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 29 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 Lord, 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!

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

v.milner@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 at 10:45am.

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 50,000 words by the end of the term to receive a reading prize.

PE:

PE in Autumn Term will be on Monday afternoon (Swimming) and Friday afternoon (Rossendale Leisure). Children should come into school dressed in their PE kits. This consists of: Black leggings/joggers, PE Top and hoody, jumper or cardigan. Please ensure that all earrings and jewellery are removed for sessions. For swimming, children will require appropriate swimming kit (full swimsuit for girls and swim trunks for boys.) All children will be required to wear swim caps at all times as per the requirements of the swimming baths.

Homework:

Homework will be set using century tech. Homework will be set on Friday to be handed in the following Friday. Any child that has not completed their weekly assignments of 3 nuggets will have to complete them in their own time in school. At times, in order to consolidate vital learning that has occurred in class, children may be sent home with additional arithmetic or reading practise. This will be work that they have been familiarised with that week and therefore should be independently completed to assess their understanding with new concepts.

AUTUMN TERM 2 LEARNING

Welcome back to the final part of the Autumn Term, which should prove to be an exciting one as we build up to the season of Advent! I am sure that the children will have enjoyed their rest and will be raring to go in their next part of their year 6 journey- which is flying by so fast!

This term, the children will begin their learning on a new Geography topic - South America. Here the children will explore the continent of South America, in particular, the Amazon Basin and the biomes and habitats that live within. This proves to be an exciting topic as the children will explore the key countries of the South America and identifying the extent of the Amazon River. Key skills will be taught here such as identifying the significance of longitude and latitude; understand the various types of maps and their uses; read and interpret scale bars on maps and develop their geographical understanding to debate such issues that affect the world today such as deforestation and climate change. Again, work within Geography will be closely linked to Literacy where children will explore the novel, 'Journey to the River Sea,' and follow the life of Maia as she navigates through a new world. We will also create hybrid texts based upon our Geographical knowledge on the Amazon and the deforestation,  concluding with some classic poetry based upon the topic of nature.

In maths, the children will be consolidating learning upon place value, addition & subtraction, and multiplication & division methods alongside learning new areas such as fractions and decimals. Children will have regular arithmetic practise daily to ensure their pace and recall of known facts and will be exposed to regular reasoning questions twice weekly to ensure their fluency in solving more complex word problems. Children will also receive discrete reasoning and arithmetic sessions weekly to promote confidence in their methods to secure their accuracy in calculations. It is important that children regularly practise their times tables too in Year 6 as this will aid fluency in solving calculations further.

In Science, the children will explore the Classification system. They will explore the work of Linnaeus and how plants and animals were divided into kingdoms. They will perform a variety of experiments to observe and classify a variety of living and non-living things to create their own database, linked to their work they have performed in their computing session previously.

In RE, this term, we will explore expectations as we prepare for the season of Advent. The children will also be exposed to regular collective worship sessions daily to allow all children to reflect upon their religious learning and understanding of key scripture.

In Design Technology, we will complete our unit on food technology. Here the children will research how food goes from farm to fork, research key recipes and ingredients for a healthy diet and produce their own three course meal from items such as peppers, pineapple and chicken. Alongside learning the importance of a healthy balanced diet, children will also be using their previous learning to ensure that they adhere to health and safety in the kitchen, ensure they use apparatus carefully to chop and dice and also, to ensure they accurately weigh and measure ingredients to create the best meal possible.

In computing, it is extremely important that children learn all about internet safety and staying safe online. We will also be exploring webpage creations to create a webpage all about our learning on South America. The children will also be making a school blog to notify others of their findings.

PE this term will be on Monday afternoon (swimming) and Friday afternoon (Coaching through Rossendale Leisure on the unit of Hockey.) Children are to come into school with their PE kits on for these days.

