Welcome to Succeed Class - Year 6

"If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you."

James 1:5

Welcome to Year 6 - Succeed Class. We have 31 children in Succeed class this year, all striving to achieve their own personal goals. I, Miss Fleming, am the Year 6 teacher and alongside myself will be Mrs Dench (who will teach the class on Monday's,) and Miss Milner as our class Teaching Assistant. We all share the same goal - to guide, to support, to learn, to laugh and to ensure that memories are made. We are looking forward to the exciting, and hard-working, journey ahead! This term we will also be joined by Miss Abbondandolo who will be completing her teaching placement with us until July. I am sure that she will receive a very walm welcome back into class.

Now that the children are in Year 6, they will have many responsibilities around the school such as: leading by example as school role models to the younger children; taking the lead with School Council; participating as senior members of the GIFT Team; supporting younger children in reception with key reading skills; demonstrating sound knowledge of Internet Safety as members of the Internet Warriors; assisting within whole school assemblies; and representing the school at the various sporting competitions that we will be participating in throughout the year. It is sure to be a busy year!

As the year progresses, we will move onto discovering about our local environments through our 'Coasts' topic in Geography; finding out about the ancient civilisation of Baghdad; learning how important Greek History was to our own language and society; discovering the history of evolution through science and where electricity came from. All of this, as well as preparing for our SAT's and the not-to-be-missed end of year musical production, which is always a highlight in the children's calendar!

Your child's well-being is of vital importance to us and we want to ensure that they are happy and progressing. If you ever have any queries, questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us via our staff email:

nfleming@olsa.lancs.sch.uk

Routines in Class

At the start of the day, children will enter the classroom where they will settle into some basic daily arithmetic practise. Collective worship will happen every day for approximately 15 minutes. This will involve a collection of meditation, thought and hymn focused activities based around the CARITAS statements of the week.

Morning break will be at 11am. If you wish, you may send a healthy snack in with your child for them to consume at this time.

Reading:

We ask that you read with your child as often as possible. Your child will have a reading record that can be signed by yourself every time your child reads or is read to. In KS2, children will be expected to quiz regularly on Accelerated Reader upon completion of their book. As a minimum, we generally expect that children quiz at least once every fortnight. This helps aid their fluency and stamina to digest larger volumes of text that are expected within the Year 6 curriculum. This term, we have set the children a challenge to read at lead 35,000 words by the end of the term to receive a reading prize.

PE:

PE in Summer Term 1 will be on  Wednesday afternoon with FUNDA.  Children will be expected to wear PE kits on these days only. This consists of: Plain black leggings/joggers (no logo's or patterns), PE Top and hoody, jumper or cardigan. Please ensure that all earrings and jewellery are removed for sessions. It is important all children participate in PE sessions - if your child is unwell and cannot participate, you must advise the office on that date or provide a note to excuse.

Homework:

Homework will now focus upon arithmetic, reasoning questions, grammar and/or comprehension activities. Children will be notified of the type of homework they have each week, which will be handed out on Friday to be completed for the following Friday. It is vital that your child completes the tasks given as it is an opportunity to consolidate the learning already performed in class that week. If you require any support with homework, please do not hesistate to contact me for assistance.The children will be practising vital skills in preparation for SAT's and transition.

Summer Term 1 Learning

Welcome back to what will prove to be yet another extremely busy term, full of learning and achievement. This term's learning will look slightly different than usual - there will be lots of intervention and practise in order to prepare the children for the up-coming SATs in May.

In maths, the children will continue with Maths No Problem sessions, focusing on the areas of volume, position and direction, co-ordinates and negative numbers. They will also receive discrete sessions in the morning that focus upon specific areas of learning with an emphasis on solving problems and explaining their reasoning. We will also continue with daily arithmetic sessions to recall known facts and aid fluency and accuracy. Booster sessions will continue with the final session ending on 5th May. 

Children will also receive discrete grammar sessions focusing on word classes, phrases and clauses, identifying and using a variety of punctuation and tense work. The children will complete daily retrieval practise to familiarise themselves with the terminology and they will already have been given a glossary of terms to aid their learning, if you wish to go through this with them at home.

We will also continue with daily reading practise to help children with key skills needed to transition into high school seamlessly. There will be lots of practise to locate and retrieve, use skimming and scanning for fluency and develop more resilience to solving inference and evidence questions much more conscisely. 

