We hope you had a good summer and that your child will settle quickly and happily into Year 6. We look forward to working with you and your child throughout the year.
Year 6 offers a combination of excitement and challenge. In common with all other year groups, we aim to provide a broad, balanced curriculum preparing the children for their future education in secondary school. Additionally, we encourage children to reflect in greater depth about themselves both as learners and as members of society. Being the oldest children at Latchmere, we are looking to these pupils to set a good example to the rest of the school. Year 6 children act as monitors, giving them status coupled with responsibility.
Reading
Our goal is to create confident, fluent, independent readers. We prioritise reading at Latchmere School and have very carefully chosen the texts your child will study this term. We focus on word reading to develop fluency and encourage the whole class to join in through strategies such as choral reading (the whole class read together) and echo reading (the teacher models the reading and the class echo back). We also have the Latchmere Reading skills. These are based on comprehension skills such as retrieval, inference, summarising, making links, prediction and vocabulary.
Maths
Our curriculum is based on the White Rose Maths programme. This research-based initiative ensures that the skills and concepts children taught are fully embedded before moving on. The children are taught strategies such as bar modelling and have plenty of opportunities to use ‘manipulatives’ such as counters and dienes all the way through the school.
This term we will be focusing on place value, the four number operations and fractions, decimals and percentages.
Children should also use the TimesTables Rockstars program to increase their quick recall of multiplication and related division facts.
Curriculum Highlights
This term, we will be learning about Richmond Park, the circulatory system, Islam, Shakespeare, the British Empire and light and shadows.
You can find out more information about the autumn term learning by looking at the overviews and programmes of study on the website.
Reading books and reading journals should be brought to school every day, as well as the correct equipment (list previously provided). In the meantime, we hope that your child will maintain a regular reading habit at home and complete at least two in-depth entries per week. This has already been discussed during lessons.
For the first half term, there will be a ‘soft’ start to homework with either English or maths set each week. After the autumn half term, there will be one piece of English and one piece of maths every week. Children have maths homework set on Fridays to be given in on the following Tuesday. There is also a piece of written English homework set on Wednesdays to be given in by Monday.
The nature and content of this will vary according to the particular focus of work being undertaken. Over the year, aspects of grammar, vocabulary, comprehension and writing for different purposes and audiences will all be covered.
We also encourage your children to use Century to consolidate and practise the learning they have been doing this year. They have all been given their user names and passwords.
PE
We would like the children to come to school wearing suitable PE kit on the day that they have PE as it allows more time for each lesson.
Year 6 children should come to school in PE kit on both Mondays and Wednesdays. Monday lessons will be outdoors; Wednesday lessons will be indoors.
Please ensure that the school sweatshirt is worn and when it gets colder, your child may come in black, grey or dark blue tracksuit trousers or leggings. In winter months, we are happy for the children to also wear gloves, hats and coats in the lessons to stay warm and fully participate. Your child will still be able to take part in the PE lessons if they forget to wear PE kit; however, they will not be allowed to borrow kit from the main school office as they would previously have done.
As always, thank you for your support.
We wish all of you and your children well during this final term at Latchmere.
The year six team
Mr Cooper Mrs Ko Mrs Grima Mr Lamb Miss Regan
Playtime Snacks
We would be grateful if you could provide a healthy snack (e.g. fresh fruit, rice cakes, dried fruit such as raisins/cranberries, malt loaf, plain digestive or rich tea biscuits) for your child each morning and please remember that we are a nut-free school. We do not consider crisps and chocolate biscuits as healthy snacks! Please ensure your child comes to school with a named water bottle.
Medication
Please ensure that your child’s teacher has any relevant medication and that this medication is up-to-date.
If your child’s class does not yet have parent representatives, the class teacher would love to hear from you! This can be shared between parents within any class.
You will find a copy of your child’s class timetable attached. Please bear in mind that lessons may be rearranged to suit the particular activities planned for any given week. You will also receive the autumn term curriculum overview and the knowledge organiser for our Richmond Park topic this term.
Key dates
We invite you to the Year 6 curriculum meeting which has been arranged for Monday 16th September at 10:00am. Please arrive at the main school reception shortly before.
We will provide you with a brief outline of the curriculum we have planned for your child this year, give preliminary details about the residential visit to Fairthorne Manor in the summer and give a briefing about secondary school admissions.
Richmond Park visit
Each Year 6 class will be visiting Richmond Park one afternoon as part of their geographical studies. Dates are as follows:
Wednesday 18th Sept. – Edison and Da Vinci;
Thursday 19th Sept. – Curie and Franklin
We require a number of parents and carers to assist for the afternoon. Please email trips@latchmereschool.org Thank you in advance to the parents who are able to support us on these visits.
Class Assembly dates
The dates for the class assemblies this year have been finalised. Please note they will now take place on Thursday afternoons. Parents are invited to attend for a 2:55pm start. Please enter the school by the main school reception.
Class assemblies are planned as follows:
Thursday 10th October – Curie; Thursday 14th November – Da Vinci;
Thursday 24th October – Edison; Thursday 28th November – Franklin
Cake sale dates
Curie – Friday 27th September and Friday 7th February
Edison – Friday 4th October and Friday 14th February
Da Vinci – Friday 11th October and Friday 28th February
Franklin – Friday 18th October and Friday 7th March
KS2 SATs Week – week commencing 12th May 2025
Year 6 residential week – week commencing 9th June 2025
Year 6 show week – week commencing 7th July 2025