We were invited by Rochdale Town Hall to come and explore the building after all of the renovations have been completed. The children learned a great number of facts from the date, linking to prior learning they have done through the years at OLSA: exploring the Victorian industry in the local area, including the cotton mill industry; exploring the links with trade through the Co-operative Society and how it linked to their topic of South America with the exportation of cocoa beans; the impact of war upon the town and how rules and precedents are set through time. The building was exceptional - full of fascinating history and was a sight to see. The children were thoroughly engaged throughout - their only request was when could they go back to explore the jail!

In class mass, the children have been practising the creed as part of the formal service. To help them understand the different elements and parts, the children designed and presented their own artistic interpretations of the Creed.

This term, the children of Succeed invited parents and carers into school to share their learning with them. The theme this time was based around creating a South American themed jungle setting as described in the book we are reading in class, Journey to the River Sea. The children could use a variety of media to create an Amazon inspired piece to use alongside their descriptive writing later on in class. Thank you to all the parents and carers that attended, your support was very much appreciated.

This term, Succeed class were visited by Bacup Fire Service for a talk all about fire safety. The children learned a lot of information that would prove very useful.

On Monday, 11th November, children in Succeed class attended the Whitworth Cenotaph along with children from other local primary schools to pay their remembrance respects. The children were incredibly well behaved and very respectful - they were a credit to the school.

In Geography, we have been exploring the continent of South America, in particular the country of Brazil. The children explored the many countries included in South America and the regions in which the Amazon River travels through.

Today, the children held a collective worship session based upon Remembrance. For the month of November, the children will be reflecting upon this important event prior to the trip to the cenotaph. The children read a lovely prayer of remembrance and used poppies to create their own thoughts of war and peace.

At the end of term, we welcomed Maggie from CAFOD to talk to us about Catholic Social Teaching. The children were presented with various scenarios through the session to discuss and relate to the principles of Catholic Social Teaching. The children were extremely respectful in their deliberations and explanations of how these are applied in their daily lives.

This term, the children visited Whitworth Museum as part of their learning on turning points of WW2. The children had the opportunity to explore real artefacts of the era including: bayonet, shell casings, helmet and gas masks. We explored the impact of war upon the local area including looking at the impact of evacuees on the town and also, how incendiary bombs were dropped, damaging St John's Church. The children had a great time and learned lots of facts, bot to mention enjoyed taking part in their very own air raid emergency with full sirens blaring!

Each week in Succeed class, children volunteer to lead sessions of collective worship in class. The children take responsibility to select the readings, music, items for the table and the activity the class will perform. All sessions are very respectful and the children enjoy the opportunity to reflect upon scripture and see how it can be applied to their daily lives.

For the month of October, children in Succeed class, along with the rest of KS2, learned how to pray with the Rosary. As a collective, each section was explained to the children and then time was given for classes to practise back in their collective worship sessions.

This term, the children participated in a Pobble 365 live writing session based around the theme of dinosaurs. The children were introduced to an interactive dinosaur as the stimulus to create an interesting and exciting setting description. Alongside many other schools across the world, including Portugal, the children discussed and improved their techniques of writing under the guidance of expert authors. The final written pieces were very engaging and showed a lot of writing flair. We will look forward to the next session, scheduled in November in time for Christmas.

In class, children have been taking responsibility to plan and deliver sessions of collective worship. They have reflected upon the theme of Love and who is important to them. They have created pieces of art for the wall to represent what love means, made art collages to show who they love and read scripture to see how it relates to God's love.

To help understand the main parts of the heart, the children made clay sculptures to label and inform following their exploration of real hearts previously. They had a fantastic time modelling the hearts and adding veins, arteries and valves.

As part of their learning on the circulatory system, the children had the opportunity to explore real animal hearts. The children had to investigate the strength of the heart, identify where the atrium and ventricles were and notice the aorta valve for the circulation of blood.

On Tuesday, 17th September, Succeed class visited the local library to learn all about WW2. The children listened to stories about D-Day. Th children then had time to explore the library to make bookmarks, complete WW2 quizzes and use the computers to research.

Microsoft Teams Access

Useful Links 

Accelerated Reader Login

Purple Mash

https://app.century.tech/login/