Toucans 2024 - 2025

Welcome to Toucans' Class Page 2024-2025

Our class teacher is Mrs Evans and our teaching assistants are Mrs Hulse and Mrs McCorkindale (Mrs M) 

Mrs Downing will be teaching the Class on Mondays, and Mr Ault will teach PE.

We are going to have an incredible final year together at Lostock Gralam Primary School.

Y6 Homework

Maths and English

Children in Toucans Class will be set a weekly maths and english homework from the CGP books to further support their understanding of the concepts we have covered in school. This homework will be set on a Friday and should be completed and returned to school by the following Friday. Your child will record the page number in the homework diary each week. 

If for any reason your child is unable to complete their homework at home, please encourage them to speak to Myself or Mrs Hulse as we would be happy to set aside some time to go through this with them. We also run an optional homework club during 1 lunchtime per week in which your child can choose to complete their homework. 

Times Tables

Times Tables must continue to be a  focus for us this year as fluency in the multiplication facts supports so many areas of understanding within the maths curriculum. 

Your child will have a login for TT RockStars which is a fun and competitive way of practising and maintaining fluency in times tables.

https://ttrockstars.com/

These are other games to play to support fluency in times tables:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button 

https://www.timestables.com/multiplication-games/

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/times-tables/coconut-multiples

Reading and Spelling Homework

Over the year I will encourage your child to choose from a wide range of both fiction and non-fiction books from school to enjoy reading at home. When your child reads at home, either independently or with you, they should record this in their homework diary and have it signed by an adult. Children should spend 20 minutes reading each evening. 

Spellings will be stuck into homework diaries on a Friday and tested the following Friday. Please spend 5 minutes daily practicing your child’s spellings with them. 

Our Curriculum

Phase 1 2024 (September - February Half term)

Writing

This term we will be focusing on two inspirational texts to support our writing. First, we will be focusing on writing a story with a flashback based on the book ‘Star of Fear, Star of Hope’ by . During this unit of work we will: Use expanded noun phrases to convey complicated information concisely (recap from Y5). Use passive verbs. Link ideas across paragraphs using a wider range of cohesive devices.  Integrate dialogue to convey character and advance the action.

Reading

Our Pathways to Read texts go hand in hand with the writing texts to support us to build our understanding of the theme, develop our vocabulary and develop our inference and deduction skills in order to answer a range of reading response questions.  

We begin with a collection of 3 short stories in the book 'When we were Warriers' by Emma Carroll.

After half term we will use the book 'Can we Save the Tiger' by Martin Jenkins. Through this beautiful book we will develop our report writing about amazing animals through developing an independent booklet including information, explanation and persuasion. We will learn to:  Enhance meaning through selecting appropriate grammar and vocabulary.  Use modal verbs and adverbs to indicate degrees of possibility.  Use brackets, dashes or commas to indicate parenthesis.

Our linked Shared Reading texts are 'Martha's Suitcase' by The Literacy Company and 'Into the Jungle' by Katherine Rundell which runs alongside.

In our final half term of Phase 1 we will use the book 'The Selfish Giant' by Oscar Wilde and Ritva Voutila to inspire our ability to write in the 1st and 3rd person and from another character's point of view. This will help us develop the skills to: Distinguish between the language of speech and writing.  Recognise vocabulary and structures for formal speech and writing, including subjunctive forms. Use passive verbs.  Use semi-colons to mark boundaries between independent clauses.

Our shared reading text is 'The Happy Prince and other Tales' by Oscar Wilde

Maths

During the Autumn Term will be working to consolidate our maths learning from Year 5 and introduce new Year 6 concepts. We will be focusing on Place Value of numbers within 10,000,000, addition, subtraction and multiplication and division of up to 4 digits by 1 and 2 digit numbers. We will also develop our understanding of fractions and geometry.

During our weekly arithmetic lessons, we will rehearse a range of mental strategies for all four operations, fractions and decimals to answer accurately and efficiently.

Science

During phase 1, Toucans will learn the science of 'Light' first and then follow on by developing our understanding of ‘Electricity’ and ‘Circuits’.

RE

During RE Toucans will discuss the key questions: What does it mean to live in a religiously diverse world? and How does having faith affect people’s lives?

