promoting sustainable living (for example) or you may have links to people who would be happy to run professional development sessions for members of Penwortham Primary School.
If so, please sign up to the Penwortham community!
Thank you