Welcome to Turquoise Class

Turquoise class is where our ambitious, friendly, hard-working year 6 children learn. We are taught by Miss Wise and Mrs Bullock (Wednesday afternoons), as well as Miss Simcock. 

We have an exciting creative curriculum that helps us develop our knowledge of the world around us as well as essential skills such as reading and writing. There is soo much to learn and many new exciting things to try. We use great focus and a positive ‘make-the-most-of-every-opportunity’ attitude to help us all succeed.

Year 6 comes with extra opportunities, responsibilities and privileges, including representing and caring for our school. We strive to be great role models for others both in the classroom and around the school. We learn quickly that hard-work helps us make great progress and achieve things we can be proud of.

We practise our new learning at home too, and really appreciate all the support that is given from parents in this final year, helping us become independent, confident and ready for secondary school journey.

Learning Journey
The Learning Journey approach means that many aspects of the curriculum combine to build a really creative curriculum. Our Autumn Learning Journey is titled ''Battles". Our learning across different subjects includes looking at our world both close up (locally) and more zoomed out (globally).

One of our first battles we will explore is the modern day battle of art and graffiti. We will be studying a range of artwork produced by a various artists: Banksy, Julian Beever, Mobstr and Celedon. Throughout our topic we will experiment and develop our use of developing ideas, using tools and creating stencils to finally create our own visually effective piece of artwork. Here you can find out more about Banksy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/46632542 

In Geography, we will explore and get hands-on with Geocaching. This will draw upon and progress our map skills such as the use of grid references, latitude and longitude, topographical features and physical and human features. Following this, we will apply our learning to the location and distribution of natural resources and to different regions within the world, such as Asia. 

Within the second half of the Autumn term, we will study and extend our knowledge of a significant turning point in British history - we deep dive into The Battle of Britain and The Blitz. To enrich our topic we will explore what it may have really felt like to be there using our own bunker!

Turquoise class have already shown how fantastic they are at playing the keyboard in Year 5.. so I am really looking forward to watching and hearing them progress their reading of music and their playing of the keyboard in the Autumn term. We will also be trying out our new skills, playing piano parts for famous pieces from a wide range of different genres, before we then be move on to learn about Music related to WWII.

In RE, we will be learning about and reflecting on Christian beliefs and Hinduism. Firsty, we will explore the different views of 'Creation and Science', followed and supported by 'Why do some people believe in God and some people not?'. 

Our French learning, will develop our speaking, writing and listening skills of school subjects, school timetables and telling the time. We will soon be able to make statements about the school environment!

In PE, we will be taking part in cross country and improving our own personal fitness as well as developing and learning new hockey skills. 

In DT, in the second half of the Autumn term, we will be selecting materials, analysing sculptures and drawing on our DT skills from our previous years at Ashperton to design and make our own sculpture linked to our history of the Battle of Trafalgar and also the SDG's (Sustainable Development Goals). 

English 
Our English curriculum is linked with our Learning Journey. We will be reading a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts and work on wide range of reading skills: developing our vocabulary; improving about ability to infer; reflecting and giving reasons for predictions; explaining and analysing the author’s choice of vocabulary; explaining and analysing the effect of a piece’s structure/layout; retrieving specific information; summarising, and sequencing.

We will be developing our writing skills, working on the individual components of writing (handwriting, spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, structuring texts, editing, proof-reading…) as well as composing a number of extended pieces including product reviews, poetry, letters and persuasive pieces.

Maths
To start off our Autumn term, we will revisit and progress our learning of all things number: place value, the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), before developing our Fractions learning. 

To enrich and apply our maths learning, Turquoise class will be applying their mathematical skills to real-life activities such as geocaching and baking!

Home learning

Reading: As a school we strongly encourage children to read daily, engaging with books from a variety of different authors and genres. This might range from reading recipes out loud to a parent when cooking, to reading a longer fiction book together at bedtime. We ask that they read out loud to an adult at least 3 times a week (even when in year 6 – as they should still be reading books that expand their vocabulary, learning the meaning of new words and how to pronounce them).

For one of these reads, we ask in year 6 that they complete a homework comprehension read with you – this involves reading a text, your child answering some questions on the text, and then you discussing and marking it with them, helping them learn from their mistakes. This is such a valuable activity – the children really benefit from the 1:1 chance to discuss and learn as well as from exposure to a range of texts they might not have naturally chosen for themselves.

Please sign your children’s homework diary each time you read with them.

Your child needs to bring their reading comprehension homework into school on a Wednesday. The pages to complete each week will be listed on Seesaw.

Timestables: We ask that children continue to practise their timestables at home regularly to ensure they are able to draw on them quickly in Maths lessons. They all have logins to TTRockstars which is a fun way to practise this – though you may also have other strategies you enjoy. Once they are confidently recalling all facts up to 12x12 quickly, I will set one of the game options on TTRockstars (The Studio tab) to offer more challenging questions that require them to use their tables with higher numbers with questions such as 30 x 70, 40 x 6 and 320 divided by 40.

Spellings: You child will learn a new spelling pattern each week at school as well as a few of the common exception words (these are tricky words that people often get wrong and need to be learned by rote). Miss Wise will teach the new pattern on a Monday, and your child will also practise these spellings at school each morning using the Squeebles app. We ask that you also find time to practise them at home either by purchasing the Squeebles App too or using your own strategies.

We will do a spelling test each week on a Friday to help celebrate the effort they have put in and to help us identify where we may need further practise.

Maths and Grammar: We have purchased books to help all year 6 pupils practise their Maths and Grammar at home. Some weeks they will have Maths or Grammar to complete – other weeks they may have a short activity from both books. The pages which they need to complete and the due date will be listed on the Seesaw.

We are continuing to use Seesaw at school to create a journal for pupils of work that isn’t in their books e.g. videos from music lessons or PE. You will be provided with a log in so that you can see your pupil’s journal from home (in reading diaries). Homework will be set on Seesaw. However pupils should be getting into the habit of recording their own homework and using their homework diaries in preparation for secondary school. I will not be doing this the second half of the year so that they can take on the responsibility themselves.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have anything you need to discuss, to let us know or if you have any questions.

Miss Wise (hwise@ashperton.hereford.sch.uk) and Mrs Bullock (cbullock@ashperton.hereford.sch.uk)