History and Geography

During the Autumn Term we will explore our class theme ‘Conflict’. We will be developing our inquiry skills by asking and answering historical questions about the similarities and differences in wars over the ages including The Battle of Hastings, The Wars of the Roses, World War 1 and World War 2.  We will use physical and online maps to locate the countries involved. We will visit the Stockport Air raid shelters in January to further enhance our understanding of World War 1 and 2. Both the Writing and Reading texts we study first will also enhance an understanding of World War 2. 

Art

We will learn about the Christian artist Christie Schofield through our RE topic Diversity and use this to inspire our own interpretations and designs for the Golden Rule.

Linking with our ‘Conflict’ theme, we learn about the artist Paul Nash. We compare and contrast his work from before and during life in the trenches in WW1. We investigate the effect of light on objects and people from different directions.

Music

For the first half term, Year 6 will be developing their Ukulele skills. Later in the term we will focus on singing and performing for the Christmas performance. In January we will develop our use of pulse, rhythm and pitch through the Charanga scheme and the song 'Happy' by Pharell Williams. 

PE

Please note that PE for your child will be on Mondays and Wednesdays. (These dates are listed in your child's Home School Diary).

Your child should come to school dressed in their PE kit on PE days.

Phase 2 (February Half Term- May Half Term)

Writing

This term we will be focusing on two inspirational texts to support our writing. 'Island' by Jason Chin. During this unit of work we will: Use passive verbs, use a variety of verb forms including the progressive and the present perfect forms, use a wide range of devices to build cohesion, use organisational and presentational devices to structure text and use colons to mark boundaries between independent clauses.

These texts will make links with our Science unit Evolution and will go alongside our enrichment text Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. 

Our second inspirational text will be 'Shackleton's Journey' by William Gill which we will use to plan and write a multi-modal biography of Ernest Shackleton and our own imaginary adventure story. During this unit we will: Use relative clauses beginning with who, which, where, when, whose, that, use a wider range of devices to build cohesion: conjunctions, synonyms, adverbials, punctuation, use a colon to introduce a list and a semi colon within lists and use hyphens to avoid ambiguity.

Reading

Our Pathways to Read texts go hand in hand with the writing texts to support us to build our understanding of the theme, develop our vocabulary and develop our inference and deduction skills in order to answer a range of reading response questions.  

We begin with 'Exploring the Amazon' by The Literacy Company and 'The Explorer' by Katherine Rundell and 'Great Adventurers' by Alistair Humphreys

Maths

During Phase 2 will be working to consolidate our maths learning on fractions, decimals, measures, ratio, proportion, algebra and geometry.

During our arithmetic lessons we will rehearse a range of mental strategies for all four operations, fractions, decimals, percentages, perimeter, area and algebra to answer accurately and efficiently.

History and Geography

During Phase 2 we will embark on our whole school topic 'Exceptional People'. Toucans will learn about Ernest Shackleton and the exceptional things he achieved in his life. We will use the enrichment text 'Great Adventurers' by Alistair Humphreys to widen our understanding of explorers, their achievements and the places they visited.

RE

During RE Toucans will discuss the key questions about Humanism and Creation. Are humanist & Christian ideas about creation conflicting or complimentary? Does evolution disprove Genesis? RE links with our Science topic of Evolution

Science 

We will explore the topic of Evolution and learn about the work and findings of Charles Darwin. 

Phase 3 May half term- July

Residential - Petty Pool

Our 2 night and 3 day stay at Petty Pool is an exciting time in which Toucans will develop their independence, resilience, team work, leadership and confidence through taking part in a range of activites such as canoeing, climbing, orienteering, abseiling, night walking and problem solving. The Petty Pool woodland is a stunning environment in which to develop all of these qualities.

RE

We will learn about how Sikhs worship and discuss the question 'How do people of faith & no faith work together for a fairer & more just society?' in our Equality and Justice topic.

Science

We will learn about the human circulatory system and develop our understanding of how to interpret and create classification trees for animal and plant species.

History, Geography and Computing

Year 6 will learn about the Ancient civilisation of the Maya. Who were these people? Why are they so significant in history? What were their beliefs and values? We will link this to our map work on central and south America and to our computing work in learning how to create and edit a power point presentation including slide animations, transitions and sound. 

DT

DT will go alongside our WW1 and WW2 theme to recap and build on our skills in designing and building structures in order to make a stable and robust shelter. We will build on our science knowledge of circuits to tinker with different ways of constructing series and parallel circuits.

Art

We will use the murals and art work by Carley Cornelisson to inspire our own animal and plant artwork using mixed media and cross hatching.