Head Teacher: Miss Siobhan Leonard (BA Hons, QTS, NPQH)Address: Royds Lane, Rothwell, Leeds LS26 0BJTel: (0113) 2828182Website: www.rothwellstmarys.co.ukE-mail: head@rothwellstmarys.org.uk

English Newsletter

Dear Families, Wednesday 7th November

Our Y6 children are working so hard and we are so proud of them! It was wonderful to be able to give you a picture of how well they are working at Parents’ Evening last half term.

This half term we are going to begin the half term by completing our Non-Chronological reports about the Vikings. The challenge here is to use technical language and advanced punctuation marks in our writing. Following on from this, and from Robinwood, we will make written leaflets to practise this style of writing, inviting & advertising Robinwood itself. The children’s excitement from the trip should make these excellent written pieces. Finally, we will complete some Christmas story writing in the weeks up to Christmas.

We will complete three long pieces of Creative Writing each half term and these will feed into the children’s writing assessments. The Rising Stars tests that we do at the end of each half term will give them their SPaG & reading assessed result. Their actual SATs results for writing (which are their end of KS2 results) are teacher assessed by myself, Miss Jackson and a moderator. They are based entirely on their pieces of writing we do in their English books.

We will have four sessions of Guided Reading a week and both Miss Jackson and I will work with all children over the course of the week. We will read long pieces of text as well as shorter pieces and will focus on fiction such as Awful Auntie by David Walliams, non-fiction and poetry.

The children will get their 12 spellings each week and the test will be the following week (we will note the date in their planner for High School Preparation). Next half term we are going to use dictation to do the tests where I say a sentence and they write it with the word correct. This is because I want to improve the way children actually apply their spelling knowledge as they can often get full marks in a spelling test but still make a lot of mistakes when they try to apply their spellings. Each week a reading Eggs task is also set and again we will note the in their planner for when the homework is due. We are working in this way because we want the children to get used to getting different homework tasks on different days as this happens frequently at High School and it is one of the things the children really struggle with when they do get to High School. We therefore want the children to develop their responsibility to look in their planner and check when the homework is due. There will also be research tasks for homework next half term similar to the one about the Vikings. Your encouragement to develop this responsibility in a really positive way is so helpful. Miss Jackson and I are doing our best to

make sure we have put everything in place so that next year the children can have a seamless transition into High School life.

How else can you help your child at home? The best thing you can do is read with them. Reading is probably the one most worthwhile thing at this point that you can do with your child. Support them with their own reading and ask questions that link to the sheets Miss Jackson sets when they finish each of their books. Read widely so help your child enjoy other fiction and non-fiction pieces. This includes reading articles in magazines that may interest your child – football magazines still have a lot of reading within them!

This half term I will be running a SPAG CLUB and it would be really beneficial for all children to attend. Please make sure that your child attends all the sessions or that you personally let me know. Otherwise I have to break off from teaching to call / text to let you know your child hasn’t come to the club, worrying they may have set off somewhere after school by themselves. Therefore I ask that if you sign up you do so for almost all the sessions or let me know when your child can’t attend. This will begin on Wednesday 21st November from 3.00 – 4.00 (the week after Rpbinwood) and will run through to the very end of term.

If you need to see me at any point don’t hesitate to call the school office. I look forward to working together for another great half term!

With kindest thanks,

Mrs Gemma Martin

I would like my child to attend the SPAG club on a Wednesday from 3.00 – 4.00. This will begin the week after Robinwood.

Child:

Please circle:

My child can walk home by themselves

OR

I will collect my child at 4.00

Signed………………………………………………………………