In Literacy, we will be using the skills taught in grammar to assist us develop cohesion in our writing. We will explore the text Wonder to create our own poetic pieces and biographies on the main protagonists. As the children have already considered the text in year 5, it will be a nice opportunity to recall prior learning and take writing up a notch!

In RE we will explore the units of witness and healing. Here, the children will explore their own roles in society of how they can bare witness to the teachings of the Lord. Through drama, role play and discussion, the children will have a greater understanding of the meaning of various extracts from the Bible to apply to their daily lives.

On completion of the SAT's, we will start to increase PSHE sessions with a primary focus on transition to high school. We will explore the children's worries and excitement about their individual schools and also have the opportunity to research and present questions to the schools to ensurre transition is as seamless and happy as it should be. More about this will follow in due course.

SAT's 2026

SAT's this year will commence on Monday 11th May to Thursday 14th May 2026. The assessments will test the children in the key areas of maths, reading, grammar and spelling.

Monday 11th May - Grammar Punctuation & Spelling (SPAG)

This test is a 45 minute grammar assessment  and a 15/20 minutes spelling assessment that assesses whether children are familiar with key terminology such as:

• word classes (adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs)
• cohesion - types of phrases and clauses
• tenses - accuracy of past and present
• formality - use of standard English
• punctuation - identifying and accurately demarcating sentences
• spelling 

Tuesday 12th May - Reading

This paper is a 60 minute assessment that assesses comprehension skills. It comprises of 3 separate reading extracts that will focus on fluency of reading during timed conditions. There will be a variety of question types that will focus on:

• location and retrieval
• inference
• prediction
• summarising/sequencing
• explaining/justifying opinion and evidence

Wednesday 13th May - Arithmetic and Reasoning Paper 1

The maths day will comprise of 2 separate assessments: arithmetic is a 30 minute assessment comprising of 36 questions. This paper assesses children's accuracy of calculations and recall of facts in a timely manner. The areas that children will be assessed on are:

• addition 
• subtraction
• multiplication
• division
• order of operations
• fractions
• percentages
• decimals

Children will then complete a 40 minute reasoning paper that applies all of the arithmetic knowledge into word problems. Children will have to answer between 23-27 questions that encompass learning from years 3-6 in a variety of forms.

Thursday 14th May - Reasoning paper 2

This is the final maths paper the children will encounter. It is in a similar format to the paper 1, covering a variety of areas of maths to assess children's recall, understanding and fluency. 

The children will have had plenty of opportunity to develop their skills and awareness of these types of papers over the past months and have worked very hard. 

Morning of the SAT's

On each morning of the SAT's the children will be invited into school early at 8:30am to have breakfast with their friends. We will provide a selection of fruits, yoghurts, fruit juice, toast and jams to prepare them for the day ahead. On each morning, the children can bring in a beverage of their choice - tea, coffee, hot chocolate, vimto. Please ensure that any hot drinks come in flasks with a sealed lid to prevent accidents. This is always a highlight for the year 6 children as they all love bringing in their own drinks and relaxing with friends prior to assessments.

On each day, the children can also bring one good luck charm with them. We have gone through examples with the children of what is accepted and not so please try to stick to examples provided below as anything too extreme or large will not be permitted and we do not wish to disappoint children on the day. Items brought in the past include:

• pictures of family/pets
• teddy (small ones only please to fit on their desk)
• charms/necklace with image in
• fidget (only one)

If you have any questions regarding suitable items, please come and see me to clarify.

On the Friday, when SATs have been completed, we will host a End of SATs party for the children. They can come into school n their own clothes for the day as is tradition for a nice day full of fun activities. More will be sent in due course when the weather has been assessed.

Diary Dates

• Thursday 16th April - Cricket Taster Day
• Tuesday 21st April - Non-Uniform for St. Anselm’s Day
• Monday 4th May - BANK HOLIDAY 
• Friday 8th May - Non-Uniform to celebrate David Attenborough’s 100th Birthday   
• Friday 8th May - Themed Lunch - Earth Day 
• Monday, 11th-Thursday 14th May - SATs week
• Friday 15th May - Non-Uniform – Crazy Hair Day £1.00 donation
• Thursday 21st May - Themed Lunch (National Dinosaur Day)
• Friday 22nd May - School Closes

On Tuesday morning and at lunchtime, a number of children have enrolled in Coach Tom's darts club. The children are thoroughly enjoying the session, practising their aim and accuracy and even working out their total scores - using maths and they never even realised! 

