Notes:

Dear Parents and Children,
A very warm welcome back to school and the class' final year at St John's. What a long journey it has been. I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday I have been hearing lots about it. As always here is an overview of the curriculum that we will be undertaking in year 6 up to Christmas. If any questions or matters arise from this please do not hesitate to bring them to my attention.

English ~ Literacy hours will continue to be based around the Heinemann scheme and the main focuses will be classic children's fiction and one of Shakespeare's plays. Towards the latter stages of the term we will be undertaking a trip to the Bull to see a Shakespeare play that we will have worked on in class and workshops. Within non-fiction we will look at report writing and biographies. Our creative writing lessons will look at planning and writing short stories including adaptations of well known authors. Now more than ever it is imperative that the children continue to read as much as they can at home. There are plenty of exciting stories on my shelf and they are always welcome to borrow any of my books to take home and read at their leisure. We also of course have an enormous variety of books in the school library as well. The children will undertake spelling lessons on Thursdays and will have lists regularly sent home to learn.

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Maths ~ The class will be working very hard in maths this term and covering a large amount in the time we have. Those children that are confident with their multiplication facts (times tables) will find new concepts more manageable than those struggling so please make every effort to ensure that your child practices these regularly. The early part of the term will focus on basic number work and fractions then towards the end of the term we will work on data handling, geometry of triangles and relationships between the metric and imperial system of measurement. Homework will continue to be given out and there may be occasions where your child may have extra homework for re-enforcement.

Science ~ We will be covering three areas of science this term. How we see things and the way that light enables us to see. Micro-organisms and the relationships they play in ecosystems and how they react as living organisms to their environment. Our final area of science this term is change and whether an experiment is reversible or not. As well as looking at these specific areas of science throughout the whole of our work we will be also ensuring that we use and explore the skills of science thoroughly within our practical work.

ICT ~ Our class based ICT work will link with our literacy and numeracy targets based on adventure games that test their skills of English and maths. The work we undertake in the ICT lab for the term will be the use of spreadsheets and how to write formula. The software we will use for this is Microsoft Excel. We will finalise this work with a mock case study of how to set up accounts for a school tuck shop.

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R.E. ~ Our main religious focus this term will be on Christianity and we will explore the Lord's Prayer and what it means to us, Immanuel at Christmas time and the work of Corrie Ten Boom. Of course the highlight of our religious festivities will be the Nativity at the end of term where the class will have a major input and the starring roles. So brush off those dancing shoes and warm up their singing voices.

Technology & Art ~ Our art work this term is based on collage and clay with some work on sculpting. The children will look at how to develop their ideas from designs and investigate which materials can be combined to form their ideas. Later on this half term we are very lucky to be going on a trip to the National Gallery for a workshop on Greek Mythology and painting. More details of this trip will follow. The class are very lucky to be working with Mr Llwellyn on some technology work with the designing and building of moving vehicles. This will include the investigations of pulleys and other electronic circuits in order to make motion.

Humanities ~ Our humanities throughout the year will have a strong focus on mapping skills and looking at the environment. We will be linking this with our school journey at the end of the year in order for the class to have some understanding of Cornwall before we visit in the Summer term. The whole year's humanities will culminate in a final project at the end of the year on Cornwall that will take into account the physical, political and human features of this county. This will take on two forms both a traditional project file and a multimedia presentation. Each week two children have been made responsible for our current events display in the class. For this to be successful the class have been asked to scour the news; papers, radio, TV and internet for main stories and interesting tales. This is a really important part of our humanities work in year 6 and the children's understanding of the global community is enhanced though this and any help or advice you can give them when it is their turn is much appreciated.

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P.E. ~ We will be doing fencing on Monday afternoons with Mr Wilkinson and hopefully some of the children will gain there 2nd grade award, which would be a great achievement for all! Also we are doing some gymnastics and fitness work in the hall on Tuesdays. The last PE lessons are games on Friday afternoons where football and netball are played. Can you please ensure that the children have the correct kit for each of these sports as it can be very frustrating when they are missing items. If you are unsure as to any of the kit they are needed please get the children to ask.

Homework ~ The children should now have a planning and diary based book. This will prove very useful as their schedules in Year 6 are going to be very busy. Information such as trips, clubs, homework and the like will be put in this so that they can begin to adjust to a more complicated schooling in preparation for secondary schools. They will also be given numeracy and literacy work to carry out which compliments tasks undertaken in class. All items of homework are normally set after lessons and the children will be given an adequate amount of time to complete them. The homework based project for this term is a prepared talk that the children will give to the class that lasts for 3-5 minutes. After giving the presentation the class will then go on to devise a project to hand in and the final grade will be based on both the prepared talk and their written work.

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What things would be useful to do at home? ~ It would be a great benefit if you could ensure that your child brings their book bags and PE kits every day. Also if you could go through their planning books frequently with them to help them manage their time, so they get tasks complete without having to leave it to the last minute. Any children that are unaware of the tasks being asked for homework are encouraged to come and ask me for guidance and if they have looked early on in the assignment it leaves them more room for assistance. Also, the children will shortly be coming home with specific targets for themselves. These will be in English, Maths and Science and will be reviewed and evaluated after Christmas. This will encourage the class to take more responsibility for their learning and it helps if everybody is working towards a common goal. As always the internet is a great resource for the class to use and there are some fantastic websites on there to visit. One of the most UK friendly search engines is www.google.com and I have found that they are excellent for Cornish websites which will be very useful throughout this term.

I would like to welcome you all back to school for another, and for some a final, year at St. John's. I am really excited about teaching your children this year and have spent some time in the summer getting some wonderful activities and events planned for the course of the year which will ensure that their final stage of primary school is the most memorable! Already the class have taken to their new responsibilities in Year 6 exceedingly well and I think that it is going to be a fabulous year. If I have not seen or spoke to you already this term I look forward to seeing you soon.

Mr Scott

www.bbc.co.uk/education/revisewise/

Here is the link to the revisewise website that was discussed at a parent's meeting.

Please encourage your children to use this site as much as they like, it will help both with their homework and their classwork.

If your child registers it will keep their scores which can then be e-mailed to me whenever you get the time! Aren't we getting technical here at St John's!?!?

My e-mail address is at the top of this page.

Good luck and most of all have fun with the games. You can try them out too if you like!!!

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autumn forecast | spring forecast | summer forecast - autumn 2002 available as Word docs

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