Year 6

Year 6 Staff:

Welcome to Year 6 and your child’s final year of Key Stage 2. We all know that Year 6 is an important milestone in a pupils’ education, but here at Aston Fields Middle School, we work hard to ensure that the year is not dominated by the Key Stage 2 assessments.

In Year 6, pupils get the opportunity to take part in a 3 day residential at the largest PGL centre in the UK: Boreatton Park. This is a trip that all of the pupils here look forward to and one that remains a core memory for so many of our pupils far beyond Year 6. The trip is an opportunity for your child to build resilience, grit and perseverance as well as important social skills all whilst having huge amounts of fun.

Just like Year 5, Character Education is weaved into all we do and Year 6 is a year where your child will achieve so much, both academically and personally.

We look forward to sharing a year full of achievement and growth with you.

Homework

Pupils will normally receive Maths and English homework each week.  In English, pupils are given a homework folder and receive either a grammar and punctuation task or a comprehension task which consolidates prior learning.  In addition, pupils will complete activities set on Spelling Shed and Lexia to recall and build upon their knowledge and understanding within SPaG and comprehension.  Pupils will record their log-in details, to access these websites, in their homework diaries.

In addition, pupils should be reading their Renaissance books every night for at least 20 minutes. To support reading skills, pupils will find it helpful if parents/carers could ask a range of retrieval and inference questions based on their current Renaissance book.

In Maths, pupils are given a homework folder and receive a task each week, which either consolidates prior learning or prepares them for the next topic. Pupils are also encouraged to practise their times tables to 12 x 12 on a regular basis. Teachers may set online homework using websites such as Times Table Rockstars, Sumdog, Mathletics and MyMaths.  Pupils will record their log-in details, to access these websites, in their homework diaries.   

In addition to Maths and English, Year 6 pupils may receive homework in Science and History/Geography. This could be a stand-alone task or part of an ongoing project.

There is a weekly Homework Club where pupils are able to complete both written and online homework with the support from a member of staff.

PGL

PGL is a highlight of the year for all of the pupils who attend the trip. PGL takes place in late October and is an excellent opportunity for pupils to get to know the Year 6 staff and build strong relationships with them. Of course, a huge amount of fun is had and memories made over their time at Boreatton Park.

Below is an account of this year’s trip written by some current Year 6 pupils.

Day 1

I could hardly sleep the night before we went to PGL. It seemed like I had been waiting forever to go and I could barely believe we were finally going. My tummy was full of butterflies: excitement and nerves were all jumbled together.

In the morning, my Dad dropped me off at school and I had to take all of my things into the school hall with him. It looked like I was going forever because of the amount of stuff I had packed! Once my Dad had handed my pocket money in, I said goodbye to him and went up to the yard to play with my friends. After we had registered, we went back to the hall and we were finally told who we were sharing a cabin with and who was in our activity group. The teachers had promised we would be with at least one of the friends we had chosen to be with and I was really lucky because I was actually with all of my friends!

Eventually, the coaches arrived and we all put our stuff into the coach and started the journey. It took about 2 hours to get to Boreatton Park. Our first glimpse of PGL was a huge mansion house up on the hill with a long straight drive. As we approached the mansion house, our groupies got onto the coach. They were crazy! They were the people from PGL who were going to look after us whilst we were there. They were so much fun and they played games with us and sung songs - they had so much energy!

We were then shown to our cabins (they were so nice) and given some time to unpack before eating lunch. After that, it was a whirlwind! We went straight into activities! My groups first activity was abseiling. The tower was really high, but the PGL staff were really lovely and did all they could to make sure everyone at least tried to push themselves to have a go – they never forced any of us though! Eventually all of our group went down the tower and everyone was so proud of themselves because some people were really scared! Our group were so good at getting everyone off the ropes that we got 4 goes each. Next, we went to rifle shooting. I had never done anything like that before and to begin with I was terrible! I hit nothing on my first go, but the instructor really helped me. Eventually I got a little better, but I don’t think a career in the army awaits me! We then got to have dinner and the food was amazing! We had so much choice and there was a salad bar which we could have as much from as we wanted. Later on in the evening, we played a game as a huge group. We had to go around the whole of the PGL site in the dark with our torches hunting for hidden flags. It was so much fun. My team weren’t very good at it, but it didn’t matter because we had fun anyway. That night we were all so excited that it was hard to get to sleep, but we did… eventually!