On Thursday, 5th March, we held our termly parent topic afternoon. This time, we based our learning on the importance of reading through creating some interesting illustrations for book covers, creating short stories of 250 words and crafts to help with reading skills. The event was well attended so thank you to all parents for attending - your support means so much!

On Thursday 5th March, Succeed class celebrated world book day with style. The costumes created were amazing and the children had lots of fun in them! They were treated to hot chocolate and biscuits in the reading cafe and enjoyed parading their costumes in the hall.

Children from Succeed class went to Liverpool Empire Theatre to watch the production of Matilda The Musical. The show was amazing and all the children really enjoyed the dancing, singing and lights! Their behaviour was exemplary, even with all of the traffic on the way home!

As part of our learning in Geography, the children had to use an atlas to locate the countries of South America. They then were tasked with the objective of identifying which countries the Amazon River runs through. The children were amazed by the expansive nature of this and how important the rainforest basin is to even us here in England.

On Friday, 14th November, children in Succeed class had a visit from Bacup Fire Service to talk about Road safety and awareness. They discussed how to be safe and be seen on roads during the darker winter months, how to travel in cars, on bikes and on public transport safely and effectively and what to do in cases of emergency. The visit was extremely useful for all children to understand the dangers on roads, particularly as the nights are becoming darker.

On Tuesday, 11th November, Year 6 attended the Whitworth Cenotaph to pay their respect alongside other local schools for remembrance. The children participated by laying a wreath on behalf of the school and sharing bidding prayers during the service. The children were extremely respectful throughout the whole service.

Parents and carers once again joined the class to participate in a topic afternoon based around the new Geography unit of South America. The children and parents were tasked with creating their own rainforest art piece. The creations were very competitive and original - even the parents were competing against each other! Thanks again to all that attended, your support is very much appreciated!

Children in year 6 participated in the theme dance around the world as part of a PE day. As we are learning about the continent of South America, we thought it would be appropriate to create their own Latin themed Cha Cha dance. It was very interesting watching some of the shapes being thrown in the dance - we certainly have some unique dancers! Well done Succeed for participating well in the spirit of the event.

At the end of the first half term, the children completed their DT project to design and build their very own playground. The children were set a brief to comprise of:

• colourful
• safe
• fun
• 5 objects
• one object to move
• one object to climb
• durable

The children had access to a variety of materials throughout the day to craft swings, slides, climbing frames and shelters. The finished products were very impressive - it was a hard decision for the staff to judge the winner!

This term, the children took part in a Pobble 365 Live Writing session on science fiction. The children joined children from all over the world including Dubai, Ireland and even Bacup!! They were tasked with creating their own space based short story and came up with some very imaginative pieces!

This term, Succeed class visited Whitworth Library as part of their learning on WW2. The  children listened to facts about WW2 from Amy and looked at a rationing pack for the army today. The children then had the opportunity to explore the texts in the library and select new books. 

On Thursday 23rd October, Succeed class investigated real animal hearts as part of their learning on the circulatory system in science. The children had the opportunity to explore a variety of hearts to identify the valves, aorta, veins, capillaries and chambers. The children were not afraid to get stuck in as you can see!

On Tuesday, 21st October, children in Succeed class visited Whitworth Museum to learn all about the impact of WW2 on Whitworth. The children explored a range of artefacts from rifles, helmets of the time, shell casings, stirrup pumps, radar alerts and gas masks. Some were even chosen to be our own little evacuees! The children had a great time and learned a lot to really enhance the learning that has been done in class. 

Every Friday, the children have been participating in cricket sessions with Chiggy. They have been learning week by week the skills of throwing, catching and batting before taking part in an actual match to display all skills. The children have made great progress so far and many balls have been lost over the fence from excellent batting skills!! Well done Year 6!

This term we have had a visit from Corum Life Bus to teach the children all about safety online and their mental well-being. The children looked at the variety of emotions that they can experience daily and how social media influences can affect or portray this very differently. The children were amazing in the session - very respectful with articulate questions and answers to test their understanding.

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