Day 2

The second day started very early and some people definitely regretted their late night! We went to breakfast (amazing again) and then went to get kitted up for raft building. It was really cold and I wasn’t sure about a swim in the lake, but we were given jackets to keep us warm and the instructors did lots with us to keep us warm. We then headed down to Lake Clive. We spent ages designing and making our raft, making sure all of the knots were really tight so we didn’t end up sinking! Eventually, we launched our super raft and all clambered onboard. We were on the lake for ages and played all sorts of games where we had to swap positions etc without falling in! Not everyone managed it: a lot of people ended up going for an unexpected swim! We then sailed our raft back to the lake edge and packed away. After that, some people went back to their cabins for a hot shower, but the rest of us stayed to play games! We played head, shoulders, knees and toes and had to sing to the fishes! It was so much fun! Eventually, we all went back to our cabins for a shower, before going to lunch. Lunch was amazing and we then went straight to afternoon activities: giant swing and orienteering. We all had to work together to ensure we all had as many goes as possible. That night at dinner we had the most amazing brownies I have ever tasted. We then went to the shop to spend our pocket money. Lots of us bought sweets and chocolates for a midnight snack later on. Others bought souvenirs like stationery and footballs. That night we had a campfire deep in the woods. We had to pick our way through the wood in the pitch black using only our torches and we then sung songs and played games around the campfire. We had plans for a huge mid night snack but almost all of us were asleep long before midnight after such a busy day.

Day 3

Day 3 was not such an early start. In fact, lots of us had to be dragged out of bed by the teachers! We had to pack all of our things up before breakfast as we were leaving just after lunch. After breakfast, we went to our final 2 activities: climbing and archery. Climbing was so much fun and we got to have a go at different walls depending on how easy and fast we could get to the top. I was surprised to find I was really good at it! Archery was really hard, but I learnt how to hold the bow safely and eventually hit the target!

At lunch time we got to eat our lunch with the 2^nd group who were coming to PGL. We got to talk to our friends and tell them how much fun they were about to have.

The journey home was definitely quieter than the journey to PGL. We all had so much fun and learnt so much. Lots of us learnt we were far braver than we thought we were. We climbed higher than we thought we could, went into cold, dark water and stayed away from our parents / carers (something lots of us have never done). We all came home knowing we could do anything Year 6 could throw at us.

As you can see, PGL is an amazing experience and one the pupils benefit so much from. They all learn resilience and perseverance as well as having to work as part of a team. We do of course realise that not all pupils want to come to PGL. Those pupils who remain in school have an activity programme organised for them that aims to offer them the opportunity to gain similar skills to their peers who do attend PGL. They do cooking and DT skills, art, sport, parachute games and drama amongst other activities.

SATS

Year 6 sees the conclusion of your child’s time in Key Stage 2 and of course the SATs in May. At Aston Fields Middle School, we have very high academic standards and your child will be thoroughly prepared for the end of key stage tests. However, we work hard to ensure that no pupil is put under any undue pressure. We do not narrow the curriculum and all pupils will have access to the full range of subjects throughout their time in Year 6.

The vast majority of pupils are unfazed by these tests, but if your child is at all anxious, please encourage them to talk to their teachers so we can help ease their worries or contact us so we can help.

Here are some comments made by some of our pupils once they completed their SATS;

“I actually enjoyed the SATS. They gave me a chance to show what I had learnt. Yes they were a bit tricky in places, but I just tried my best and it was all ok in the end.”

“I was a little bit nervous about the tests but Mock SATS really helped as it made me realise that there was nothing to worry about. They were just the same as any other test and nothing to be scared about!”

“I was a bit nervous on the morning of the first test, but I quickly forgot about it when my teacher started handing out pain au chocolate and brioche! The tests really weren’t that bad and as a reward at the end we got ice cream! Can I do them again this year?”